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Female Bodies In The Handmaid's Tale

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Women’s Body The Figuration of the female body is well described in both Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El-Saadawi and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Both novels show that the women bodies are not their own and controlled by others which it turned into an object in order to survive. In this paper, I would like to argue how the objectification of the female bodies in both novels resulted in their oppression and sufferings. Moreover, what is the definition of the figuration of a body to both Offred and Firdaus? And is there a way out to survive this tragedy in both novels? The body is a precious thing for everyone to have. The concept of having your own body and taking care of it is very important and vital, unfortunately this is the exactly opposite of what happened in both The Handmaid’s Tale and Woman at Point Zero. In both novels, their bodies are not their own and they are not the ones who were in control of their bodies but the other people. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred did not want to look on her body anymore because it is strange to her, as what she said: “My nakedness is strange to me already. My body seems outdated.” (63). She said also in describing the figuration of her body: “I can’t think of myself, my body, sometimes, without seeing the skeletons: how I must appear to be an electron. A cradle of life, made of …show more content…

The patriarchal society, most of the time, is one of the important reasons behind turning the women bodies into objects with having control over their bodies. However, the most arguable question is: is there a way out? Can women survive these oppressions that resulted from objectifying heir bodies? In The Handmaid’s Tale, Mayday came to Offred’s rescue, but as what she said it is an vague way out: “whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can’t be helped.”

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