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The Handmaid's Tale Power

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Power is the currency of the world. Those with power have the ability to influence others and rapidly initiate change into their surroundings. Even the slight chance of acquiring great power pushes people to compete against each other in order to get ahead in life. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Aunt Lydia claims to protect the Handmaids from society’s sex-crazed men. However, the pleasure she gets out of patronizing women brings her down to the morality similar to that of the men she advocates against because they all berate the Handmaids in order to aggrandize their power. Aunt Lydia incessantly reminds the Handmaid’s that their work is “empowering” and allows them to be free from bad influences of past generations. In an effort …show more content…

When conferring about recent changes, Offred says, “‘Better?’ I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better?” while the Commander replies, “‘Better never means better for everyone’ he says. ‘It always means worse, for some’” (274). While the Commander is aware of the horrifying situation the Handmaids are placed under, he glosses over their lack of freedom because he knows his power will continue to grow. Similarly, Aunt Lydia overlooks the women’s struggles because their pain allows her to succeed at her job. Men in Gilead believe that they are shielding women because they assume that women are clueless and naive. As a woman, Aunt Lydia should be understanding of the immense pressure the Handmaids are put under. Instead, she leaves them defenseless because like the men, she relishes in the authority she has over the women. Aunt Lydia persistently reminds the women to stay focused, once saying, “No mooning and June-ing around here, girls. Wagging her finger at us. Love is not the point” (285). Aunt Lydia treats the women as objects to be used because the narrator repeatedly mentions how she “wags her finger at us” like one would to a dog. She uses this technique to view the Handmaids as inanimate entities rather than people. Atwood uses the men in Gilead and Aunt Lydia to show that while the two sides may claim to follow different mindsets, they both contribute to the women’s

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She is additional brainwashed through the education she received from the handmaid's teachers which they call the Aunts. They use propaganda through a bible that has been rewritten to satisfy the wants of the government or society. This allows the aunts to use manipulation through religion. Power is shown through all of these methods and warns the reader of similar affairs that could happen soon. Margaret Atwood’s superfluous attention to power through symbolistic religion helps cation the reader about issues with religion, government, and education.

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By employing objectification, Atwood exhibits the dehumanisation endured by the lower class. The handmaids are subjected to language such as ‘carriers of life’, ‘walking wombs’, and ‘shallow rooted seeds.’ The oppression forced onto the proletariats in the dystopian Gilead is illustrated by Atwood through symbolism, imagery, and

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Throughout the novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood portrays a world built upon the ideals of male leaders through the lens of a woman subject to the terrors that this world inflicts. In response to falling fertility rates and progressive ideologies, a group of powerful men are motivated to concoct a society based entirely upon their religious ideals to further both their reign over the female population and their success as leaders. Through the experience of a woman living at the expense of these ideas, Atwood communicates the negative consequences of idealism in the hands of a man, and the consequences of a religion-based idealistic world. Throughout the Handmaid's Tale, Atwood portrays a dystopian world by the name of Gilead, where

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The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, where they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. However, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it. An example is Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with prostitutes to service the male elite. Another example is the Ceremony that compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders. Foster suggests, “...sex can be pleasure, sacrifice, submission, rebellion, resignation, supplication, domination, enlightenment, the whole works” (158).

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The public's beliefs can be influenced by a faith, and fear can be used to prevent people from expressing opposing views. the expectations placed on women's clothing and how they are perceived as inferior humans. These norms, laws, and rules all seem to be rather familiar, they seem almost identical to the ones from the book. Our current reality is not all that different from Atwood's ideas in The Handmaid's Tale. However, it is possible to interpret Atwood's literary work as a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing those in positions of authority to abuse the legal system.

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What would become of the world, if our current societal flaws, such as sexism, racism, and classism were ingrained and executed at a systematic level? This is exactly what The Handmaid’s Tale set out to explore. The novel, which claims to be speculative fiction, is set in the theocratic Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA), where birth rates are rapidly declining and women have been marginalized by the patriarchal regime, forbidden to read, write or love and valued only if they are able to procreate. They are separated into classes, including Wives, Marthas, Aunts, Unwomen, and Handmaids, distinguishable only by the color of their clothing. The Handmaids are renamed by combining ‘of’ and the name of the Commander that they have been assigned to, stripping them of any individuality.

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Offred is suspicious of what the handmaid 's did. She looks at their hands, and a clue is given to her when she sees “black gloves”(Atwood 275). She ponders what they could have possibly done to have warranted such action from the authorities. Her speculation shows how the society of Gilead functions. The government of Gilead wants the handmaids to see that the prisoners are being hanged, as their suspicion is how Gilead gains control of them.

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Some of these methods include destroying identity through classification, objectification, and indoctrination. Most women of Gilead are sufficiently repressed that they seem to accept their assigned roles, at least outwardly resigned to their fate. Atwood uses gender roles in The Handmaid’s Tale to show the lengths to which misogynistic totalitarian governments will go, to protect their dictatorships. The Republic of Gilead is a hierarchical society which requires complete submission of women to men. By taking away women’s paid jobs, confiscating their property, draining their bank accounts, and giving them no recourse, the male leadership leaves women in a fully dependent and subservient position.

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Aunt Lydia’s more relevant quote in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is the two freedoms, who gives the reader an accurate insight of the Gilead society. This quote exposes the contrast between the freedom before and after the settlement of the Republic of Gilead, and the mentality of the brainwashed nation. It is well known that the Gileadean era is a dystopia, but the reader must study deeper into both societies –Gileadean and pre-Gileadean- to understand which one is really worse. Before the appearing of the Republic of Gilead, freedom was seen as a person’s desire, however, on the Gileadean era, freedom is a collective idea. On the current community, freedom is settled by laws based on moral and social values, but ignoring the

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This year is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Atwood 's dystopian classic, The Handmaid 's Tale. The novel is told from a first person account of a young woman, Offred. In an age of declining births, she is forced to become a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, the imagined future in the United States. The Handmaids are to provide children by the substitution of infertile women of a higher social status. Through the creation of different characteristics of female characters – ones who are submissive yet rebellious, and like to take advantage of their power - Margaret Atwood portray themes of love, theocracy, rebellion, and gender roles.

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In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.

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According to Alanna A. Callaway, Gilead’s entire power structure relies on the disunity of women. Although Gilead’s system oppresses women, it is the few women in power that make the caste system dangerous for Handmaids. The patriarchal power structure of Gilead needs women to regulate each other, suggesting that gynocentric misogyny, or women hating women, is far more dangerous than traditional misogyny (Callaway 2008). This being said, the genuine threat in Gilead is not from the men in power, but the

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