Theme Of Motherhood In The Handmaid's Tale

Bearing a child is only the start of what motherhood is about. In the dystopian novel,

The Handmaid’s Tale, motherhood changes for Offred in many ways. Offred, the main character is captured while on the run to Canada with her husband and daughter. Her husband Luke is potentially dead and her daughter is taken away from her. Offred is then taken into the Gileadean society under the house of Command Waterford, where she becomes a Handmaid and is raped to increase birthrates. Offred’s idea of motherhood changes as the story progresses, this includes the aspect of making Handmaiden's forget their role as a mother in the past, being raped in ceremonies without sexual autonomy, bearing children became a matter of life and death, and degrading motherhood

Motherhood should be a beautiful occurrence where you experience and bond with your child but the ideals set on a Handmaiden have made motherhood twisted. Offred’s experiences of how religion was used as a excuse for rape is demonstarted here by the Commander, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth… Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children with her,” (Atwood 88). The only duty bestowed upon Handmaidens is to bear children and if they are unable to do that they shall become a unwomen or die. Both positions are neither ideal so the Handmaids have to deal with being raped in order to survive. Motherhood should not be something that is forced upon someone but the decision of the female and the person she wants to have a child with. As explained “Motherhood maintains a peculiar association with both death and eternal life…Giving birth to another being may be considered an experience of or an attempt at eternity while it involves potentially fatal consequences for mother, literal and symbolic. Offred describes her body-or her womb that is equated with the potential to give birth to a new life-as empty, and emptiness is empirically associated with death and hunger in The Handmaid’s Tale.”(Jung, “Margaret Atwood Studies”) Offred’s idea of motherhood has now changed. Bearing a child was now a demand rather than her own choice. The new life that she is trying to get now feels all empty rather than joyous. The child that took time to grow in the handmaid's body would have nothing to do with the mother after they are taken away by the Commander and the Wife. Being a mother takes both getting pregnant and being committed to the baby after they’re born. It’s a