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Women In The Handmaid's Tale

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A work of speculative fiction, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale introduces a totalitarian theocracy established after the fall of the United States government. In an effort to stop the readily available amounts of prostitution, porn, and violence directed towards women, The Republic of Gilead rose to power, and with that uprising, women were stripped of their basic privileges. Throughout the novel, the protagonist Offred recalls events and flashbacks of her early life before the conversion of the society to a Catholic theocracy.
Set in the early United States, roughly around 2045, The Republic of Gilead is controlled by an elite group of men. In this elitist society, a caste system, furthered by fertility, classifies the women of Gilead: …show more content…

For a society that was built on a goal of controlling reproduction after pollution and chemical spills led to radiation sickness which caused a decline in fertility rates, fertility was one of biggest influencers of Gilead’s caste system. For sterile women living in the Republic of Gilead, perhaps the most fortunate they could get was to be married to an man of power and status. Otherwise, the next best alternative for a sterile woman was to serve as a servant. In Gilead, two servant positions are granted to infertile women. Servants known as “Aunts,” worked to educate and train the fertile women in their road to becoming a handmaid, and “Marthas,” worked at an elite family’s home, serving as either housekeepers or cooks. Women who had followed Gilead’s rigid rules and could still bear children were selected to become handmaids. Besides being classed based on a woman's ability to bear a child, women who did not qualify for either of the four roles, either due to their “economic status or perceived ungodliness,” were deemed as individuals who held no value and were sent to the Colonies, a vast wasteland. The women sent to the Colonies are powerless, and if their position were lowered, they were branded “Unwomen,” and banished from all societies. The status of “Unwomen” were granted to women who defied the rules of the society; their reluctance in marriage or their refusal and

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