Gilead: The Handmaid's Tale

Gileadean women are divided into seven classes based on hierarchy and identified by the color of their clothing. However, “They are not divided into functions. They have to do everything; if they can” (Atwood 24). The commanders’ wives wear blue. Their responsibilities are to bear children, and if they are not able to reproduce, they are to take on a handmaid and stay loyal to their husband. Aunts wear brown clothing, they work for Gilead, enforcing, teaching, and supervising the handmaids; urging them to accept their new way of life. The Marthas clothe themselves in green dresses and aprons. They are the household servants, in charge of the cooking and cleaning. Handmaids wear red, symbolizing their fertility. Their sole responsibility is to bear the Commanders’

To begin, the Republic of Gilead outfits women based on their function to strip them of their individuality. The process starts by colour coding women into easily identifiable class groups. This is seen when Offred makes her way to town, narrating the scene and drawing attention to the other women by saying, “There are other women with baskets, some in red, some in the dull green of the Marthas” (Atwood 27). Women in Gilead have been colour coded to be easily identifiable and known under their respective colours, completely erasing their identities. Furthermore, the colours they wear identify their sole purposes to society. When Offred first introduces Econowives she notes that “...the striped dresses, red and blue and green… Econowives, they're called. These women are not divided into functions. They have to do everything…” (Atwood 27). The Econowives are the wives or the poorer men, wearing the medley of all three colours to

Control dominates all aspects of Gileadian society, from minor, seemingly petty normalities such as the clothes allowed, all the way up to how and who to have sexual relations with. Unimaginable in this day, Atwood represents modern society gone sour, something which is chillingly

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Offred recounts the story of her life and that of others in Gilead, but she does not do so alone. The symbolic meanings found in the dress code of the women, the names/titles of characters, the absence of the mirror, and the smell and hunger imagery aid her in telling of the repugnant conditions in the Republic of Gilead. The symbols speak with a voice of their own and in decibels louder than Offred can ever dare to use. They convey the social structure of Gileadean society and carry the theme of the individual's loss of identity.

The handmaids are one of the many social groups in Gilead. Their main purpose in Gilead is to bear children for the infertile,

Parents typically don’t want their children reading in depth books about sex; however, The Handmaid’s Tale offers great fictional examples that teach sexism and the mistreatment of women, yet these examples can lead some in the wrong way. Therefore depending on the view in society, The Handmaid’s tale should be banned or kept to certain areas of the world because of the unfair treatment of women.

Imagery, particularly when describing beautiful colors before Gilead and contrasting them with the dull colors described in Gilead reveal how drastically life has changed. Offred mentions that in the past when she took her daughter to get ice cream, everything was “colored so delicately, pale orange, pale green, pale pink” and that her daughter, dressed in similar “ice cream pastels” would choose her treat “by the color” (Atwood 165). In life before Gilead, colors were vivid and cheerful, something to make objects more enjoyable to look at. People could wear whatever color they please, and colors had no additional meaning to them other than to show people had freedom to make their own decisions. However, in Gilead, color imagery shows the lack of decision and the rigid societal structure the government imposes. Each group has their own colors even in minor aspects of life, such as with umbrellas categorized as “black, for the Commander, blue, for the Commander’s Wife, and the one assigned to [Offred], which is red” (Atwood 9). Each color labels members of the society as part of a certain category and defines their roles without further consideration. Here, colors serve as a way to restrict peoples’ freedoms unlike when colors previously served as way to enhance freedom of choice and expression. In Gilead, “The women… are color coded to strip them of their individual identities and to mark their social status and relationships to men” restricting everyone’s freedom, even the

Fear is power. Fear is ever-present in Gilead; it is implemented through violence and force. It is through fear that the regime controls the Gileadian society. There is no way Offred, or the other Handmaids can avoid it. What used to be Harvard University, a

They use an extremists interpretation of Christianity and Islam, in their own respect, to support and justify their desire to remove individuality and opposing morale beliefs. One of Gilead’s main policies is that women are not permitted to read (with the exception of the Aunts in certain circumstances). As Frederick Judd, an architect of Gilead, put it, “Our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won’t do that again” (Atwood 383). The fact that women are intelligent beings is seen as an inconvenience towards their goal that needs to be corrected.

Gilead, a novel written by Marilynne Robinson, is one long letter written by a dying pastor, named John Ames, to his young son in hopes of teaching his son a little more about him. Because this novel is in the form of one long letter, there are no chapters or concrete plot line. Ames will begin telling a story, and more often than not, something will distract him from his many point only to retell his story again in slightly more detail later. Throughout the letter we learn about John’s family and friends, his town, the hardships they all face, and John’s ability to apply everything back to scripture of some sort. The novel offers interesting and fresh insight on Christianity and traditions of a church in a rural town throughout different generations.

The propaganda presented by Gilead is used to create a facade of benevolence and in the hope of masking the reality of their distorted world. The most prominent example being the second news segment which shows “a close shot of a prisoner, with a stubbled and dirty face, flanked by two Angels in their neat black uniforms” (82). Even within the first image it is clear the rebels are to be thought of as unhygienic whereas the Angels are clean and well put together, representing someone to be proud of. Gilead choses this juxtaposition for two reasons, the first being for viewers to associate a sense of disgust with the prisoners and their lifestyle. The second intention is to further the idea that life within Gilead is much better than the life of the dirty prisoners.

The central social hierarchy within the novel is the gender hierarchy, placing men in a position of extreme power. This is evident in every aspect of the book, as the entire Gilead society is male dominated. The Commander is at the top of the hierarchy and is involved with designing and establishing the current society taking control of a nation of women, and exploiting their power by controlling what is taught, what they can teach themselves and the words that they can use. Soon all of the women will become brainwashed, simply because it is made nearly impossible to defy the rules

The post-Gileadean society depicted decades after Offred’s story is the final allegory, presenting, in its totality, the cyclicality of human nature. Just as the rise of Gilead showed the downfall of liberalism and feminism, the fall of Gilead showed the exact opposite, a return to a world very similar to the one before Gilead ever existed. In the novel, a symposium on the history of Gilead describes how Gilead is a “fascinating and worthwhile talk” (299), using many similar descriptors as are used to speak of the other classically conservative religious society, Puritanical Massachusetts. Atwood presents how, just as the rise of Gilead signalled an end to the progression of economic and social liberalism, the fall of Gilead showed the end

Politics and religion are a central component to Gileadean life as it decides the lives of everyone. Gilead is governed by a totalitarian militant group, called the Sons of Jacob, that justifies their newly imposed laws and changes to society supposedly through religion. Their religion is not as important to reasons for change as they would like people to think though. Their actual goal is to retain the power they have obtained by brainwashing and oppressing the people of Gilead. This will be proven in three ways.

The artistic depiction and the quote shows how the society of Gilead brainwashes its Handmaids. During the Testifying, Janine has to tell the girls of the Red Center about her awful experience at the age of fourteen. Aunt Helena made the girls chant that it was Janine’s fault for getting raped. This wasn’t the truth, but their words forced themselves into Janine’s head until she eventually believed it herself. After Janine accepts that it was her fault for getting raped, Aunt Lydia says that she’s “an example”. This is true. Janine is an example for the girls of the Red Center. She’s an example of what Gilead wants the girls to be; helpless, weak, and easily