Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid Tale Essay

In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale she explores the concept of a not-so-distant future where toxic chemicals and abuses to the body have left many men and women alike sterile. The main character, Offred, gives the reader a first person account about her submissive life as a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. A republic that was formed after a coup against the U.S. government. She and her fellow handmaids are fertile women that the commanders of Gilead ‘enslave’ to ensure their power and to repopulate their ‘society’. While the laws that govern the people of Gilead seem outlandish and oppressive, they are merely

It is hard to perceive Offred as a rebel. However if Offred is at all

THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN IN ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE AND THEIR WAYS OF RESISTING THE REGIME

Within the totalitarian society created by Margaret Atwood in the Handmaid’s Tale, there are many people and regimes centred around and reliant on the manipulation of power. The laws that are in place in the republic of Gilead are designed and implemented so as to control and restrict the rights and freedom of its inhabitants.

The Handmaid's Tale, a film based on Margaret Atwood’s book depicts a dystopia, where pollution and radiation have rendered innumerable women sterile, and the birthrates of North America have plummeted to dangerously low levels. To make matters worse, the nation’s plummeting birth rates are blamed on its women. The United States, now renamed the Republic of Gilead, retains power the use of piousness, purges, and violence. A Puritan theocracy, the Republic of Gilead, with its religious trappings and rigid class, gender, and racial castes is built around the singular desire to control reproduction. Despite this, the republic is inhabited by characters who would not seem out of place in today's society. They plant flowers in the yard, live in suburban houses, drink whiskey in the den and follow a far off a war on the television. The film leaves the conditions of the war and the society vague, but this is not a political tale, like Fahrenheit 451, but rather a feminist one. As such, the film, isolates, exaggerates and dramatizes the systems in which women are the 'handmaidens' of today's society in general and men in particular.

In Gilead, members of the society are labelled by their age and economic status. The deep red cloaks, the blue embroidered dresses, and the pinstripe garments are all uniforms to define a person’s role in society. In particular, the handmaid’s cloaks also say a lot more about their position. The fact that they are like a nun’s gown, and are also called ‘habits’, signifies chastity and dedication to God.

Serena Joy is the most powerful female presence in the hierarchy of Gileadean women; she is the central character in the dystopian novel, signifying the foundation for the Gileadean regime. Atwood uses Serena Joy as a symbol for the present dystopian society, justifying why the society of Gilead arose and how its oppression had infiltrated the lives of unsuspecting people.

It is necessary for the government to impose a certain amount of power and control of its citizens in order for a society to function properly. However, too much power and control in a society eliminates the freedom of the residents, forbidding them to live an ordinary life. In the dystopian futuristic novel, The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood demonstrates the theme of power and control through an oppressive society called the Republic of Gilead. The government established power and control through the use of the wall, military control, the salvaging, the particicution, and gender.

A woman’s power and privileges depend on which societal class she is in. In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale each group of women are each represented in a different way. The three classes of women from the novel are the Handmaids, the Marthas and the Wives. The ways in which the women are portrayed reflect their societal power and their privileges that they bestow.

In Gilead Handmaids are seen as adulterous, harlots and are hated by everyone because of their role, “But the frown isn’t personal: it’s the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for.”(pg.19 ) they are especially hated by the wives of commanders.

Women are not the sole bodies in the caste system. Not all men in The Republic of Gilead are higher in the caste system then women, some men live amongst the house maids. Nick is an example of a male working outside but in correlation with the house. Nick is the limo driver for the Commander. Men like Nick are not allowed to have wives or be with any woman in any way. They are low on the caste but they are able to move up faster than women. In the eyes of Gilead men are more likely to change then women. They also have more power to become better.

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

Psychological criticism has roots as far back as the fourth century BC, when Aristotle “commented on the effects of tragedy on an audience, saying hat by evoking pity and fear, tragedy creates a cathartic of those emotions” (Dobie 54). More recently, however, psychological criticism has been shaped and influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud. He developed theories concerning “the workings of the human psyche, its formations, its organization, and its maladies” that, while further refined by other theorists, are still the basis of the modern approach to literary criticism (Dobie 54). Freud’s theory of the tripartite psyche is used to classify and define the conscious and unconscious mind into the id, ego, and superego. When examined using this theory, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel about a patriarchal totalitarian government that has replaced the United States of America, is particularly interesting.

In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood explores the role that women play in society and the consequences of a countryís value system. She reveals that values held in the United States are a threat to the livelihood and status of women. As one critic writes, “the author has concluded that present social trends are dangerous to individual welfare” (Prescott 151).

The laws of Gilead dehumanizes women and takes away their rights as citizens to society. Gilead wasn’t always like that until the revolution overcame the town and took away women's rights. “In Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, women are totally under the control of male members of the patriarchal society; she describes a patriarchal society and reflects the political ideology in America of that time.” Women are downgraded without any authority and control by men. “Women are like birds that are kept in cages to stop them from flying. And the authorities make women believe that this society is very secure for them and they are protected in this way of living. They also make women believe that the new way is a better freedom and God will save them if they follow.” They are taking the laws made by Gilead and comparing