Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale

Over the past 200 years sexual liberation and freedom have become topics of discussions prevalent within western culture and society. With the recent exploration of sexuality a new concept of sexual and gender identity has emerged and is being analyzed in various fields of study. The ideology behind what defines gender and how society explains sex beyond biology has changed at a rapid pace. In response various attempts to create specific and catch all definitions of growing gender and sexual minorities has been on going. This has resulted in the concept of gender becoming a multi- layered shifting hypothesis to which society is adapting. Since the 19th-century, philosophers and theorists have continued to scrutinize gender beyond biological and social interpretation. Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale captures the limitations and social implications forced upon a set gender based on societal expectations. Gender is a social construct that limits the individual to the restrictions and traditions of a society, or if it’s an individually formed self-identification of sex and sexuality that is formed autonomously. Evidence of gender establishment can be seen within literary works and supported by various schools of gender and sexuality theory.

Written by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel set in the near future where the United States is overthrown and a military dictatorship forms called the Republic of Gilead. Gilead is a society that reconsolidates power and creates a new hierarchical regime that limits women entirely of their rights. The rulers of this dystopia are centrally concerned with dominating their subjects through the control of their experiences, time, memory, and history. A woman called Offred narrates the story and works as a Handmaid for reproductive purposes only. In her storytelling, Offred describes flashbacks consisting of portions of her life before the revolution. These flashbacks are the only thing that keeps her going in this

Throughout the course of world history on Earth, humans have always worked harder and harder in order to improve society and make it more perfect, although it still hasn’t been done quite yet, because it is merely impossible to achieve perfection in a world with close to seven billion people. There is a very distinct difference between a utopia, which can also be known as perfection, and a dystopia, which can also be known as a tragedy; and the outcomes normally generate from the people in charge or the authority that sets up the foundation, the rules, and the regulations for a society. In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Republic of Gilead is created by a powerful authority group called the Eyes after a huge government take over and the assassination of the US president. It’s very strict rules and goals are set up to protect women, to increase childbirth, and to keep all violence, men, and powerful social media under control. The novel is set in a first person point of view and the narrator, Offred, tells her story to us readers about her experiences as a handmaid and how her life was completely turned upside down. Throughout the course of the novel Offred reveals many sides of herself; although her thoughts do not remain consistent, her personality and opinion tends to change revealing, that she is hesitant and strong because she learns to make the best of what she has and silently overcome the system of the Republic of Gilead.

The literary masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is a story not unlike a cold fire; hope peeking through the miserable and meaningless world in which the protagonist gets trapped. The society depicts the discrimination towards femininity, blaming women for their low birth rate and taking away the right from the females to be educated ,forbidding them from reading or writing. These appear in Ethan Alter’s observations that:

In the book The Handmaid 's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the foremost theme is identity, due to the fact that the city where the entire novel takes place in, the city known as the Republic of Gilead, often shortened to Gilead, strips fertile women of their identities. Gilead is a society that demands the women who are able to have offspring be stripped of all the identity and rights. By demeaning these women, they no longer view themselves as an individual, but rather as a group- the group of Handmaids. It is because of the laws that have been established that individuality has been demolished. From these points that will be raised, it can be concluded that a handmaid’s role in Gilead is more important than their happiness, and mental wellbeing.

According to the dictionary, “feminism” is the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. Many stories have been written to denounce the difference between the two sexes. Indeed, one of the main themes of both the The Handmaid’s Tale and The Scarlet Letter is feminism. The Scarlet Letter was a book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 and it tells the story of a woman, Hester Prynne, who committed adultery while she was married to a man named Chillingworth. Adultery frowned upon by the Puritans and was harshly punished. On the other hand, The Handmaid’s Tale, the other book is about a dystopian future with the Republic of Gilead. Women are very restricted and have to abide by her Commander with whom she has sex. In both stories, the message of feminism is very important for the reader. Hester is treated as a spectacle who will make her more powerful, while in the Handmaid’s Tale women are seen as objects merely, “baby-making machines.”

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.

Lay Patel ENGL 1101-130 Professor Shoemake 17 April 2017 Title Margaret Atwood in her novel, The Handmaid's Tale portrays the idea of the political, religious and social trends in 80’s United States. Atwood continues to argue about trends, the attitude held about women and what would happen if it were taken to logical ends. In her recent article, Atwood speaks out on how she started writing the novel in 1984 and it was not the same title as it is when published. Atwood describes about her days in West Berlin, which was still encircled by Berlin wall.

In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the author expresses a feminist dystopia in which men dominate the Republic of Gilead and women are objectified and used as machines whose only purpose is to produce babies. This former state of Massachusetts now known as Gilead is run by Commanders and their assigned wives, marthas, aunts and handmaid’s. The women in this society are controlled in every aspect of their life, from who they talk to and what they say; which is all monitored by the eyes (spies). The lack of authority over their lives over time push Gilead into becoming stronger as a male dominated society, where women slowly lose sight of their worth. This authoritarian regime glorifies rape and condemns abortion, they restrict

Meanwhile, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood writes about the underlying social dynamics present within the dystopic Republic of Gilead, a procreation-based society that ultimately defines the worth of a woman by her sex and biological role in reproduction. In this way, women in the novel are dehumanized and objectified because it is evident that they are seen by society as more of “baby-making” machines than actual human beings. Thus, one can argue that identity becomes problematic in this sense because the worth of a woman in Gilead is solely determined by her biological identity and reproductive function. In general, all women in Gilead are deemed inferior to men due to their sex and the socially constructed belief that males are

The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel which work is a speculative fiction written by Margaret Atwood. It is set in the near future, written in the 1980s where the Republic of Gilead’s only success will be to increase birth rate by gaining control over reproduction. However, the Handmaids were fertile women whose role was to bear children for the commander's wives. Handmaids, as well as other classes of women rights, were taken away, leaving them off controlled by men in the Gilead where they must serve men. The author uses symbols and themes to demonstrate women's oppression as victims, where their bodies are controlled through political subjugation and interpreted by the societal trends.

The Handmaid's Tale, a science-fiction novel written by Margaret Atwood, focuses on women's rights and what could happen to them in the future. This novel was later made into a movie in 1990. As with most cases of books made into movies, there are some similarities and differences between the novel and the film. Overall the film tends to stay on the same track as the book with a few minor details changed, and only two major differences.

Charles Strickland, a dull stockbroker, lives in England with his wife and two children. Mrs. Strickland is a model mother, but her husband seems bored with her and with his children. To everyone else, it is Strickland who seems commonplace. The family spends the summer at the seashore, and Strickland returns ahead of his wife. When she writes him that she is coming home, he answers from Paris, simply stating that he is not going to live with her anymore. With singleness of intention, Mrs. Strickland dispatches a friend to Paris to bring back her husband.

    Feminism as we know it began in the mid 1960's as the Women's Liberation Movement. Among its chief tenants is the idea of women's empowerment, the idea that women are capable of doing and should be allowed to do anything men can do. Feminists believe that neither sex is naturally superior. They stand behind the idea that women are inherently just as strong and intelligent as the so-called stronger sex. Many writers have taken up the cause of feminism in their work. One of the most well known writers to deal with feminist themes is Margaret Atwood. Her work is clearly influenced by the movement and many literary critics, as well as Atwood herself, have identified her as a feminist writer.

In China, it is not an issue of conscious consideration. In England, despite its history and persistence, the wheels of progress roll slow and hesitant. In the United States, it is one of its most significant and vocal social movements. In the face of patriarchal politics that have suppressed women’s agency and reigned over social discourse and action to the advantage of men and disservice of women, feminism is the stalwart warrior and defender of women’s political, economic, cultural, and social rights. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood’s seminal work, has largely been read as a commentary on and warning against such socio-political conditions. Yet, it is truly the lack of proper male participation in the feminist