Reproductive Rights In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

In a society where women are completely oppressed they have two choices: To conform and survive, or to rebel and risk execution. Conformity would entail suppressing their morals and their personal rights to adapt to Gilead’s social standards. Would one choose self-inflicted isolation by disassociating oneself as a human being to survive, or gain more rights and disregard all morals by working for the government? This society is represented in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, a dictatorship, formerly known as the United States of America. The government controls all aspects of the lives’ of its citizens, with its harshest regulations directly affecting women.

From very early on in the book, the significance of gender roles is set out in order to allow the reader to comprehend the idea of the castes in this patriarchal society. The transition between the “time before” and what Offred describes as “now”, is essential in order to realize the changes that occurred. After the “Sons of Jacob” start the revolution, people’s rights are put in limbo as the constitution is suspended. Women’s rights become almost non-existent, and the division begins. Since her attempted escape, Offred is brought back into Gilead and do her duty as a fertile woman, and become a handmaid. She is very limited in what she can do, and in order to not be sent away to the

In Gilead the social relationship that once existed between men and women is a thing of the past. In the former society women had value and felt good about themselves and how they looked. However, in the new society the men have stripped the women of their freedom and equality and lowered them to varying degrees of status. The young healthy women are labeled handmaids and are "issued" (24) by the government to various high-ranking officials in order to offer them the opportunity to create offspring. Getting pregnant is their only hope of survival. Females who are not of childbearing age are called Marthas because their purpose is to work and serve the men. A third category of women is labeled Unwomen because of their worthlessness in this male dominated society. All three categories are divided into colonies to prevent their rebelling against the system. Also, within each colony communication is limited and higher education is denied. In order to enforce this kind of oppressive social structure, the government uses various forms of intimidation.

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

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Gilead regime oppresses women in many different ways; they take complete control over their bodies, they

The Bible is distorted once again to manipulate the women during the Women's Prayvaganzas. The Commander hosting the service makes a speech to the crowd: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection…All…But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve?(221). The Bible is once again used selectively, isolating only the passages that pertain to Gilead's interests, which in this case is restricting women to be submissive. Gilead is trying to implement the fact that women should be subservient to men in society by literally justifying it from a myth in the Bible. This is only one of the stories of creation in Genesis, and is secluded and appropriated to make the women believe that "if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety,?(to the Republic of Gilead) "they shall be saved by childbearing?(221). The theocracy of Gilead encourages the handmaids and women in their society to continue to obey the hierarchies of their totalitarian-like regime, and in turn also have them provide children

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.

In the Republic of Gilead, children are seen as lawful possessions of wealthy, powerful couples like the Commander and his wife. As such, women called ‘handmaids’ have been reduced to two basic functions, breeding and buying groceries. Moreover, since women are prohibited to vote, write or read, the grocery store labels all of the products

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

The Handmaid’s Tale is about Offered as she shares her thoughts and experiences in a journal-like form and provides some advice. Offred is a lower class female who has been taken from her husband and daughter at 5 years old to be a handmaid for the red commander at the red center. The point of this center is to reproduce with the Commander

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

The Handmaids Tale is a poetic tale of a woman's survival as a Handmaid in the male dominated Republic of Gilead. Offred portrayed the struggle living as a Handmaid, essentially becoming a walking womb and a slave to mankind. Women throughout Gilead are oppressed because they are seen as "potentially threatening and subversive and therefore require strict control" (Callaway 48). The fear of women rebelling and taking control of society is stopped through acts such as the caste system, the ceremony and the creation of the Handmaids. The Republic of Gilead is surrounded with people being oppressed. In order for the Republic to continue running the way it is, a sense of control needs to be felt by the government. Without control Gilead will

the Biblical context, however, is irrelevant to the modern society which existed before the coup. The context of the scripture is that of an ancient patriarchal society where men often had multiple wives whose value was to produce progeny, and the Judaic laws accorded women few rights. Though there are some similarities between ancient times and Gilead-the high infant mortality rate and death in childbirth--scripture is used by Gilead as a means to an end. In order to increase the birth rate, the regime forced the wives to accept their roles as barren women, hence inferior people, and surrogate mothers. Consequently, the handmaids are not seen as whole people at all, just reproductive machines. Offred observed that her uterus made her like a womb on legs. At the Red Center, the women listened to a tape of the Beatitudes, and Offred knew the reading was incorrect. She recollects, "'…Blessed be the meek. Blessed are the silent.' I knew it was wrong, and they left things out, too, but there was

This kind of biblical context is not relevant to the modern society that existed before the regime of the Gilead. As the context of ancient societies, the men were considered the head of the family. Men could have multiple wives, so he can produce as many children as possible and women did not have many rights according to their laws. There are some similarities between the Gilead and the ancient society, as in the ancient times and Gilead, the child death rate is very high. In the regime of Gilead commanders used handmaids as surrogate mothers of their children.

The future lays in past decisions, such as the decision to end segregation, the decision to organize population growth, or the decision to separate blood family. These choices have come from past generations’ failure and future generations’ desires. The Republic of Gilead in Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale must focus on the reproduction of offspring and nothing else. Men and women do not “make love” anymore. They only have sex for reproduction purposes. Every loved one is taken away from them—husbands, children, parents, etc. One right that can never be taken away from them is their opinions. Offred rebels against her government with the use of thought and alliance. She believes she will one day see her husband and daughter again, and while Offred dreams of her family, Aunt Lydia dreams of a world where everyone in the Republic of Gilead “will live in harmony together,” and once rebellion by the suppressed women is stopped and population levels are