The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

In her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has created the fictional Republic of Gilead, in which women are heavily oppressed by the newly installed regime. The new regime values women solely on their fertility, thus objectifying them to no more than a means of reproduction. By confiscating control over the process of and the rights to reproduction, the Gilead regime denies women ‘’any sense of control or independence’’ (Byrne). In this essay, I will argue that, although the female body is the main subject of oppression in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it is also the key to resistance for women in the so-called nation of Gilead, and that women hold the ultimate bargaining power, as they have the ‘’final say’’ on what happens to their bodies.

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.

Imagine living in a world where women’s rights are removed. Now imagine that people are forced to have encounters with each other in order to repopulate the world. This crazy fictional thought becomes reality in the book Handmaids Tale, by Margret Atwood. This book takes place in a society called Gilead. Gilead is a place where women are no longer considered human.

With these changes to society, members often felt bounded by Gilead and the ability to control one’s thoughts appears impossible, as Aunt Lydia tells Offred, “The Republic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds. Gilead is within you” (Atwood 23). It appears that Aunt Lydia believes that Gilead is an internal part of each individual and therefore, it is always helping to ‘shape’ one’s thoughts and actions. Gilead’s justification of why women don’t need an education is that since a woman’s purpose in society is to bear children and raise them, they no longer require an education to perform such duties. The male population of Gilead did not lose the same rights that the women lost, however, males still have restricted freedom and restricted access to materials (books, magazines, etc). The restrictions placed on women’s and men’s lives in Gilead appear to match a characteristic of a dystopia. Since men and women don’t receive the same education in Gilead due to the restrictions on freedom, it would be improper to consider Gilead a utopia.

This group then legitimizes the unequal relationship and incorporates it into society's guiding concepts. (The Handmaid’s Tale 127) Using any technique possible, Gilead has found ways to suppress women and take control over their bodies. Because of this, the society of Gilead has turned into a rape culture by normalizing the horrible sexual assault that the handmaid’s face. Today, many of these same events happen to women.

In the “science fiction” novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood describes a distinct view of the future in which a new totalitarian regime has taken over the government of the United States. The novel focuses on the experience of Offred, a handmaid, as she retells events of her past life, and provides readers an insight on the extremity of control that the Republic of Gilead has over citizens. Atwood conforms to and deviates from the conventions of science fiction by using different narrative elements to give her audience a view on her futuristic, dystopian society. Although this novel was first seen as science fiction, Atwood claims that it is speculative fiction.

so she is able to satisfy the mens needs. She says “I am a national resource.” (Atwood, 73) This quotation is seen as misogynistic because Offred is only valued for her fertility and her ability to have children. This can lead to the destruction of society because, women are a part of Gilead so oppressing these

With the feminist movement under constant attack, one could wonder the effect on society if the progress of the movement were to be completely reverted. Margaret Atwood speculates this scenario in her best-selling novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, where through a military coup, a totalitarian theocratic regime, known as the Republic of Gilead, takes hold of the United States government. The novel tells the daily life of the protagonist Offred, a handmaid whose sole purpose is to bear children in a time of declining fertility, in her assignment to another wealthy man. Through Offred’s endeavor to fulfill her duties as a handmaid, Atwood advances the theme that ‘one must struggle in order to truly live freely.’ While Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s

Margaret Atwood is the author of both Lady Oracle and The Handmaid’s Tale. Both of these novels follow the conventions of the oppression of women. Lady Oracle is the narrative in which Joan Foster, the first-person narrator, tells the story of her life. Spanning the time period of the early 1940s through 1970s, Joan’s story describes her growing up in Toronto, becoming an author of gothic romances, marrying and faking her suicide to escape the complicated turmoil of her life. The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a city what used to be in the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead. In this alternative future state, the democratic government has been overthrown and replaced by an authoritarian one. In this book, the narrator, Offred, acts as the reader’s eyes and ears. People who have read this novel see Gilead as she sees it; they interpret it as she interprets it; and their only knowledge of it comes from the information she gives to them. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Lady Oracle both portray the theme of the roles of women in society. This will be discussed by analyzing and contrasting the conflicts that Offred and Joan are faced with, and how they react to these conflicts.

Literary Analysis In a world that is created of men and women, all must equally work together in order to achieve a functioning society on Earth. However, in the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, a dystopian society is created where men have complete authority over women. Thus, the women in The Handmaid’s Tale are not subject to any rights or freedoms. A matter of a fact, the only women that have any place in the society are the handmaids that reproduce children for the elite men of the Republic of Gilead.

In the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, written by Margaret Atwood, the author details a futuristic dystopia where women have been subjugated and dehumanized to serving the purpose of bearing children in order to equalize the disproportion in declining births due to the effects of the nuclear pollution. The authors in depth analysis conveys the notion of the atrocities women throughout history consistently find themselves enduring through with a male-dominated patriarchal system. Within the Republic of Gilead, women have been denounced as being seen as pure objects of reproduction not as actual beings. The agenda of Gilead has completely disrupted the order of society and refers back to a biblical order of existence. The creators of Gilead aspired to create a regime where women would no longer be

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel published in 1985 during a period of conservative revival. The story takes place in the Republic of Gilead, a society in which a theocratic regime has replaced the USA. This regime primarily oppresses women as they have been stripped of their sexuality and reproduction rights. Besides that, the women have been segregated into different classes or social groups, distinguishable by the role assigned to them. Our narrator, Offred, is a “handmaid”- a woman who is to be used by the Commander for reproductive purposes.

In Margaret Atwood's fictional novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a dystopian society, the character of Offred is a ‘handmaid’ assigned to a high-ranking Commander and his wife. Atwood’s explanation of the novel in her ‘Introduction’ categorizes The Handmaid’s Tale as a “feminist novel” (xv). Through Offred’s struggle to rationalize her transgressions, which lead to her imprisonment, Atwood challenges feminists’ conceptions of idealistic worlds. Feminists believe that women have both the right to control their bodies and to control if and when they have children, which is critical to their freedom of choice surrounding procreation and the expression and enjoyment of their sexuality (Boston Women's Health Book Collective). Barbara Ehrenreich,

The novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, explores the role of women in a fictional patriarchal society. Women in the novel are seen as property of a man and they live under a strict set of enforced rules and guidelines that male society has deemed appropriate. These patriarchal beliefs are so entrenched in the society that many women either believe the ideals or have been subconsciously influenced by society. Most of the women in the novel were “products of society” with their personalities being heavily attributed into the culture that they were now immersed in. A major theme of “The Handmaid’s Tale”, by Margaret Atwood, is the skewed sense of freedom and power that the women have developed; seen in the value placed on children, the women’s interactions with one another, and the clear presence of suicide.

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