Essay on The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

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’

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.

The women who have become sterile are fit into other classes within Gilead’s society and are differentiated by the color of their dress.. The women who are high on the class list are the wives (Blue Dress) who are married to the commanders. In this case the wife of the commander is Serena Joy, who is unable to bear any children. She was able to escape the oppressive chains of the Republic due to her devotion to serving God and spreading the word of God prior to the collapse of the U.S. However, her life is no more joyous than that of a Martha or a Handmaid as she must watch the handmaid's enter her home to attempt to bare her husband's children. The next on the list are the Aunts, they are staff members who blend the prim role of academy schoolmarms with the sadism of prison matrons. These women ‘teach’ the Handmaid’s about the role they have had the privilege of their positions within the new Republic of Gilead. The Martha's (Green Dress) women who are older or sterile and have the task of being the commander’s housekeepers. The Econowives (Striped Dress)who are working-class women who lack maid service and thus must "do everything." The Unwomen (Dress color never specified) are females that were remanded to the Colonies to serve in clean-up crews removing toxic wastes. Both the class and dress code of the women symbolizes that they are no longer individuals; they

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

The Handmaid's Tale is set in the early twentieth century in the futuristic Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States of America. The Republic has been founded by a Christian response to declining birthrates. The government rules using biblical teachings that have been distorted to justify the inhumane practices. In Gilead, women are categorized by their age, marital status and fertility. Men are categorised by their age. Women all have separate roles in society, and although these roles are different, they all share the same theme: Every woman is confined to the home and has a domestic duty. Marthas are cooks and housekeepers, and handmaids have one duty, which is to reproduce, growing and giving birth to babies to the childless

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.

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.

In Margaret Atwood 's book, The Handmaid 's Tale, the women in the book often find themselves at the mercy of men and being used for the purpose of fulfilling man 's needs. They are more seen as property, than as humans themselves. The women are systemically ranked for amount of use in the household and women who can give birth are often high ranked, but not given much freedom. Over they do everything and are allowed nothing. The woman are not allowed to read, have their own money, or to normal jobs outside of being maids or cooks. The woman are often ranked in terms of colors with wives wearing blue, handmaids wear red, Maratha’s wearing green and Ecowives wearing stripes. The women are often seen as commodities and only relevant to the needs of man.

June.” Along with the theme of oppression being demonstrated throughout the book, the women are also stripped of their identities, one of them being how the Handmaids were not to use their real names. Another way that loss of identity is shown is how women in the book are split into four different social classes (Handmaids,wives, marthas and econowives). Each group of women are forced to wear a certain colored dress so that others would know which group they belong to and so that they can easily define them. This clearly denotes how they are all seen as one and are only seen as what their social class is.

In the beginning of The Handmaids Tale, there are 3 quotations that form the front piece of the book and insight the readers into the important aspects of the book. “And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children…” This quotation resembles how important it was to give children. That if Rachel gave no children she might as well die, “Give me children or else I die”. This quotation sets the theme for infertility. Rachel allows Jacob to get the maid pregnant because she wants to claim the children as her own. The desire for children is put above any other sin committed, such as this version of adultery. The reason for this quotation in the book is to imply that these actions will be taken in The Handmaids Tale. The second quotation,

Imagine if you can, living in a world that tells you what you are to wear, where to live, as well as your position and value to society. In Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, she shows us the Republic of Gilead does just that. Offred, the main character, is a Handmaid, whose usefulness is her ovaries. Handmaids are ordered to live in a house with a Commander, his wife, and once a month attempt to become pregnant by the Commander. Throughout Atwood's novel, you will notice she uses different colors for her characters clothing that correspond to their position and place in the Republic of Gilead. They become aware of people's statuses by the color of their

In Margot Atwoods “The Handmaids Tale”, she introduces a dystopian world where women slowly start losing all of their freedom. They are only deemed useful to exist

Men historically have been known to attempt to control women, but that actually proves how much control the women really have if the men feel the need to try and take that away from them. Control is an interesting concept in this story because there are lots of scenarios that involve people having control over others. In terms of women, Marthas are in control of wives, and wives control the handmaids. In this story, it seems that the women are the most in control though usually that is not the case. Another unusual thing about control is the fluctuation of control between the Commander and Offred. It seems that the Commander starts out with the advantage of being in charge, but when he brings up how he is looking for more of a relationship

to give a horrific picture in the readers mind of what happened. The movie changes the scene slightly in that there is only one hanging. The Handmaid in the movie is hung for "seduction of a doctor." The director of the film makes this scene very tense when Aunt Lydia asks, "Why is she punished?" All the handmaids answer in unison while bowing "For our sins! For our sins," and by showing the Handmaids pull the rope to hang the convicted woman. Both the movie and the film proceed to the Particicution. The handmaids make a circle around a man who was convicted of "rape of two women, one was pregnant and the baby died" (279). Atwood describes how all the handmaids "surge forward, like a crowd at a rock concert in the former time,"(279) and kill the man. The movie follows along with the picture Atwood gives accurately.

In Haindmaid’s Tale, women are divided into a small range of social categories, each one signified by a specific-color dress in a similar style: