The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

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.

It reflects in the restrictions of language to only shows masculine as Offred tries to show her gratification to the Rita she says, “the Mathas are not supposed to fraternize with us” when the words should been “soronize” (18). After Offred lost her freedom by becoming a Handmaid, she realize being exposed to massive information and having the ability to read and write was power, which Atwood implicate that information and knowledge empower people. But the Gilead regime only allow men to be literate as compared to women As Offred walks the street with Ofglen, she points out the store that sells dresses for women “habits” in which “habits are hard to break” (34). [in fear that nothing has change in the future and history] As Gillam and Wood states, as long as we look at the media with a critical eye, people can decipher the purpose of large amount of images that appears in the media and decides at their own

In today’s news we see many disruptions and inconsistencies in society, and, according to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, humankind might be headed in that direction. The deterioration of society is a concept often explored biologically in novels, but less common, is the effect on everyday social constructs such as the position of women as a item that can be distributed and traded-in for a ‘better’ product. The Handmaid’s Tale elaborates the concept that, as societal discrimination towards women intensifies, gender equality deteriorates and certain aspects of societal freedoms are lost. Offred’s experience with serving Gilead demonstrates a victim’s perspective and shows how the occurring changes develope the Republic.

To begin with, money defines the power of a person. For instance, the commanders own huge houses that narrator explains as, “Late Victorian … a family house, built for large rich family” (9). They represent a rich powerful society, who rules that place. Commander’s wife gets a special treatment for being a wife of a powerful person. To be specific, narrator Offred includes, “You don’t see the commander’s wives on the sidewalks. Only in cars” (24). Therefore, commander’s wives have more power than other women. On the other hand, handmaids represent a poor powerless society. To illustrate, Offred shares her experience through flashback as she states, “We slept in what once had been the gymnasium” (3). Handmaids do not even have a house, and lives a poor life. To differentiate their status in society, handmaids are labeled and forced to wear only red clothes with red veil on face. To emphasize, Offred includes, “the color of blood, which defines us” (8). This color is given to them because they are a low class and they are used as a machine to make babies. Atwood the writer of this story named the handmaid as Offred, because she is powerless. In “Margaret Atwood on What ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’s Means in the Age of Trump”, Margaret Atwood defines that Offred means, “victim offered for sacrifice” (2017). In other words, commanders are rich and in power, but handmaid are powerless and a sacrificing object- to be offered to of commanders. Therefore, they are using their power to rule over people for self-benefit.

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.

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

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.

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, explores the idea of physical and mental oppression through hierarchy, patriarchy, manipulation of history, surveillance and finally, community identity; hence the main character’s name “Offred” or ‘Of-Fred’ if you will. 1984, by George Orwell, covers this by including configuration of language; the characters have a new language called “Newspeak” and are also constantly watched by the government and the “Thought Police.”

In the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Margaret Atwood wrote the novel based on the backlash of the feminist movement where women were entitled lower class than men (caste system). To illustrate, the women, in the story, were taken possession of by the republican group called Gilead. This group consisted of upper class men categorized as commanders, the eyes, the angles and the guardians. The commander was married to Serena Joy, labeled as one of the “wives”. Serena Joy was once a gospel singer, but is now an anti-feminist and controls what happens to the handmaid’s in the center.

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

Atwood takes doesn’t take the feminist side in “The Handmaid’s Tale”, but does examine the possibilities of what could happen if the feminine was removed from the norms and reverted back to pre-1970s gender roles as being a ‘slave’ (Irigary 795). The dystopian government or the Republic of Gilead is the epitome of false Christian values that have been altered to achieve a person goal of obtaining knowledge at the risk of destroying something that already existed. The goal to achieve such knowledge ends up being flaw by the creators, The Commanders of the Faith, Offred’s commander actually breaking the rules for caring and allowing knowledge that she already had being given. She is allowed other freedom that were supposed to be forbidden and even begins breaking into her sexuality to be with Nick. In a way, Offred captures the ideals of Nietzsche to have the will to keep going and find the flaws in the Republic of Gilead.

In her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood subliminally raises the question of how one’s personality is influenced by their role in society. This question is answered through multiple characters in the novel, specifically Offred, The Commander, and Moira.

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.

Unlike Moira, Offred is desperate to conceive the Commanderís child in order to survive. Both women parallel many women in todayís society. On one hand, there are feminists who rebel against society no matter what it costs. On the other hand, there are women who are just trying to survive and find their place in a society in which they are second class citizens. In the novel, Offred is torn between smearing her face with butter to keep her complexion and hanging herself. In the same manner, she is caught between accepting the status of women under the new regime and following her own desires to gain knowledge and fall in love. Offred doesnít know whether to accept the circumstances and die inside, or to fulfill her own desires, set herself free like Moira has done. The contrast between Moira and Offred reveals Atwoodís attitude towards women and their sometimes self-destructive submission. Atwood shows the oppression of women through the extreme setting of the story, but she also allows the reader to see how women passively oppress themselves.