The representation of the body and identities in The Handmaid’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale and with reference to Never Let Me Go.

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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.

“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from,” (Atwood 24). The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, is a novel set in the near future where societal roles have severely changed. The most notable change is that concerning women. Whereas, in the past, women have been gaining rights and earning more “freedom to’s”, the women in the society of The Handmaid’s Tale have “freedom froms”. They have the freedom from being abused and having sexist phrases yelled at them by strangers. While this may seem like a safer society, all of the “safeness” comes at a drastic cost. Atwood depicts a dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale

“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood is a story set in an alternate future in which birth rates have plummeted immensely. In the Republic of Gilead, they seem to have found a solution for this decline in birth rates: handmaids. Handmaids are women who are fertile. They go to houses of wealthy and powerful couples who cannot bear children and have sexual intercourse with the male of the house (also known as the Commander). The problem with this solution is that it is forcing women, such as our narrator Offred, to have sex. When Offred and the Commander have sex, it is during a ritual called the Ceremony. Other than the Ceremony, sex is forbidden. Although, there are still some situations in which it occurs. For instance, at Jezebels, a

In “The Handmaid 's Tale” by Margaret Atwood, there is the addressing of freedom, abuse of power, feminism, rebellion and sexuality. The audience is transported to a disparate time where things normalized in our current society are almost indistinguishable. Atwood uses each character carefully to display the set of theme of rebellion within the writing, really giving the reader a taste of what the environment is like by explaining detailed interactions, and consequences as well as their role in society.

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

“Disposable people”, a prominent theme of The Handmaid’s Tale, is a concept that describes the people who are possessed as property and are exploited under the owner’s control. The Handmaid’s Tale, which is one of the best-sellers of Margaret Atwood written in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s, is a narration of Offred about the futuristic society of Gilead where the population is severely reduced and in an attempt to raise it, the government captures fertile women and trains them into Handmaids. In the book, people who are considered to be valuable or disposable depending on their fertility, genders, and influence on society. Therefore, distinguishing human beings as commodities leads to the consequences of a death sentence, being

Offred's memories are a way for her to escape a society riddled with hopelessness. The authoritarian society of Gilead prevents her from

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.

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Offred recounts the story of her life and that of others in Gilead, but she does not do so alone. The symbolic meanings found in the dress code of the women, the names/titles of characters, the absence of the mirror, and the smell and hunger imagery aid her in telling of the repugnant conditions in the Republic of Gilead. The symbols speak with a voice of their own and in decibels louder than Offred can ever dare to use. They convey the social structure of Gileadean society and carry the theme of the individual's loss of identity.

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.

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

Margaret Atwood’s harrowing novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, follows the story of a woman marginalized by the theocratic oligarchy she lives in; in the Republic of Gilead, this woman has been reduced to a reproductive object who has her body used to bear children to the upper class. From the perspective of the modern reader, the act of blatant mistreatment of women is obvious and disturbing; however, current life is not without its own shocking abuses. Just as the Gileadian handmaid was subject to varied kinds of abuse, many modern women too face varied kinds of abuses that include psychological, sexual, and financial abuse.

This is exemplified when Offred hears Aunt Lydia say, “Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary” (Atwood 33). The repetition of ordinary is used to reinforce how harsh realities (e.g. public execution) are perceived and justified as normal by the citizens of Gilead; however, in Offred’s previous life, she would have been repulsed to see a public hanging of an innocent person. With Aunt Lydia’s presence and words casting a shadow in Offred’s mind, she begins to have a sense of normalcy about life in Gilead. The Aunt Lydia’s words are so powerful and influential that Offred begins to transform her way of thinking, which mirrors the lack of individuality that she displays. Not only can Offred not think for herself, but her vision is also controlled by Gilead. For instance, Offred and other handmaids must wear white wings, which are a headdress to restrict their vision. This is shown when Atwood writes, “There remains a mirror, on the hall wall. If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct my vision towards it…[I see] myself in it like a distorted shadow” (9). The white wings are symbolic of her not being able to see reality and only what Gilead wants her to see; therefore, her vision is restricted and so are her thoughts. Furthermore, her vision is not