Women In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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.

The main character, Offred, is a woman who lives in the Republic of Gilead. The Republic of Gilead overthrew the original United States government and quickly began to take away women’s rights. As a result, Offred was forced to become a Handmaid, a fertile woman whose job is to bear children for a Commander who has an infertile Wife. The story follows Offred through her ordeals as a Handmaid with virtually no rights. She hopes that she will become pregnant so that she will not be sent away with the sterile Unwoman, who are exiled to the Colonies to clean up deadly pollution. Offred misses what the country used to be and struggles to survive in the dystopia that has erupted.

The origins of the suppression and alienation of women have its roots in what is entrenched within our social system — male dominance. The struggles of women are underrepresented in history and have long been the plight of feminism. The patriarchal dictum maintains that a woman must adopt a submissive role to fit into society. Historically, a woman’s role included compliance and chastity, which propelled male supremacy. Literary analysis provides a unique perspective of both the past and modern feminism.

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

“Were the women people who were not the paper. We lived in the black white spaces of the edge of the paper,”(Artwood).There is forced to serve men; have rules they must obey or else they get punished. Women characters have lack of freedom and are color code by the role in which there are given in Gilead. Women are oppressed in The handmaid’s Tale which leads to the power of male gender role. The women are generally assigned to be handmaids, aunt, martha's, wives which deal with house chores and having kids.

The relationship between sex and power shows how the sexual abuse of the female body, whether it be through childbirth or rape. The handmaids are first kidnapped and forced to become sex slaves by the Aunts, they are then physically held down by the wives during sex, and they are finally penetrated by the unwanted males. This act is not consensual by any means and should have been abhorred as a disgusting crime but is social, and evolutionary necessity. This shows an extreme form of what the rape culture of the 1980s represented. Ideas of rape are further examined in the Particicution, which is the execution of rapists in Gilead by the handmaid’s

Without identity and individuality there are no distinguishing features in people when compared to everyone else. In society, it is difficult to deviate from what is considered ‘normal’. The novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood displays the resilience the protagonist Offred exhibits when it comes to preservation of her identity and uniqueness against the oppressiveness of the Gilead regime. The author uses the treatment and observances by Offred to reveal her persistence in preserving her identity through her resistance against the despotic environment surrounding her. She is able to persevere despite the efforts of society to erase her identity through changing her name, defining her purpose in life and control of her body.

For this essay, we focused strictly on critics' reactions to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. For the most part, we found two separate opinions about The Handmaid's Tale, concerning feminism. One opinion is that it is a feminist novel, and the opposing opinion that it is not. Feminism: A doctrine advocating social, political, and economic rights for women equal to those of men as recorded in Webster's Dictionary. This topic is prevalent in the novel The Handmaid's Tale. Margaret Atwood, a Canadian writer, spends most of her time featuring women in her books, novels, and poetry that examine their relationships in society. In the book Atwood centers her novel on a girl whom

A handmaid’s Tale displays a society in which gender roles and functions in society are strictly controlled and determined by those in power. Female sexuality, reproduction, and masculinity is present throughout the book and has an interesting parallel to our current society and where we are moving towards. The story and the epilogue reminds us of the fragile nature of our rights and freedoms and how easily they can be stripped away and how much we rely on the people in power. The Gilead regime overthrew the U.S. government- the President and Congress were killed and the Constitution was suspended- the government blamed the Islamic fanatics (Atwood, 174).

As a child, everyone hears the Motto “be seen but not heard.” That closely models how the world was crafted. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale helps to convey the social difference between men and women, not only within the novel but today. Women are treated as subhuman world-wide and unintentionally are told to be seen but not heard. Atwood plays on this idea within the novel as the women in it are treated as third-class citizens And are only seen as people who can become fertile in life and grow the population.

Unrestrained government control; limited or absolutely no freedom; no power to make your own choices. These things sound like the makings of a nightmare, which luckily is all they are. However, this is the reality that protagonists in dystopian novels must deal with. There are many other elements in dystopian novels that fit this nightmarish life, including a gender hierarchy, arranged marriages, and women having children to give to other families. Dystopian societies, conveyed through The Handmaid's Tale and Bumped, often control women’s relationships and bodies to stay in power.

In the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, life in the newly formed dystopian society of Gilead is partial to the rights of women. Once the college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gilead has produced laws that prohibit women from writing, reading, conversing in a casual manner, having jobs, purchasing items, and even forming intimate and meaningful relationships. They are brought down to just a means of reproduction. Those who reproduce are called Handmaids and one such Handmaid is Offred. Her way of adapting to such a drastic change of lifestyle is to separate her mind from her body, to dissociate herself from what’s happening around her and to her. Pollock, the author of The Brain in Defense Mode, cites a definition of dissociation

The purpose of this essay is to look at how the two protagonist women, Offred from “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Celie from “The Color Purple” are treated in literature. This essay aims to answer the question: “How are the two protagonist women Offred from “The handmaid’s tale” and Celie from “The Color Purple” oppressed by the circumstances, the society they live in and the men in their lives and in what ways are their situations are similar?”, focusing on the similarities between their

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.

I have found the process of self and learning reflection to be very therapeutic and using the Blackboard Learning Tool, (Blackboard Learning, 2013) focusses my thoughts and my state of being. I have committed to journal entries on a biweekly basis on a Wednesday and Sunday evening. A key tool for effectively recording and unpacking complex information is the Henley Mind Map Tool. (Buzan, 2006), (Appendix 2 – PD1) The key focus on the journey of my MBA will be to manage my time effectively and make sure that my 60 hours a month are incorporated into my work and family life in a successful manner.