Imagine being split apart from loved ones to be forced into a different society. In a society that is considered unordinary to today's society; where one does not have freedom for anything. In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred rewrites about the struggle of men, her past, and the difficult times women face on a day to day basis. The men in the Republic of Gilead live differently compared to the men in today’s society. The men divide into three different categories: Guardian, Storekeeper, and Commander. The Guardians are men who perform day to day routines and other unskilled functions. The Guardians are the men considered to be the lowest out of all three. The narrator says; “Leave it on the porch. [Serena Joy] said this …show more content…
The women split up into three different categories: Martha, Handmaid, and the Commander’s wife. Martha’s are women who cook and clean. Offred observes Rita, a Martha at Serena Joy’s house, and says; “She’s making bread, throwing the loaves for the final brief kneading and then the shaping” (10). While at Serena Joy’s house, Offred watches Rita, and she sees her making bread, which is a Martha’s job. Moreover, Handmaids are women who have intercourse with the Commander, then carry their baby, and give the baby to the Commander and the Commander’s wife. The narrator says; “Serena Joy is arranged, outspread. Her legs are apart, I lie between them, my head on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base of my skill, her thigh on either side of me. She too is fully clothed. My arms are raised; she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product” (106-107). Offred is a handmaid, and she has intercourse with the Commander, while she lies in between Serena Joy’s leg. If Offred becomes pregnant, she will carry the couple’s baby and hand it off to the couple after she gives birth. Additionally, the Commander’s wife has a lot more freedom compared to Martha’s and Handmaids. The Commander’s Wife has the option to knit, garden, or watch television. Offred says; “A Guardian detailed to the Commander does the heavy digging; the Commander’s Wife directs, pointing with her stick. Many of the Wives have such gardens, it’s something for them to order and maintain and care for” (13). The Commander’s Wife has the privilege to demand others, such as the Guardian, who takes care of the garden. Hence, the women who reside in the Republic of Gilead are treated differently compared to women in today’s society since women in Gilead are
The Handmaids Tale is a poetic tale of a woman's survival as a Handmaid in the male dominated Republic of Gilead. Offred portrayed the struggle living as a Handmaid, essentially becoming a walking womb and a slave to mankind. Women throughout Gilead are oppressed because they are seen as "potentially threatening and subversive and therefore require strict control" (Callaway 48). The fear of women rebelling and taking control of society is stopped through acts such as the caste system, the ceremony and the creation of the Handmaids. The Republic of Gilead is surrounded with people being oppressed. In order for the Republic to continue running the way it is, a sense of control needs to be felt by the government. Without control Gilead will
When Offred ventures into the Commander’s office, a place handmaids are forbidden to enter, she is overwhelmed with books. Atwood provides more information on the restrains of women in Gilead when Offred comments “It’s an oasis of the forbidden.” (137) Atwood provides insight on the strict regulations on women with Offred’s amazement on how extraordinary it was to be in the presence of many words. Atwood then makes a point of how disposable women are when Offred feels uncomfortable with the Commander watching her put on lotion but she doesn’t turn away. Offred silently lectures herself “For him, I must remember, I am only a whim.”(159)
In Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale she explores the concept of a not-so-distant future where toxic chemicals and abuses to the body have left many men and women alike sterile. The main character, Offred, gives the reader a first person account about her submissive life as a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. A republic that was formed after a coup against the U.S. government. She and her fellow handmaids are fertile women that the commanders of Gilead ‘enslave’ to ensure their power and to repopulate their ‘society’. While the laws that govern the people of Gilead seem outlandish and oppressive, they are merely
Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred’s accepts her role as a bystander of a perpetual atrocity as her struggle progresses. Offred’s experience exemplifies the pattern of devolution in women impacted by internalized oppression through her metamorphosis from a defiant agent to a complicity individual to an isolated victim of an extremely repressive society. When the story begins, the Republic of Gilead has already been established. Women lack autonomy of any kind, and Offred, a handmaiden of an influential family in the Republic, recounts how the society came to be. She remembers the revolution and the violence, but she also recalls the way life was before the Republic.
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood describes the story of Offred, a Handmaid, that is a woman ascribed a breeding function by society, and who is placed with a husband and wife higher up the social ladder who need a child. Through Offred's eyes we explore the rigidity of the theocracy in which she lives, the contradictions in the society they have created, and her attempts to find solace through otherwise trivial things. The heroine is never identified except as Offred, the property of her current Commander, she was a modern woman: college-educated, a wife and a mother when she lost all that due to the change in her society. The novel can be viewed from one perspective as being a feminist depiction of the suppression of a woman, from another
In the Republic of Gilead, Wives are simply wives, they are there for their husbands, whether it means being loyal to them, taking care of their children, and being their cohort. But, when they can’t carry their husband’s descendants, they are assigned a Handmaid, one of the few fertile women able to bear children in the poisonous environment full of toxic waste. This is what happens to the Wives in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Indubitably, some devoted Wives, like Serena Joy, have a tough time adapting to their new lives in Gilead so they decide to put all their anger towards the people around them.
In conversation with Offred, the Commander describes his outlook on the oppression of women by saying "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some" (Atwood 274). The Commander’s ability to have this view of Gilead’s government comes from a place of privilege and power. Offred, as well as the other women in the story who are ranked beneath him, are oppressed and degraded. They no longer have an
Beginning life in a new environment is often a challenging transition. Events such as moving away from home for college or beginning a new job require some time for adjustment. This being the case, many people start off new experiences with a support system behind them. The main character in The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred, must deal with the challenges of a new environment, but she is not embracing a new stage in life. Instead, Offred has been stripped of her freedom and placed under the authority of a man much older than her.
To begin, in Atwood’s novel it explores how women are degraded solely on the basis of gender that is reflected in Offred’s view of her body and sexual encounters. Offred views her body simply as an instrument by Gileadean women having their liberties stripped away from the right to hold property, write, and read. This view of women’s role is depicted throughout the novel such as when Offered states, “I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am” (Handmaid’s Tale 73). Offred has internalized Gilead’s attitude towards women.
Women no longer have the ability to hold public office, own property, have their own bank accounts, work outside the home, or even view text. A totalitarian theocracy, Gilead holds wives under the complete control of their husbands and handmaidens—or concubines— under the control of their Commanders, so much so that the handmaidens are renamed to reflect their individual Commanders’ names. The story’s narrator and protagonist, Offred—literally “Of-Fred”—allows us to view this new society through the eyes of a handmaiden, whose sole purpose is to produce offspring in a world where fertility is seemingly
A Critical Analysis of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In this dystopia novel, it reveals a remarkable new world called Gilead. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, explores all these themes about women who are being subjugated to misogyny to a patriarchal society and had many means by which women tried to gain not only their individualism and their own independence. Her purpose of writing this novel is to warn of the price of an overly zealous religious philosophy, one that places women in such a submissive role in the family. I believe there are also statements about class in there, since the poor woman are being meant to serve the rich families need for a child. As the novel goes along the narrator Offred is going between the past and
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
Women in the past were perceived as insignificant because of the society’s inability to embrace and acknowledge women as of equal importance as men and of those who are wealthy. In Margret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the character by the name of Offred, is a handmaid and tells her perspective of the dystopian life in the community of Gilead. The women of 1985 serve the males and the rich if they are not a wealthy maiden themselves. However, regardless of class, women are always discerned as of lesser significance than men. This is manifested through Offred’s observation that although the women who are a Commander’s wife are entitled of higher authority than the handmaids, they are still seen as insignificant. In order to give them
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.
Within history, societies have to try to find a balance between gender and class. Margaret Atwood writes about a country called Gilead: a society where women are broken down into classes while men control all the power. Throughout her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood utilizes gender and class to alienate the protagonist, Offred, illustrating how women and their position within society are used as a political instrument to gain dominance.