Cruelty In 'Blindness And The Handmaid'

This new environment forces women into certain mentalities. They have become so damaged that they break the rules in order to regain their sanity a bit. Handmaids are not given lotion as part of the law and resorted buttering “[the] skin to keep it soft”(Atwood 96). They are breaking rules only for vanity. It’s their only way to keep going and have beauty.

Throughout history, women have had to fight against stigma and stereotypes in society. In every era, from the ancient world to present day, females have been persecuted and taken advantage of due to their gender. In our previous set of readings, the female protagonists were strong characters who defied weak stereotypes, but were still viewed as lesser beings than men. In our second group of readings, where were written more recently, women saw a slight increase in their sovereignty. All depict women as powerful figures who use their wits to make a better life for themselves.

Kingston particularly gets mad about this silence and even attacks the silent sister at the lavatory reminding her that she was not going to be a housewife. Anzadula herself claims that she will no longer be ashamed of her existence and will use her own “serpent tongue” to overcome the traditional silence (81). The two authors show that their culture had defined role for women. Anzaldua claims that hers expected a Mastiza to turn to church as a nun, to streets as prostitute or to home as a mother. In all these they are seen to be under male dominance because just as a nun is below a priest, a prostitute uses her body for male canal gratification and a wife serve and take care of the husband.

Jalil’s wives were resentful towards Mariam. Later she was introduced to Rasheed, a man triple her age, during their time of committing the abuse starts. Mariam became submissive, there was no one to save her even her own father, so she accepted her fate of being a wife and a possession. Laila is the second protagonist who is introduced halfway through the story. Her family died off and later finds out her childhood lover; Tariq is gone too.

Post World War Two America made an everlasting wound on the gender gap of our society and that we will spend years trying to bandage. This time period of women being submissive and men having all the dominance or power is in the process of being behind us, but not completely. The way we portrayed our gender roles in the workplace, social settings, or even family life has made a dramatic impact on how we portray them in the 21st century. Without the War’s change on society’s view of genders, America would not be where it is at

They were primarily only wanted for their ability to get pregnant and were “victimized by a totalitarianism system that attempts to control her [their] thoughts and dent her [their] humanity” (Thomas 90). The Aunts

Perhaps because she is isolated from the rest of society, she takes her identity as a mother very seriously. Hester has to become an independant woman without her husband; Hester is put in jail, it becomes herself against the whole colony. She needs to move forward for not only herself, but for her daughter, Pearl. Hester had perceived that pearl would be viewed differently by the adults and children of the colony. Hester begins to dress Pearl in beautiful bright-colored clothes.

There are many ways in this film where we see women dependent and subordinate to male authority. To begin with, in the beginning of the film Dadi explains about the process of how women are traded off as braids. The tradition in India is that women at young ages are traded off as wives. What happens is that men and their families arrange marriages for these young girls who have no say in whether or not they want to proceed with being married. Whichever wive the man and his family chooses he gets.

Offred provides an admission of guilt: "We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it" (66). All those who choose to “ignore” the cold hand of oppression and presume complacency are just as guilty of the result of that ignorance. But beyond base ignorance and submission to authority, Offred remains compliant even when outside of the line of direct danger – a display of her submission to the systemic oppression of Gilead. Offred, as the protagonist, incorrectly appears as a “heroine” in a .

Although gender equality has come far, it still has a ways to go. These woman and many others like them are aiding in this role reversal process. They are sparking change by eliminating the American media’s sexual portrayal of women and replacing it with a confident, driven image. Females are both viewed and portrayed as equal human beings rather than objects for pleasure now more than

With Stella Kowalski no longer residing at Bell Reve and all other family members ailing, DuBois was left in charge of Belle Reve and its finances, which also contributed to DuBois’s break with reality (Williams). DuBois had to stand by and watch everyone she knows die, yet she couldn’t run away as Stella Kowalski did, for she contains a perseverant attitude and therefore could not break down and be weak. She stayed strong, cold, and

During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s women’s suffrage was a huge epidemic in the United States along with the rest of the world. Not only was the United States in the fight for women’s rights, so were places like London, Australia, and even the Bahamas. Women’s suffrage was fighting the right for women to be able to vote within their territory. Women’s suffrage has been going on for centuries and is still a problem within the community that has switched over to gender equality. But was the Civil Rights Movement blinding the issues in the Bahamas?

“No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body”. When Margaret Sanger spoke these words, she was expressing her belief on a woman’s right to have an abortion. This quote, however, speaks to the fact that women are oppressed on more than just abortions. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Atwood portrays the dehumanization of sexuality through both the characters and events within the novel, therefore proving that women will always be considered less than men will. Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1939.

What difference can an individual make against society? According to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the answer is not that much. Set in the Republic of Gilead, the characters all suffer under the totalitarian regime, and the few who actively try to change the system fail in the end. Even though Offred, the protagonist, periodically contemplates the inalienable types of an individual’s power, the actions throughout the novel indicate that such powers are negligible; because of this, The Handmaid’s Tale ultimately suggests that an individual is powerless to their environment. The most significant and potent form of power and thereby control in the strictly regulated state of Gilead is knowledge.

Dystopian novels are works of fiction written that depict a perfect society. Naturally, most of dystopian literature is about societies with an altered piece of society that the author deems insufficient in their reality. Margaret Atwood wrote a futuristic dystopian novel, ‘The Handmaids Tale’ about a society named Gilead. Atwood creates a dystopia in which sexuality is governmentally regulated. Due to a cultural shift of values, the Republic of Gilead had one goal: to control procreation to repopulate the earth.