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Feminism In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

676 Words3 Pages

Feminism refers to the broad range of ideas, approaches, and ideologies directed towards gender and sex equality of women, in doing so, there are many misconceptions of women being of servitude to men and that “... women are slaves of the system” (Coad). In “The Handmaid’s Tale” Margaret Atwood, shows the domestic roles that women play as well as their feminist satire, in the Republic of Gilead.
Some people believe, that women are only meant for servitude. For instance, due to “declining births” (Atwood, back cover) the Republic of Gilead tend to give the false impression that “there is no such thing as a sterile man” (Atwood, 61). However, women are not always the main fault of not having the ability to have children. While it is easier to …show more content…

The roles of women are related to the historical accounts and analysis of women’s roles in the Middle Age (Lukes). In meaning the women are And although, giving women different roles made things run smoothly throughout the Republic of Gilead, “women are silenced, oppressed and disempowered” (Coad).The roles of women were a major part of the story. Everyone had their own unique role. For example, the Handmaid’s, like Offred were only used for their ovaries, nothing more. The Wives, for example, are in charge of all the women in their households, including their Handmaid. Any transgression made by a Handmaid is handled by the “woman” of the house, such that Offred realizes that "If I 'm caught, it 's to Serena 's tender mercies I 'll be delivered” (Atwood, 128). Wives view their assigned authority over the Handmaid’s as just compensation for their humiliation suffered on nights of the Ceremony, where they watch their husbands and their Handmaid 's having sex. Even though, women are subject to their role in society they are still watched …show more content…

While the Handmaids are carefully monitored by the Wives at their postings, all women are constantly watched by “the Eye”, which is in other words the arm of surveillance (Cooper). At the Red Centre Handmaids are also under constant surveillance by the Aunts--a term that is especially appropriate for suggesting matrilineal policing. The brutality the Aunts inflict on the Handmaids--their would-be kin-- demonstrates just how much women in Gilead are involved in a kind of sado-masochism. Offred recalls watching her friend Moira, "limping from what they’d done to her feet" (203), in punishment for attempted escape from the Red Centre. In doing such Margaret Atwood “... depicts a futuristic society in which a brutal patriarchal regime deprives women of power and subjectivity, enslaving them through a sophisticated, ubiquitous apparatus of surveillance” (Cooper). Giving women no sense of freedom, due to religious preferences.
Throughout, the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret “... brings together pre-Christian notions of absolute patriarchal authority--the omniscient, avenging god--with postmodernist theories of the objectifying and possessive male gaze …” (Cooper). The Republic of Gilead was established by a military group called the “Sons of Jacob”, coming into rule by killing the President and stopping the political system as well as the Constitution (Nakamura).

Throughout, the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret shows the many domestic roles of women, in a world that diminishes women. She

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