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Freedom In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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Aunt Lydia’s more relevant quote in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, is the two freedoms, who gives the reader an accurate insight of the Gilead society. This quote exposes the contrast between the freedom before and after the settlement of the Republic of Gilead, and the mentality of the brainwashed nation. It is well known that the Gileadean era is a dystopia, but the reader must study deeper into both societies –Gileadean and pre-Gileadean- to understand which one is really worse. Before the appearing of the Republic of Gilead, freedom was seen as a person’s desire, however, on the Gileadean era, freedom is a collective idea. On the current community, freedom is settled by laws based on moral and social values, but ignoring the …show more content…

This new regime brings the laws to control women; this included a new language and the use of violence as a method of oppression. Language is very connected with oppression. Throughout history, we see how colonizers impose their language in colonized countries to keep the natives ignorant, the same in The Handmaid’s Tale. It is noticed how every simple thing that can contain a word has been replaced. Coins are now tokens with symbols, and shop signs were replaced by drawings, to give just the necessary information about it. Every simple book or magazine was burned, all this to keep women ignorant and submissive. Language is the barrier between knowledge and ignorance, depriving someone of its language is depriving him from truth. For this reason, the Scrabble games were so important in the book. The commander playing Scrabble with Offred is a representation of clandestine rebellion. They were committing a crime and Offred enjoyed that, because for the first time since the settlement of Gilead, she was free. After all that time, Offred is having the opportunity of taking control over language, and control over the truth. In the journal The Role of Language in European Nationalist Ideologies by Jan Blommaert & Jef Verschueren, the oppression of language is constantly treated, giving examples of the uses of it throughout history and the consequences brought by …show more content…

The way to achieve this, is with the previously stated laws and bans that only deprived people from their liberties. Even the simplest things, like make-up, were prohibited, leading to an extremist government, where men were clearly superior. However, this class difference existed even between women, like the merciless Aunts and the useless unwomen. The Handmaid’s where only tools for having babies and future soldiers for the war as is expressed in the quote ““cradle[s] of life, made of bones; and within, hazards, warped proteins, bad crystals jagged as glass” and “shock troops … [who will] march out in advance, into dangerous territory” – a kind of baby-machine who will produce soldiers to fight for the country.” (Atwood, 194). In the end all the methods used to protect women only reinforced the discrimination, and Handmaids are depicted as baby machines. All this class struggle leads to one answer, in this society freedom is all about what you are forced to achieve to serve the nation. Individuals do not settle their objectives, but the government that force them to accomplish them because they are morally correct. Women are expected to do their job, their “uses”, since it is for the wealth of the

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The fight for women’s rights was not without good cause. Many saw the hypocrisies of allowing all men – even complete buffoons – the right to vote while educated ladies had no say on the ballot. Divorce laws prevent women from splitting from their spouse unless he agreed to do so. In addition, women could not own property or keep their own paychecks if they worked (see Document 1). These problems of hipocrasy were additionally highlighted when people began to see women doing the same exact work as men on farms and in other job areas (see Document 5).

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Both texts ‘The Handmaids Tale’ and ‘The Bloody Chamber’ were written during the second wave of feminism which centralised the issue of ownership over women’s sexuality and reproductive rights and as a result, the oral contraceptive was created. As powerfully stated by Ariel Levy, ‘If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire.’ Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter both celebrate female sexuality as empowering to challenge the constraints of social pressure on attitudes of women. Both writers aim to expose the impact of patriarchy as it represses female sexual desire and aim to control it thus challenge contemporary perspectives of women by revealing the oppression

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The Gradual Unbinding of Revolutionary Women Women back in the 17th to 18th century were labeled insignificant and served no major roles in any life-changing events. The fate for most of the women, was being confined in their own living spaces- left to prioritize housework duties such as cooking and cleaning. The etiquette of women was subjected to remain obedient to men. The inferiority of women forced imposition of loyalty and obedience towards men; the respect to women remained unrecognized in society. Preluding to the beginning of the 18th century, before the American Revolution arose, the position of a woman was strictly only to maintain household orders and comply towards the necessities of men.

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The last class of society that had restrictions on freedom was women 's. They had the stereotypes of tending the home, raising the kids, and being under a dominant male in the house. Also, when they did work in the factories, they were only offered lower wages compared to the men 's. Thus there were major gender inequalities. For example, the women combated the dominant white male class by advocating the equal rights, “...

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But thanks to the women’s suffrage movement courage and tenacity women gained their right and went on to fight for equal representation in other fields such as in the courtroom, marriage, and job market. A world without women’s rights would look like Margaret Atwood famous dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In the story, the government suspends the US Constitution and revokes all women’s rights, and establish a new regime largely based on the hierarchical model of the Old Testament inspired social and religious fanaticism. In this society women’s rights are strictly curtailed, the women are physically segregated by the color of clothing — blue, red, green, striped and white - to signify social class and assigned position ranked highest to

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“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves,” Mary Wollstonecraft states in her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. This female writer and philosopher published her ideas in 1792 approximately one hundred and twenty five years before women in the Soviet Union were liberated and strived to gain not only equality but also control over themselves and the expectations they were faced with. When the Bolshevik Party won control over the Russian government in 1917, they aimed to create a socialist society in which every person was equal. Very soon after taking power, the Bolsheviks introduced a new legislation “extending the principles of sexual equality to political, economic, and family life.”

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First, it is totalitarian which means that the government had control over every aspect in its citizens’ lives. This is why the government could dictate even the private lives of the people. It dictated how the handmaids spent their time, and how people interacted with each other, and also what goes on during the Ceremony. If the people did not follow, they could be reprimanded, or even worse, hung on the wall for everyone to see. Nothing was too personal for them not to delve into, and everything was under their

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Works of literature often portray ideas relating to Marxist theory, this is why in a dystopian society, class distinctions dominate the social climate, using Marxist ideologies as a tool to define the lives of the narrator and those around her. In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, ideologies from Marxist theory dominate the society in which Offred, the narrator, lives in, evidenced by the strict class systems and limited interaction between them. In writing the novel, Atwood makes a point to create a world that could exist using technology and ideas already accessible in today’s society, meaning the events that take place in The Handmaid’s Tale could happen in present day. Offred lives in a reality where class distinctions dominate society, and women, especially fertile women. These women are displaced downwards, although there are those women who attempt to resist the grip of society.

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Furthermore, one act of rebellion was when she goes to the Commander’s office and he says, “‘I’d like you to play a game of Scrabble with me’” (Atwood 138). Not only is Offred breaking the rules by being with the Commander, she also

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Some of these methods include destroying identity through classification, objectification, and indoctrination. Most women of Gilead are sufficiently repressed that they seem to accept their assigned roles, at least outwardly resigned to their fate. Atwood uses gender roles in The Handmaid’s Tale to show the lengths to which misogynistic totalitarian governments will go, to protect their dictatorships. The Republic of Gilead is a hierarchical society which requires complete submission of women to men. By taking away women’s paid jobs, confiscating their property, draining their bank accounts, and giving them no recourse, the male leadership leaves women in a fully dependent and subservient position.

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“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.

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According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, power is defined as “possession of control, authority, or influence over others. ”Although it is customary to see power in straightforward terms such as government or parenting, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood explores the different limitations and locations of power in society. From the perspective of Offred, a handmaid, the novel tells of a dystopian society called the Gilead, where the people are defined by labels according to designated power and fertility. Atwood is able to expose the diverse range of power through the system of government created, the dynamic of members of a household, and the social interactions between people.

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These texts demonstrate the societal issues involving oppression of women, women’s sexual role and their status. The Handmaid’s Tale depicts the rigid societal structure whereby women are forced to serve in various aspects and functions in the society. The boundaries of the context set are in Gilead, a totalitarian state dominated by Christian fundamentalists, indicating that Gilead enforces conformity among its citizens. In a simply put manner, one’s social position is fixed. The permanent social statuses are clearly evident from the colour-coding of the women wherein “some [are] in red, some in dull green of

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In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.

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From the outset, literature and all forms of art have been used to express their author’s feelings, opinions, ideas, and believes. Accordingly, many authors have resorted to their writing to express their feminist ideas, but first we must define what feminism is. According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, feminism is “the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state”. As early as the fifteenth century is possible to find feminist writings. Centuries later, and although she never referred to herself as one, the famous English writer Virginia Woolf became one of the greatest feminist writers of the twentieth

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