Gender Roles In The Handmaids Tale

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the author explores the idea of male dominated society where love is forbidden and a woman’s worth is measured on whether or not she can give birth. While the world the book is set in is beyond dramatic and hyperbolized, fiction tends to look at the extremes of a situation in order to clearly indicate the message. In the real world, the idea of a male dominated society is less transparent. The #MeToo campaign has swept across Hollywood and the rest of the nation soon afterwards speaking out against men in power who took advantage of several women in discretion over the course of years and even decades. In both scenarios, both fictitious and not, women are seen to be weak and must remain silent in order to survive. The empowered know and abuse this cyclical system. By utilizing harmful gender stereotypes, men can oppress women from places of power by enforcing stereotypes to be societal norms; this puts pressure on women to conform because they do not want to be seen as an outcast and be isolated from society, forcing them to fulfill the oppressive roles assigned to them by a patriarchy.

Margaret Atwood constructed a society that demonstrated how men in power were utilizing gender roles for their own personal gain. For instance, the Republic of Gilead was a society that focused on the stereotypes of women being obedient

Both of these texts explored the issues of the exploitation of sexuality and gender roles. It is irrelevant if the exploitation is in a fictional novel or if it occurs in everyday reality; Nevertheless, the issue poses as a threat to societies. The pressure established for the shoulders of women coerce them to conform and fulfill the oppressive roles assigned to