ipl-logo

Female Bodies In The Handmaid's Tale

957 Words4 Pages

Women’s Body The Figuration of the female body is well described in both Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El-Saadawi and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Both novels show that the women bodies are not their own and controlled by others which it turned into an object in order to survive. In this paper, I would like to argue how the objectification of the female bodies in both novels resulted in their oppression and sufferings. Moreover, what is the definition of the figuration of a body to both Offred and Firdaus? And is there a way out to survive this tragedy in both novels? The body is a precious thing for everyone to have. The concept of having your own body and taking care of it is very important and vital, unfortunately this is the exactly opposite of what happened in both The Handmaid’s Tale and Woman at Point Zero. In both novels, their bodies are not their own and they are not the ones who were in control of their bodies but the other people. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred did not want to look on her body anymore because it is strange to her, as what she said: “My nakedness is strange to me already. My body seems outdated.” (63). She said also in describing the figuration of her body: “I can’t think of myself, my body, sometimes, without seeing the skeletons: how I must appear to be an electron. A cradle of life, made of …show more content…

The patriarchal society, most of the time, is one of the important reasons behind turning the women bodies into objects with having control over their bodies. However, the most arguable question is: is there a way out? Can women survive these oppressions that resulted from objectifying heir bodies? In The Handmaid’s Tale, Mayday came to Offred’s rescue, but as what she said it is an vague way out: “whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can’t be helped.”

Show More
Related

  • Without Her Body In John Perry's The Third Night

    233 Words  | 1 Pages

    In John Perry’s The Third Night, Weirob argues that without her body, even if she maintains the same brain, she will not be herself. She uses the example of Julia and Mary Frances to try and persuade Miller and Cohen that because she has “never seen [her body, she has] no attachment to it” (Perry 48). If someone was walking down the street and saw his friend, that person would be recognized by his body and by his physical appearance. The same can be said if someone had to be identified in a police line up.

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale And The Bloody Chamber Analysis

    1647 Words  | 7 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Dissent Assent And The Body In 1984

    842 Words  | 4 Pages

    Literature Resource Center, www.jstor.org/stable/20719844. Accessed 18 May 2023. In this journal article, Naomi Jacobs, a professor of English at the University of Maine, discusses the role of the physical body in 1984. Unlike other utopian fiction novels that portray the human body as a source of power and

    Read More

  • Racism And Classism In The Handmaid's Tale

    746 Words  | 3 Pages

    What would become of the world, if our current societal flaws, such as sexism, racism, and classism were ingrained and executed at a systematic level? This is exactly what The Handmaid’s Tale set out to explore. The novel, which claims to be speculative fiction, is set in the theocratic Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA), where birth rates are rapidly declining and women have been marginalized by the patriarchal regime, forbidden to read, write or love and valued only if they are able to procreate. They are separated into classes, including Wives, Marthas, Aunts, Unwomen, and Handmaids, distinguishable only by the color of their clothing. The Handmaids are renamed by combining ‘of’ and the name of the Commander that they have been assigned to, stripping them of any individuality.

    Read More

  • Femininity In The Handmaid's Tale

    1008 Words  | 5 Pages

    cultural constructs of femininity, identity, and the extent of government control. The story explores the affects social and political trends have on society. The Handmaid’s Tale evaluates gender roles and the subjugation of women. Atwood’s use of aphorisms, symbolism, and allusions urges readers to examine the juxtaposition of cruelty and vulnerability in femininity.

    Read More

  • Jennifer Morgan Laboring Women

    1407 Words  | 6 Pages

    Unlike, male slaves, women were rarely given the opportunity for advancement via skilled labor. Their daily lives were largely shaped by the harsh realities of agricultural production. The final chapter turns more explicitly to ideas of autonomy and reproduction, examining what Morgan refers to as a “gynecological revolt.” She looks at how women could use reproduction, or a lack

    Read More

  • Dehumanization In The Handmaid's Tale

    783 Words  | 4 Pages

    “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.

    Read More

  • Imagery In The Handmaid's Tale

    836 Words  | 4 Pages

    She describes her body with imperfect diction, such as “strange”, “outdated”, “shameful”, and “immodest” (82). Atwood has such a critical tone towards body image to expose the high standard of beauty and how the standard forces people to feel about their own body. Such image of oneself compared to the standard allows people to feel imperfect and incompetent and prohibits beauty to surface. Atwood uses parallelism in “without thought...without care” (82) to emphasize the past’s carelessness of exposure. Atwood compares the past’s exposure to the present’s concealment to differentiate the effects of each.

    Read More

  • Injustice In The Handmaid's Tale

    1482 Words  | 6 Pages

    In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood demonstrates a quizzical protagonist, Offred, in a dystopian, totalitarian society where fertile women are only a mere vessel for child birth. Every month during Offred’s menstrual cycle her Commander, Fred, and his wife Serena Joy perform detached intercourse while Serena holds Offred’s hands. The handmaids of the Republic of Gilead are not allowed to use their mind for knowledge nor take part in formal society. They are but the vacuous-minded property to their Commanders and their infertile wives. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred discloses the day to day moments and her commicalOffred had once lived in a world where she was her own person with a job and a home with a family of her own but now she lives under unfortunate circumstances that disable her from being a true, soulful human.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In The Handmaid's Tale

    1410 Words  | 6 Pages

    Symbolism can be defined as the use of symbols that an author uses to suggest more than the literal meaning of the object .Symbolism often allows the reader to understand the text better and connect with the story on a different level. In The Handmaid’s Tale, symbolism can be seen in various parts of the novel. One of the most common type of symbolism that can be identified in the text is through the use of colours. One of the most obvious symbols in the novel is the uniform that every Handmaid is supposed to wear.

    Read More

  • Body And Objects In Susan Stewart's On Longing

    786 Words  | 4 Pages

    Body and objects are always discussed together in a relational sense. In ‘On Longing’, Susan Stewart discusses the body- object relation by way of scale, arguing that when we are presented with a miniature object we are invited into a different temporal and perceived space. The smallness of the object takes us into a private world and changes our focus from public to private spheres. She explains, “This is the daydream of the microscope: the daydream of life inside life, of significance multiplied infinitely within significance’ . This mode of significance and sphere of miniature scale, Stewart argues, returns us to a childlike state ‘the daydream of life inside life’ suggests the way we would play as children creating a safe domestic space,

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaids Tale

    1035 Words  | 5 Pages

    This year is the 30th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Atwood 's dystopian classic, The Handmaid 's Tale. The novel is told from a first person account of a young woman, Offred. In an age of declining births, she is forced to become a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, the imagined future in the United States. The Handmaids are to provide children by the substitution of infertile women of a higher social status. Through the creation of different characteristics of female characters – ones who are submissive yet rebellious, and like to take advantage of their power - Margaret Atwood portray themes of love, theocracy, rebellion, and gender roles.

    Read More

  • Oppression Of Women In The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

    996 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Handmaid's Tale Literary Analysis

    857 Words  | 4 Pages

    Margaret Atwood has seamlessly woven a tapestry of feminist elements - mainly regarding gender oppression - within her works. With that, using two of Atwood’s texts, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of The Flood, as the foundation for our literary research, we will be focusing on the commodification of the female flesh in both similar dystopian contexts. Commodification refers to the action or process of treating an object, or a person, as a raw material or product that can be bought and sold, or even treated as an object of which sovereignty can be held over by one. In both works, women are victimized and treated as sexual beings whose bodies and physical expressions can be freely used by the men who have power over them against their will. The two texts illustrate how society brings about the oppression of women and this exacerbates the commodification of women.

    Read More

  • Patriarchy In The Handmaid's Tale

    1122 Words  | 5 Pages

    Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, argues that women are instruments of the patriarchy, that women know this, and that women allow the system of oppression to live on. Her fictions ask, “What stories do women tell about themselves? What happens when their stories run counter to literary conventions or society’s expectations?” (Lecker 1). The Handmaid’s Tale is told through the protagonist, Offred, and allows readers to follow through her life as a handmaid while looking back on how life used to be prior to the societal changes.

    Read More

More about Female Bodies In The Handmaid's Tale

Open Document