The Handmaids And Women In The Handmaid's Tale

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The Handmaids Tale is a story that sets in the near future of the Republic of Gilead---a city that used to be in the USA. Offred, the narrator, is a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead and the job of the handmaids is to produce or carry a child that a married couple is unable to do.
Offred was assigned to carry the commander and Serena Joy’s child. Every month, Offred must lie on her back to pray that the commander has made her pregnant; which tells us that it’s different from the surrogacy that we used to learned in the class. To be able to get pregnant,
Offred must have sex with the commander while the commander’s wife is watching and laying behind Offred and holding her hand. They said that they must do this because they believed that …show more content…

. . . . . . . She’s a magic presence to us, an object of envy and desire, we covet her. She’s a flag on a hilltop, showing us what can still be done: we too can be saved” (Atwood 26). This quote also shares the same aspect of both women—handmaids and women in Sosua while living in their society. For the women in Sosua, having a foreigner client for sex means that they will be saved from the poverty and its similar to the handmaids aspects because getting pregnant means that they will be saved and won’t be send to the colonies to be declared as “unwoman” (Atwood 162). The colonies is what the handmaids’ are trying to avoid and the poverty in the Dominican Republic is what the Sosuan women avioids. The book is also similar to the documentary called Made in India. The Made in India documentary is about an infertile couple from Texas, USA named Lisa and Brian Switzers travel from USA to India for assistance reproduction. Lisa doesn’t have the ability to carry a baby and needs to have somebody carry it for her. They are one couple out of hundreds that hire women in
India to be their surrogate. This shows similarities between the handmaids and women in …show more content…

Just like the Women from this era, the Handmaids have once became an educated woman, have jobs and their own access to knowledge before the Republic of Gilead form. Offred shares that during their time, they aren’t even allowed to write or read anymore.
The Republic of Gilead was once a city in located in the USA and compare to what has been happening now and in that era of the Republic of Gilead, the equality for both and women have changed. Today, in the USA women have the same rights or freedoms as men. Women can wear whatever they want unlike the handmaids who were being assigned to wear certain outfit and today, women have an access to knowledge as much as men. While reading this book, I keep wondering to myself if things or situations in The
Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood would really occur. However seeing what the USA is like today, it’s far from possible that women would lose their freedoms just like what happened to the handmaids. But nobody can really predict the future. Whatever outcome the future will

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