Comparing Persepolis And The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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A Woman's Place in a Novel: How Patriarchal Religions Exploit, Demean, and Oppress Women. Evelyn West, May 28, 2024. Patriarchal religious systems have long used strict gender roles and norms to maintain power structures which harm and oppress women. Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel “Persepolis” and Margaret Atwood’s critically acclaimed dystopian Sci-Fi novel “The Handmaids Tale” provide compelling examples of how fundamentalist patriarchal religion has oppressed women in both Islamic and Christian societies. While based on different religions, they both share some similarities in the patriarchal sense of their societies. The Patriarchal class system, and the roles men and women are given based on the values of their respective holy texts and teachings. Persepolis shares details about how Satrapi has personally faced gender-based oppression and hate growing up due to …show more content…

They are given the role of the leader. They are the heads of their families, they are strong, they provide for their families, they are the voices of their society. Women are the caretakers of life. They are valued by their ability to live a life of their own, and therefore must take care of their children. An unwed woman is valued for her ability to create a family. She must be fertile, she must be sexual, she must be quiet, she must be submissive, she must give herself completely to the man. Colossians 3:18–19—“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.” This quote exemplifies how in the Christian Bible, the woman is to submit herself to her husband, allowing him to take control and be the leader of the home, the family, and their marriage. In the Qur'an, on the subject of men and women in the family it says, “men are the maintainers of women” (chapter 4, verse 34). In both Christianity and Islam, women are to be submissive in the marriage between men and

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