Dystopian Novels In The Handmaids's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Dystopian novels are a dime a dozen and the majority of them focus on the overuse of technology causing the demise of humanity. However, with The Handmaids Tale, written in 1986, Margaret Atwood uses her dystopian novel as a warning against patriarchal societies. Atwood’s novel portrays a world undone by pollution and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears about declining birthrates, environmental degradation and nuclear war during the Cold War. The novel was written shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival that was partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of powerful religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the remnants of the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this “religious right” heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in the previous few decades would be reversed ("Historical Context"). In The Handmaids Tale, Atwood portrays two distinct social classes through her choice of diction and uses her novel as an allegory for the treatment and perception of modern day women by conservative men.
Within The Handmaids Tale exist two distinct social classes, which Atwood distinguishes early on by associating specific diction with each one. The first one, and the focus of the novel are the Handmaids. For these women, Atwood frequently uses words such as "cattle", "sheep", and "herd". She uses those words to constantly reinforce their subservient placement to men of the novels society. Even when not directly speaking about the women, she uses associated words with anything relating to the women - punishments are doled out by "cattle prods slung from leather bel...

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...s still evidence of two social classes in today's society. While not as distinct as those described by Margaret Atwood, men are more often in positions of power, they are often paid more, and there is less pressure on males to have a specific body type. Women are still viewed as conquest and recent events such as the video and shootings by Elliot Rodger is enough proof that a large group of people still believe that women owe them sex. However, media coverage has not focused on the well documented misogynist opinions of the shooter, instead focusing on his suspected mental illness. The warnings from a book written 30 years ago still ring true in today's society. In The Handmaids Tale, Atwood portrays two distinct social classes through her choice of words and uses her novel as an warning against the treatment and perception of modern day women by conservative men.