Handmaids Tale: Destruction of Family

1394 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effect of parental divorce on children

In society today families are falling apart and getting divorced. Not all families of course but the percent rate is higher year after year. Destroy means “to wreck; ruin” (Webster’s 169). This is what most people would say about their family if their parents were no longer together. In Gilead this is what all families are saying. The government has destroyed the families by taking away the women and giving them to other families like a piece of property.
In Gilead most of the wives can no longer have children. Keeping a town alive requires reproduction. In order to do this the government groups all the women able to have children together. They are called handmaids and they are basically like a mistress, “they are continual reminders of the Wives’ failures to conceive” (Callaway 55). When the handmaids go to the commander’s room there is only one thing it is for. They are trying to get pregnant. During the intercourse of the commander and the handmaid the wife is in the room watching. Not only does she watch but she holds the handmaids hand. “Serena Joy grips my hands as if it is she, not I, who’s being fucked” (Atwood 94).
The government in Gilead is afraid that because there are not many women able to reproduce that the town is going to fall apart. They have come up with a solution to make sure there is enough reproduction every year to make a town. Piling all the women together and sending them to different homes to reproduce is what they thought was best. Once the handmaids have a child with a commander then they give up the child to the commander’s wife.
Nobody wants to see their husband with another woman. They especially do not want to sit in a room and watch them have sex with that woman. Which is what they are forced...

... middle of paper ...

...nships. Everybody would be left single and just sleeping around in order to get children to make the community grow. Of course this would be an organized sleeping around. With everybody separating and giving up their children to be raised by someone else, the town would fall apart. One needs a relationship to make one’s self feel better. One wants to have those friendships, but with everybody being with everybody it is hard to be able to trust another person.

Works Cited
Atwood, M. (1998). The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Anchor Books.
Callaway, A. A. (2008). Women Disunited: Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale as a critique of feminism. SJSU ScholarWorks , 48-58.
Cooper, P. (n.d.). Sexual Surveillance and Medical Authority in Two Versions of The Handmaid's Tale. 56.
Guralnik, D. B. (1983). Webster's New World Dictionary. New York: A Warner Communications Company.

Show More
Related

  • Personal Discovery of the Protagonist in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

    1279 Words  | 3 Pages

    Callaway, Alanna A., "Woman disunited ; Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale as a critique of feminism" (2008). Master's theses. Paper 3505. http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3505

    Read More

  • The Threat of Physical, Emotional, and Mental Abuse if you Disagree: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

    1456 Words  | 3 Pages

    The threat of physical abuse is huge. Being woman is enough of a crime, but “any crime can result in an execution and a public hanging on ‘The Wall’” (Cameron 3). A woman can be hung for just about anything. If they defy the people in charge they can get hurt. The women are constantly abused. The Gilead government is in charge of what goes on in this society. If a woman has an affair with a different man they are taken and possibly tortured or hung. The Red Center, which is where they were taught how to be Handmaid’s, the women were constantly tortured. They had Aunts that looked over them. These aunts were not nice and, “they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts” (Thomas 91). The aunt’s view was all that was needed was the Handmaid’s baby making parts. The women did not need their feet, hands, or any part other than the torso. When the woman did something wrong or tried to run away th...

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In The Handmaids

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the gilead society, women are placed in a social hierarchy in which they are defined by their role. The wives are the elite members. The handmaids are the people who produced babies. Marthas are the house servants. Aunts are a prestigious group of people who trained handmaids. Econowives are low class women. However, none of the women are defined as people with their own personalities and interests. Instead, Women are seen as objects that belong to men. Econowives belong to the Guardians. The wives, marthas,

    Read More

  • Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

    878 Words  | 2 Pages

    “We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we would stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren’t looking, and touch each other’s hands across space. We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other’s mouths.” (Atwood, p4) The handmaids whisper to each other to exchange information. They engage in this conversation to keep alive the nature of relationships between people. It is very lonely for these women, for they cannot say what is on their mind, they are only allowed pre-approved phrases from Gilead’s authorities Without this contact it would be impossible for the women to reminisce and be comforted. Another way of keeping the past real to Offred is to remember old stories from before the revolution. She spends a lot of her time thinking about her husband Luke and how the city used to look before, “Lilies used to be a movie theater here, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their own minds” (Atwood, 25). These small rebellions that Offred and other handmaids participate in are very significant. The simple fact that they choose to engage in these insurgences shows that they still cling on to their more just and free past. They still have a notion of truth and are keeping it alive. Having these passions and feelings causes the structure of Gilead to truly not work, and will probably (The Handmaid’s Tale was left open ended) lead to its demise.

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale: Societal Complacency

    1139 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Gilead Society has segregated women into different caste systems. There are six main categories in the caste system. The first are the Wives, who wear blue dresses and are at the top of the female hierarchy. Their main purpose is reproduce with their husbands, if they are unable then Handmaids are used. Then there are Daughters, either the natural or adopted children of the ruling class. They tend to wear white until marriage. The next are the Handmaids, fertile women whose sole purpose is to reproduce children for the wives. Handmaids wear a full red dress outfit with red gloves, red shoes, and...

    Read More

  • Biblical Themes Of The Bible In The Handmaid's Tale

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is a story heavily influenced by the Bible and has many biblical themes that are used to prove Atwood’s belief in balance. The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead which was formerly the United States. The story is told through the perspective of a handmaid named Offred and begins when she is placed at her third assignment as a housemaid. Offred describes her society as a fundamentalist theocracy where the Christian God is seen as the divine Ruler over the Republic of Gilead. Atwood is often thought of as a feminist writer but through this novel her writing is not completely feminist nor patriarchal but something in the middle. Atwood is also someone who described herself as a “strict agnostic”

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale

    904 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaids Tale’, we hear a transcribed account of one womans posting ‘Offred’ in the Republic of Gilead. A society based around Biblical philosophies as a way to validate inhumane state practises. In a society of declining birth rates, fertile women are chosen to become Handmaids, walking incubators, whose role in life is to reproduce for barren wives of commanders. Older women, gay men, and barren Handmaids are sent to the colonies to clean toxic waste.

    Read More

  • Class Discrimination in Gilead

    1196 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thesis: In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood characterizes Handmaids, as women with expectations to obey the society’s hierarchy, as reproducers, symbolizing how inferior the Handmaid class is to others within Gilead; the class marginalization of Handmaids reveals the use of hierarchical control exerted to eliminate societal flaws among citizens.

    Read More

  • The Handmaids Tale - Social Situation

    972 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin with the so called Handmaids are girls who have only one purpose in life which is to reproduce. They are women who when have reached the age and maturity to reproduce have been taken to Gilead where they are tattooed with four digits and an eye (Gilead's tattoo which works as a passport in reverse) which immobilises them, in contrast to the winged male eye which is the state symbol. Then they are re-educated at the so called Red-centre, the name emphasises female sexuality and how they are taught there can be linked with brainwashing. They are told how lucky they should feel because they have been saved from the primitive and cruel outside world where women are being raped and maltreated. Other things they learn are numerous sayings and mottos of the Red-centre like "Pen is Envy" which is based on a Freudian psychoanalytic theory which presents "penis envy" as an essential element of femininity, and a mark of "woman's natural inferiority to men". So knowing this, are they actually better of in Gilead? There they are "valued only in terms of their biological usefulness as child bearers" due to that the birth rate in the society has fallen to a catastrophically low level because of deadly pollution and sexually transmitted diseases which cause sterility and infertility. They are known by their Commanders first names, Of -(name of commander), this to underline their function as sexual objects without individuality.

    Read More

  • A Nation of Indoctrination: "The Handmaid's Tale"

    1475 Words  | 3 Pages

    Neuman, Shirley. "'Just A Backlash': Margaret Atwood, Feminism, And "The Handmaid's Tale.." University Of Toronto Quarterly 75.3 (2006): 857-868. Academic Search Elite. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.

    Read More

  • Handmaids Tale Analysis

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, social turmoil after a staged terrorist attack has led to a totalitarian Christian regime. In this dystopian future, the roles of men and women are much different than in today’s society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are unequal because they have no choice about their bodies, their dress, or their relationships.

    Read More

  • Atwood's Handmaid's Tale

    896 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Handmaid's Tale presents an extreme example of sexism and misogyny by featuring the complete objectification of women in the society of Gilead. Yet by also highlighting the mistreatment of women in the cultures that precede and follow the Gileadean era, Margaret Atwood is suggesting that sexism and misogyny are deeply embedded in any society and that serious and deliberate attention must be given to these forms of discrimination in order to eliminate them.

    Read More

  • Relationship Between Men and Women: Jane Eyre and The Handmaid's Tale

    1786 Words  | 4 Pages

    Charlotte Bront’s Jane Eyre entails a social criticism of the oppressive social ideas and practices of nineteenth-century Victorian society. The presentation of male and female relationships emphasizes men’s dominance and perceived superiority over women. Jane Eyre is a reflection of Bront’s own observation on gender roles of the Victorian era, from the vantage point of her position as governess, much like Jane’s. Margaret Atwood’s novel was written during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fueled by a strong, well-organized movement of religious conservatives who criticized ‘the excesses of the sexual revolution.’ Where Bront’s Jane Eyre is a clear depiction of the subjugation of women by men in nineteenth-century Western culture, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights by men.

    Read More

  • Handmaids Tale

    3082 Words  | 7 Pages

    This principle from the Bible is used throughout ‘The Handmaids Tale’, the principles being that it is the idea of both assemblages that a women’s duty is to have children and that it is acceptable for a man to be angry if a women can not produce a child. Both these beliefs show that in jointly the Bible and ‘The Handmaids Tale’, women are completely defined by fertility and are classed as ‘walking wombs’. ‘The Handmaids Tale’ recreates the selected stanzas from the bible with Jacob, Rachel, Leah and the two handmaids. The tale is an Old Testament story about surrogate mothers, on which the novel is based. The section gives biblical precedent for the several practices of Gilead, by doing this it paves the way for Atwood to comment on patriarchy where women are undervalued and abused in all walks of life. The idea is also expressed later when we discover the ‘Red Centre’ governmentally known as the ‘Rachel and Leah Centre’. As the basis of the novel it is replicated many times throughout the text, for example, it is found in the family reading before the monthly ceremonies, and in Rachel’s plea ‘give me children, or else I die’. This clearly lays emphasis on the threat to the Handmaids life. By failing to produce a child, they will be classed as Unwomen and sent to the Colonies to die.

    Read More

  • Fertility and Motherhood in The Handmaid´s Tale by Margaret Atwood

    665 Words  | 2 Pages

    The epigraph in The Handmaid’s Tale amplifies the importance of fertility in Gilead. The quotation at the beginning of the book ‘‘And when Rachel saw the she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister, and said unto Jacob, Give me children or else I die...And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees,that I may also have children by her.’’ makes it seem that Gilead wants to go back to traditional values, thus manipulates its citizens that their ideology is correct since it corresponds with what the Bible says. Consequently, this state is telling its citizens that a woman’s worthiness only depends if she is able to produce or not. In fact women who are barren, and are not of a high class are sent to the colonies. The handmaids’s only purpose is further amplified through the rights Gilead abolishes; they can not communicate with others, in fact Offred says, ‘How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it’ and are no longer able to go outside alone or without being spied...

    Read More

More about Handmaids Tale: Destruction of Family

Open Document