Handmaid's Tale Gender Roles Essay

601 Words2 Pages

Atwood most strongly critics gender roles in her dystopian novel. She does this through the women, who were forced to become prostitutes; All woman were used as slaves, and no women could escape from Gilead Society.

After reading the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood it convinces me that she mostly uses gender roles as critics in her dystopian novel due to all her main topics in her story. In the novel chapter 37, it says “Women know that instinctively. Why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each day.". The commander explains that "the club” is officially forbidden, but that everyone knows that to be satisfied, men require a variety of women. Some of the women were prostitutes before Gilead. The commander point was to trick Offred by explaining this was not a prostitute club but rather than just a good place to be and work. This shows how careless and heartless the commander is in treating a woman, just as if he wasn't born from his mother that didn't have feelings …show more content…

In the first chapter of the novel they call each name and at the end they call "June" which is described as Offred during the entire novel, in all historic places where they had slaves there is always a new name chosen by the owner for each of every one of the slaves just as the handmaids as well. The Handmaid were being guarded and instructed by Aunts for example in chapter n of the novel it says "We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? It was in the air; and it was still in the air, an afterthought, as we tried to sleep, in the army cots that had been set up in rows, with spaces between so we could not talk.". This shows part of slavery due to not having their rights and freedom to do what they want and desire to

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