Handmaids Tale Quotes

The Handmaids Tale essay
If we limit women's rights, it can lead to a society where all we need from women is reproduction and that’s a very bad society if you ask me. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, it tells us the story of a handmaid named offred. She lives in a totalitarian state that took the U.S.’s place because the reproduction rates were extremely low. That being said the handmaids are suppose to reproduce and live under rules. They can't really do much unless they get permission. As Offred tells her story and what she went through she mentions that society has separated her from her family so she can be a handmaid. Handmaids are given very little rights they actually can't do anything they would enjoy doing. They're

allowed two daily walks and have to wear the same outfit everyday which is bright red dresses capped with stark white bonnets. Limitation of women's rights can lead to a dystopian society as shown in The Handmaid's Tale through point of view and plot.
Women should be allowed to have total control of their own life and should be able to do whatever they please as long as they don't hurt anyone. In Atwood’s novel, women aren't even allowed to use their own names it's quite disappointing considering society took whatever they could from a woman. Atwood confesses this when she writes, “I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name, remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me.”(Atwood 97). This quote saddens me because it shows that all she wants is to be her own person like she once was. Im sure offred is not the only one who feels this way either many women are trapped to be used only for reproduction. Offred or any other woman for that matter, didn't deserve to miss elements of being an actual person because they should be able to live like an actual person. Offred and the other handmaids had to learn how to communicate without talking so they can say who they really are. “We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we exchanged names from bed to bed” (Atwood 4). Offred is explaining how they exchanged names. It must have taken them a long time to learn how to lip read. In Atwood's novel, this society had taken away a simple right from women as shown when they talk about changing their names for the commanders satisfactory.
The handmaids in Atwood's novel are so use to having no freedom they forgot what freedom had felt like. Freedom to the handmaid's was considered something in the past. They often find the idea of freedom strange because they're so used to being trapped. “It's strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the ever—expanding perimeters of our lives. I was like that too, I did that too.” (Atwood 227). Offred is remembering the feeling of freedom. It's so distant to how she originally feels all of the time, so sometimes it's quite hard to imagine how freedom feels like. The handmaid’s don’t really have the right to shape their life anymore. That’s basically what freedom is, to shape your life into whatever you please. To have that taken away from you along with your family has got to lead to a horrible life.The handmaid's often had the right to change their lives before they were handmaids. As offred talks about these topics she always seems to mention how they use to be a certain way and could do certain things. “If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change the man for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised ourselves.” (Atwood 227). The fact that she mentions how they “were” instead of how they “are” basically already tells the reader how she feels. She talks about changing as if it's no more, as if she can no longer do it. Which is unfortunately completely correct. As we hear Offred’s point of view and how she feels about freedom we realize that women's rights are so limited in this book that they cant even change who they are. They're stuck being a person they have to pretend to be in order to impress society so they don't get punished.
Being trapped in this society with such little rights for women is no way to live.

In order for Offred to keep her sanity she often considered her room her own. “My room, then. There has to be some space, finally, that I claim as mine, even in this time. I'm waiting, in my room, which right now is a waiting room. When I go to bed it's a bedroom.” (Atwood 50). This quote just explains that in order for her to make her still feel like a person she claims the room as her own. When she concludes how it turns into a waiting room when she waits and a bedroom when she goes to bed she’s letting herself believe that she still has some power left in her because she gets to choose what kind of room it gets to be in her mind. In Atwood’s novel, she describes the conflict and suffrage of Offred's life through the very limited rights she is given. It shows us that handmaids have little control over their own lives. Her room and the night were really the only things she had to herself. She can often do anything she wants and think about anything as long as she was quiet. “The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet.” (Atwood 37). This concludes on how I stated that the night was one of the things she had to herself. She could go anywhere mentally and do what she wanted quietly. In Atwood's novel, Offred explained to us the only few things she had to herself since society had taken away almost all of her rights through the quotes I

stated.
In Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale, the narrator Offred, concludes the little rights she had and how miserable that made her. Once again, she used point of view and plot while she was talking what she went through and how she felt while going through that. If society ends up limiting women's rights as they did in the novel, it can completely lead to some sort of dystopian society. In the past, women often struggled with having very little rights. It goes down in history on how they were originally viewed and what their rights were. Most women only lived to grow up and satisfy their husband, that was probably their only job other than cooking and cleaning. Some women are still viewed that way in today's society which is just sad. If we continue to let more people believe that women shouldn’t have that many rights, women really are going to end up having very few rights which is going to lead to a society I wouldn’t want to live in.