Gender Roles In The Handmaid's Tale

Imaginary Space
In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale
“One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one” Simone de Beauvoir.
The female body is being constructed by the patriarchal system, which is under the control of the societal institutions like state, family, and economy where power operates in the form of culture, tradition, religion and so on. The societal construction of gender takes place through the workings of ideology. Ideology offers partial truths obscuring the actual conditions of one’s existence and making people act in ways that are contradictory. An oppression of the woman results in this construction. They being unpaid workers don’t even protest against the manhood, who is the so called “Head of the Family”. Society overpowers the courses of action of men and women through cultural tyranny. The socialization process forces them into behavioral modes, personality characteristics. And occupational roles considered befitting by the society. Woman had always been constructed and oppressed by the patriarchal system, from ancient period to the modern times. Women had always suffered, a subordinate status to men,

The tale opens with the narrator, in first person, by Offred (of-Fred) the protagonist, remembering a time when she was held against her will in an old Gymnasium (Red Center) where women are trained to become handmaids or surrogate mothers for powerful military families, who are ordered to wear red dresses with white veils to signify their importance to the cause .It is a utopia, that is not real, but represents a perfected version of society. But the fair sex is being victimized and handicapped of all their individual freedom, by the patriarchy, in which women are mere breeders, house- keepers, mistresses or house