Imagine you are a woman in the 1600’s, one small mishap and you could be falsely accused of being a witch and put on trial. This hypothetical is similar to the story of Mary Webster, she was a normal girl living in Massachusetts with her family, then at the age of 60, she was put on trial, was verbally abused by the judge, and sentenced to hanging. Remarkably, she survived the night and earned her title “Half-Hanged-Mary.” Similarly, The Handmaid’s Tale explores thematic topics of oppression as the characters Offred and Moira are treated poorly as handmaids; they are forced to reproduce and give up their children to wealthy families. In writing The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood was inspired by the injustice of the Salem Witch Trials in the …show more content…
Similarly, throughout history, women like Mary Webster faced adversity like accusations of witchcraft and persecution based on superstitions. Additionally, Lisa Jadwin shares a discussion she had with Atwood in Critical Insights, mentioning the author took an interest in the witch trials and questions those who unjustly serve God. To demonstrate, “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Cultural and Historical Context” expresses, “The Handmaid’s Tale illuminates the deplorable irony that a nation established upon the utopian principle of “liberty and justice for all” has also been a dystopia for those humans sequestered and tortured because of differences from mainstream culture” (13). Hence, many Americans look past history's injustices because they are willing to feed into the idea of “liberty and justice for all” but there have been people, like in the Salem Witch Trials, who have been tortured unjustly to prove a point in society. The Handmaid’s Tale serves the purpose of highlighting those injustices and potentially forming change within corruption. Ultimately, the unfair events of the Salem Witch Trials were a source of inclination for Atwood as she wrote The Handmaid’s
Staels, Hilde. “Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: Resistance Through Narrating.”Critical Insights (227-245) From English Studies 76.5 (1995): 455-464. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
The Handmaids Tale is a poetic tale of a woman's survival as a Handmaid in the male dominated Republic of Gilead. Offred portrayed the struggle living as a Handmaid, essentially becoming a walking womb and a slave to mankind. Women throughout Gilead are oppressed because they are seen as "potentially threatening and subversive and therefore require strict control" (Callaway 48). The fear of women rebelling and taking control of society is stopped through acts such as the caste system, the ceremony and the creation of the Handmaids. The Republic of Gilead is surrounded with people being oppressed. In order for the Republic to continue running the way it is, a sense of control needs to be felt by the government. Without control Gilead will collapse.
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.
Within freedom should come security. Within security should come freedom. But in Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood, it seems as though there is no in between. Atwood searches throughout the novel for a medium between the two, but in my eyes fails to give justice to a woman’s body image. Today's society has created a fear of beauty and sexuality in this image. It is as though a beautiful woman can be just that, but if at the same time, if she is intelligent and motivated within acting as a sexual being, she is thought of as exploiting herself and her body. Atwood looks for a solution to this problem, but in my eyes fails to do so.
Many texts that were published from different authors have introduced topics that can be related in today’s society, but Margaret Atwood’s creation called, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, gives voice to the thoughts and revolves around the narrator Offred, a woman whose rights have been deprived due to political issues. However, the information shared by Offred to the reader to the text is not reliable for the reason that she only touches upon her own perspective. Through the text, Atwood depicted what the United States of America would be in the future based on the actions of humanity during 1980’s. The text is set up in an androcentric and totalitarian country called Gilead, where the government attempts to create a utopian society. Thus, in order to attain this society, the authorities generated their legislation from the teachings of the Holy Bible in an attempt to control humanity. The governing
Margaret Atwood's renowned science fiction novel, The Handmaid's Tale, was written in 1986 during the rise of the opposition to the feminist movement. Atwood, a Native American, was a vigorous supporter of this movement. The battle that existed between both sides of the women's rights issue inspired her to write this work. Because it was not clear just what the end result of the feminist movement would be, the author begins at the outset to prod her reader to consider where the story will end. Her purpose in writing this serious satire is to warn women of what the female gender stands to lose if the feminist movement were to fail. Atwood envisions a society of extreme changes in governmental, social, and mental oppression to make her point.
As the saying goes, 'history repeats itself.' If one of the goals of Margaret Atwood was to prove this particular point, she certainly succeeded in her novel A Handmaid's Tale. In her Note to the Reader, she writes, " The thing to remember is that there is nothing new about the society depicted in The Handmaiden's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about ...have been done before, more than once..." (316). Atwood seems to choose only the most threatening, frightening, and atrocious events in history to parallel her book by--specifically the enslavement of African Americans in the United States. She traces the development of this institution, but from the perspective of a different group of oppressed people: women.
People need some sort of control in their lives, whether that be through big or little things. In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, the republic of Gilead had clear positions that enabled more power for some compared to others, the most powerful being the commander and the least being the handmaid’s. Men were the ones controlling all of Gilead and they had the power to make the rules. There were different ways in which men ruled over women a few of them being taking away their names, using the wall as a threat and controlling what they wear.
While The Handmaid's Tale conveys the oppression of women, it also reveals the significant role women have in society. Atwood gets the point across that just as they can be oppressed by men, women can equally oppress themselves. Through Offred's eyes, comparisons between today's society and the possible consequences of one's attitudes are examined. The Handmaid's Tale slowly uncovers the many facets of women and the vital role they have as members of society.
Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaids Tale belongs to the genre of anti-utopian (dystopian) science fiction where we read about a woman's fictive autobiography of a nightmarish United States at the end of the twentieth century when democratic institutions have been violently overthrown and replaced by the new fundamentalist republic of Gilead. In the novel the majority of the population are suppressed by using a "Bible-based" religion as an excuse for the suppression. How does this work and why can the girls, the so called Handmaids, be considered the victims of society? Also, in what way does Gilead use biblical allusions? That is some of the questions this essay will give answers for.
Feminism as we know it began in the mid 1960's as the Women's Liberation Movement. Among its chief tenants is the idea of women's empowerment, the idea that women are capable of doing and should be allowed to do anything men can do. Feminists believe that neither sex is naturally superior. They stand behind the idea that women are inherently just as strong and intelligent as the so-called stronger sex. Many writers have taken up the cause of feminism in their work. One of the most well known writers to deal with feminist themes is Margaret Atwood. Her work is clearly influenced by the movement and many literary critics, as well as Atwood herself, have identified her as a feminist writer. However, one of Atwood's most successful books, The Handmaid's Tale, stands in stark contrast to the ideas of feminism. In fact, the female characters in the novel are portrayed in such a way that they directly conflict with the idea of women's empowerment.
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.
In Night, the Jews were confined and imprisoned in the concentration camps because they were destined to be murdered in a systematic manner by the Nazis. An example of the systematic murdering tactic used is the selection process. This was the process in which the Jews had their age and fitness checked to determine who was old and fit enough to work, and who was to be murdered. An example of this is when Elie and his father first arrived to Birkenau an inmate said, “Not fifty. You're forty. Do you hear? Eighteen and forty”(Wiesel 30). The inmate said this so the father and son could avoid death upon entry. In Night, The Jews represented resentfulness and disgust in the eyes of the Nazis. However in The Handmaid’s Tale the Handmaids are
There are two kinds of freedom, “freedom from and freedom to” (31) throughout Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Freedom from is a negative liberty that involves external restriction to a person’s actions. On the other hand there is freedom to, a positive liberty the one can act upon their own free will. The two different categories of freedom are discussed and debated through a feminist view point. We explore and try to understand the way in which the difference between “freedom from” and “freedom to” is applied to females in society. This novel gives us two contrasting ways of liberal thinking. You are free if no one is stopping you from doing whatever you might want to. The story appears, in this sense, to be free. On the other hand, one can
The United States of America; the former powerhouse of the world, became a country that is taken over by religion and no longer controlled by a democratic society. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood follows the perspective of Offred who showcases the struggle of living and the oppression the Handmaids go through in their daily lives. While it is arguable that freedom is given if they comply to rules, that is not directly true, the Handmaids live in harsh conditions that restrict the women of their rights; where they are objectified as means for reproduction, are being oppressed by being unable to voice out their opinion freely without punishment, and are under patriarchy.