Women In The Handmaid's Tale

In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, written by Margaret Atwood, the author offers a futuristic dystopia that explores the concept of the overt subjugation and marginalization of the status of women. The setting of the novel takes place in a republic based theocracy referred to as the Republic of Gilead. The majority of the population is rendered sterile as the result of chemical and nuclear pollution. The narrator, Offred, forcibly takes on the role as a Handmaid, who serves the purpose of reproducing in order to equalize the current population. The social structure of Gilead implements a male-dominated prerogative that is designed to keep women under radicalized oppressive restrictions. The totalitarian regime reduces women as usable commodities and forces them to cower under the notion of women inferiority and objectification. The psychological pressures of conforming to the restrictions of Gilead begin to result in the majority of the women acquiring high levels of internalized misogyny. This paper will examine the women characters in The Handmaid’s Tale, who have passively accepted the oppressive agenda of Gilead. The psychological damage carried out by

these women exaggerates the schisms of feminism, which enforces a restrictive women’s culture. While on the surface the text is examining the notion of a radicalized women’s culture in Gilead, within deeper analysis the author conveys the concept of internalized misogyny in the women of Gilead and how this phenomenon actively distorts their psyches and definition of womanhood.
In contrast, the article “Feminism’s Phantoms”, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, conveys the cultural feminist movement and the dystopia of feminism that Margaret Atwood creates within The Handmaid's Tale. Ehrenreich addresses the lack of interest in resistance the women who acquired a considerable amount of authority in Gilead had. The women of Gilead such as the Aunts, Martha’s, and Commander’s Wives were not hindered all of their rights as women citizens. These women who acquired a high status in the caste system were privileged. They acquired much more freedom than the women of the lower statuses such as the Handmaids and Econowives. The privilege the Aunt’s, Martha’s, and the Commander’s Wives had resulted in them turning a blind eye to the injustice of the agenda Gilead presented. The women passively navigated themselves as if they had no power and stance to help in overthrowing Gilead’s oppressive regime.

The women in essence assimilated into the notion of being content with the limited powers they were given. The Aunt’s and Martha’s accepted the notion of being deemed powerless in comparison to men. They were subordinate to the ideology that a woman’s main responsibility and debt to society was to procreate in order to raise the next generations of people. The active internalization of the notion of powerlessness and objectification resulted in a lack of aggression for freedom. The author details that the women within the novel played as "actors as well as victims, even whom, like Offred, we choose to turn our backs and burrow into the narrow world of daily life" (Ehrenreich 10). Although, the women were portrayed as victims of the atrocities in the patriarchal society of Gilead. Many of whom, such as Aunt Lydia, expressed a sincere appreciation for the regime that denounced the existence of women. Aunt Lydia states,” Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles. There are more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia.” (Atwood 10-11) The women characters of The Handmaid’s Tale begin to internalize the ideologies of Gilead in which they too become forces that restrict and withhold the overall freedom of women. The function of the self-sabotage push for a women’s culture is a recurring issue within the schisms of feminism that enforces the opposition of total freedom for women with the belief that the sacrifice of equality benefits the greater good.

The notion of the women of Gilead conforming to the constraints of gender inequality is a familiar ordeal that is seen continuously in implications such as societal order, politics, and domestic lifestyle.

In “The Rebel, The Lady and the ‘Anti’: Femininity, Anti-Feminism, and the Victorian Woman Writer”, author Ann Heilmann, explores the boundaries between feminist and anti-feminist agendas and women’s role in this movement. The Anti-Feminist and Anti-Suffrage movements of the 1920’s argued that women demanding equality and political stance will only cause detrimental effects on the order of the society and the roles within the domestic home. Many anti-suffrage movement protesters argued against female independence and made no position of desiring any sort of equality against their male

counterparts.
The main concern amongst the women who were in opposition to the suffrage movement was that there would be a shift in women’s femininity and womanhood if prompted with sex` neutral rights. According to Heillman, “...women who struggled to reclaim a model of femininity in which they had ceased to believe, but to which they still felt an ideological allegiance to it. In their endeavor to promote traditional values, they pitted the womanly against the ‘unsexed’, masculine woman...” (Heillman 295). Similarly, Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale, despite her level of authority to aid in the resistance of Gilead’s restrictive order, actively advocated for the many constraints placed upon the women. Although Aunt Lydia was aware of the despair the agenda brought upon the women of Gilead, she believed that the suffering they were enduring was for a greater good that would savior and establish a women’s culture where she said, “For the women who come after, it will be so much better. The women will live in harmony together... women united for a common end!” (Atwood 171). The aspiration for a women’s culture that requires a separate forum away from the involvement of men is what is driving the women in The Handmaid’s Tale to justify their apparent levels of internalized misogyny. Similar to the ideologies of the women who participated in the Anti-Suffrage movement, Aunt Lydia is wrongfully convinced that conforming to the ideologies of Gilead, that openly oppresses and hinders the freedom of the women will result in the restoration of femininity and the betterment of a future systematic order set out to preserve the definition of womanhood.
The feminist dystopia of Gilead provides a chilling realization of the effects of what a system influenced by the radicalized push for a women’s culture can lead to. The women of Gilead as the result of the psychological damage they have endured begin to assimilate into the harmful notions that Gilead intends to generate. There is a reoccurring notion of women internalizing harmful misogynistic agendas that seek to harm and hinder the overall growth and progression of a woman’s status. Thus, perpetuating the idea of the sustainment of normalized subordination concerning gender roles and womanhood. As recollected in, “‘Sexism defeated!': Women for Trump and the binding energy of political hope”, author Emma Blackett, details the approval from women of Donald Trump’s agenda and purpose within the presidential office. Although Donald Trump seems blatantly anti-feminist to many viewers, there is a group of ‘Women for Trump’ supporters who claim to be feminist. They have argued that Trump adheres to the needs of American womanhood. This essay provides recent studies to bring light to the long-standing issue of women voting against what would be right for the future of all women. Women who vote for Trump defend a misogynist white man because they too have internalized the agendas of women that Trump consistently supports.