The role of Women in "The Handmaid's Tale"

In the Handmaid's Tale, men are dominant in Gilead society, playing a superior role in it, meanwhile, women are not allowed to have a voice or opinion. The women of this society have to demonstrate complacency and passivity because they are inferior to everyone in society, especially the men. The lack of the handmaid´s voice is linked to their existence depending only on their fertility. They lose all their possessions, memories, families, etc. They do not even have a name, being named according to the names of their commanders.  “ This attitude of complacency is evident when Offred explains, Aunt Lydia said it was best not to speak unless they asked you a direct question. Try to think of it from their point of view, she said, her hands clasped and wrung together her nervous pleading smile”.  - Aunt Lydia  This extract demonstrates how women should not speak unless people in charge of Gilead society give them the right to do so. The idea of having Aunts to force the rules...

 The novel is full of symbolism, from the place where the plot takes place to the clothes worn by the characters. Atwood gives much attention to the symbolism in the novel as it gives more depth to the meaning of the story and at the same time it is the symbolism that makes the reader understand that this novel is a protest and a criticism of the patriarchal society. Margaret takes historical elements and visual symbolism such as symbols, logos, or colors for it. As the novel covers a great variety of symbolism, here we will mention some of them, the most relevant ones like the setting, Harvard , colors, etc The setting: Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The place where the events take place is not explicitly specified in the novel but the author puts at our disposal a number of clues that indicate that the center of power of Gilead is located in the current city of Cambridge . If we go back in history, cities like Cambridge, Boston, and Washington were Puritan settlements. These thr...

In the American newspaper New York Times, there is an article by Margaret Atwood. There she discussed the meaning of her work "The Handmaid's Tale".   The setting of the novel is Gilead that was influenced by Puritan society of the 17th-century . Also, it becomes a foundation of now-day America. Atwood discussed the feminist topic in this article and answered the main reader's questions. The most typical question that Atwood was asked was if she considered her novel feminist. The answer that she gave in the article is that women as all human beings have different characters and behaviors so we can find female protagonists as angels and on the other hand as victimized. Female protagonists play an important role in "The Handmaid's Tale". They are central characters. "Why interesting and important? Because women are interesting and important in real life. They are not an afterthought of nature, they are not secondary players in human destiny, and every...

 "The Handmaids Tale" is a dystopian novel by an author from Canada Margaret Atwood. The book was published in 1985.  The Handmaids Tale set in the repressive Republic of Gilead, in a near-future New England. The narrator is a woman whose name is Offred. She is a member of the group "Handmaids" who are forced to produce children for the "Commanders". They are the ruling class men.  The story flashes between her daily experiences and memories of her past life before the Republic of Gilead took control of society.  The main themes of the novel are identity, feminity, freedom, and subjugated women in a patriarchal society. In this blog, the last theme will be analyzed detail. In the next posts, you can find more information about the role of women in "The Handmaids Tale" by Margaret Atwood. If you are interested more in this topic, you can do a quiz to check your knowledge about "The Handmaids Tale"  The Handmaid´s Tale Quiz Written by Kir...