The Handmaid’s Tale happens in Cambridge, MA, explicitly the Harvard territory, outside Boston, a city in what used to be in the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead. In this tragic future, where we, as a rule, discover a general public that has a wide range of wrong, the fair government has been ousted and supplanted by an authoritarian government. As the general public winds up distanced, Gilead’s essence appears to continue as before regardless of the absence of opportunity. The same number of extremist expresses, the Republic of Gilead begins as an imagined perfect world, a revamped world frantic to manage a contracting birth rate caused by contamination, substance harming, and diminishing richness, most by far of the characters we meet are persecuted by this world; its strict consideration regarding savagery, demise, and congruity features the manners by which it is an absolutely hopeless place.
Made up for a lost time in a universe of steady observation, strict direction, and extraordinary discipline, the legislature of Gilead makes the Handmaids, ladies with practical ovaries who are put in the families of high positioned authorities whose spouses can’t hold up under kids like Rachel and Leah in the Old Testament. Offred, the book’s hero, lives in the Commander’s home, the man who she has been allocated to lay down and ideally uncovered his kids. The house is nothing especially exceptional regardless of having her very own space to rest in, she makes an effort not to allude to it as ‘her’ room since she never needs to feel comfortable there. The room is relatively exposed, the main component of Offred’s room that she finds remotely consoling is a modest expression of spray paint that a past handmaid jotted on the divider for her successor to discover, ‘Nolite te bastards carborundum (Atwood 52), Offred has no clue what it implies, however it gives her expectation all the equivalent.
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Atwood calls The Handmaid’s Tale ‘theoretical fiction’, despite the fact that the novel appears to have quite a bit of sci-fi, another association of intensity; the new world endeavors to change the connections of society, yet definitely, the connections reemerge in on a very basic level comparative ways. Atwood stresses that she attempted to restrict the thoughts and practices in The Handmaid’s Tale to those that have happened someplace on the planet sooner or later. For instance, she utilized components of early American life in Massachusetts. She calls attention to the that the Puritans had a religious government that was exceptionally prejudiced of divisions. Likenesses are depicted between the outfits of the Handmaids and the customary dress of Muslim ladies in the Middle East. Polygamy has been rehearsed by various societies all through the world and is dominatingly found in those with substantial inconsistencies between the upper and lower classes. In a large portion of these societies, the main spouse has a colossal measure of intensity frequently to the point where she is allowed to take their youngsters and raise them as her very own which is appeared in the novel as Serena impacts Offred and Nick to have insinuated relations. Military autocracies have frequently been described by steady observation of the general public for demonstrations of unfaithfulness and rehashed cleanses and re-associations of the legislature. Atwood has expressed in various meetings that this novel was a reaction to numerous thoughts presently in vogue in the public eye, and was simply following those plans to what appeared to her to be their inescapable decisions.
Gilead is a weird world, the novel infers that it happens later on yet innovation has made a stride in reverse, probably out of dread. The American progressions in innovation prompted obliterating the profitability of ladies so now they trust that innovation is unsafe and not very many individuals approach it, these are extravagances held. Innovation is restricted in light of the fact that learning is constrained. Gilead needs their subjects to stay unmindful to their general surroundings and the political circumstance. Innovation can prompt information and learning is power and power is something that no one but Gilead can have in this wound tragic world at the same time, there are key highlights that make Gilead unique. One of them being ‘the divider.’ Offred frequently passes the divider regularly portrayed as ‘the divider is many years old […] Now the entryways have sentries and there are monstrous new surge lights mounted on metal posts above it, and spiked metal along the base and broken glass set in cement along with the best.’ (Atwood 40) Hooks are mounted along the divider to hang individuals that contradict Gilead their bodies remain mounted on the dividers for quite a long time to remind alternate residents that Gilead is dependably in charge.
Offred depicts the city as ‘the yards are clean, the façades are thoughtful, in decent shape; they’re similar to the wonderful pictures they used to print in the magazines about homes and gardens and inside adornment. There is a similar nonappearance of individuals, a similar quality of being snoozing. The road is relatively similar to a gallery, or a road in a model town developed to demonstrate the manner in which individuals used to live. As in those photos, those exhibition halls, those model towns, there are no kids’ (Atwood 29). Offred’s portrayal offers superb knowledge into her reality, Gilead is vacant, be that as it may, not void of belonging but rather totally ailing throughout everyday life and opportunity. To a visitor Gilead may appear like an extremely clean and well-kept place, as stated, the gardens are all around kept up, and the homes in great condition. Kids convey life and vitality to a place, and without them, Gilead appears to be dull and void. All through the book, we meet not very many youngsters, despite the fact that making them is the protest which all grown-ups try. Horrendous wars are seethed outside the city, yet inside the city, individuals are sheltered from the outside powers of death and annihilation. It is the ones inside they need to stress over.
A standout amongst the most startling things about Gilead is the means by which it appears to saturate everybody’s minds. The storyteller initially hears this when she’s being reconstructed at the Women’s Center: ‘The Republic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no limits. Gilead is inside you. Yowser. There are no making tracks in an opposite direction from this current society’s convictions, ever. They’re generally with you since they’re inside you’. One of the thoughts that plainly assumes an essential job in The Handmaid’s Tale is the significance of comprehension and regarding the earth. In Atwood’s reality, synthetic compounds, contamination, and wars have made a big deal about the nation completely unacceptable. Everybody is denied specific things that we underestimate. Atwood paints a picture of what life will resemble later on if individuals keep on disregarding the inexorably perpetual harm being done to our natural frameworks. Upon its first production, The Handmaid’s Tale was quickly viewed as a critical novel, to a great extent as a result of Atwood’s unmistakable and exact perspective. The Handmaid’s Tale is a brutal examination of sexual orientation relations, biological harm, the risks of blending religion and government, and the significance of free discourse. Despite the fact that a few components of the novel have started to feel dated, the narrative of a customary individual endeavoring to endure a tyranny stays important to American culture and to the worldwide network all in all. Atwood settled on this decision as a result of the area’s Puritan foundation and history of prejudice, frequently heard in America, ‘It can’t occur here,’ yet it happened very from the get-go. The Puritans ousted individuals who didn’t concur with them. In spite of Atwood having an individual association with The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s anything but difficult to perceive how the possibility of something so alarming ‘not occurring here’ can so effortlessly be refuted.
The Gilead Women Oppression In “The Handmaid’s Tale” By Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a dystopic and totalitarian society called Gilead, formed in response to the crisis caused by decreasing birthrates and, consequently, with one main goal: total control of reproduction. Therefore, the state intercepts the problem head-on by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through their politics supported by religious terms in a form of subjugation, since women are not allowed to vote, hold property or jobs, read or do anything else that might allow them to become independent. The main character, Offred, belongs to a class of fertile women who are assigned to produce children for the ruling class and are known as handmaids (based on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah). Offred describes this society along with narrating her story and contrasting her present day with flashbacks of her life before.
Offred narrates female subjugation to be present in every single aspect of her life after Gilead’s formation. This society segregates the different classes of women and their lives within the new regimen by the color of clothing to signify social class and assigned position, ranked from highest to lowest. The color blue is for the Commander’s wives, red for the handmaids, green for Marthas (cooks and house cleaners), striped for all other women who generally do everything in the domestic sphere, and white for unmarried girls. The name Offred is just to remind her position of being a possession of the Commander named Fred –so in that way she is “of Fred” meaning that she belongs to Fred-. Offred’s freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely restricted. She cannot leave the house only on shopping trips, the door to her room should be partially open, and Gilead’s secret police, the Eyes of God, watch her every public movement. During those shopping trips –where she goes with another handmaid fellow, never alone- she is not allowed to touch, speak or even look to anyone else and vice versa; the red color of her clothes that cover every part of her body identifies her as what she refers to be a “two-legged womb”, an object status given by the society. The narration of the ceremony, where the handmaids are fertilized once a month, is quite representative of the women’s objectification while reduced to their reproductive functions. As Fisher and Silber claim in Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender, “it depicts the dehumanization of both handmaid and wife, who are made to participate as passive objects and victims in a sex act robbed of sensuality, desire, and love.”
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The reason for building Gilead is well explained and, at some point, justified in the novel; but why would a society agree with any type of subjugation and misogyny, breaking with doctrines of human rights? Moreover, why would some women help in its development? The creators of Gilead claim to defend women from sexual violence in an era where feminism was rising as a protestant movement against some expressions of sexuality as prostitution, pornography, and rape. As a response to this movement’s appeals and solving the decreased birthrate issue, arise an oppressive system that dictates all aspects of every woman lives to the point of reduced her as what Offred refers to as “a sack of flesh around a womb,” in exchange of a society where no man disrespects a female, that is to say, no man shouts obscenities to a woman or touches her inappropriately. Gilead is a theocratic dictatorship, so power is imposed entirely from the top. There is no possibility of appeal, no method of legally protecting oneself from the government, and no hope that an outside power will intervene. However, as McCarthy states, “The new world of ”The Handmaid’s Tale” is a woman’s world, even though governed, seemingly, and policed by men”. That is to say, every woman is a fundamental piece in Gilead, and this is better explained in the execution of the supposed rapist, where the handmaids have the power, and duty, to strike against the man in order to kill him.
Offred remembered when her mother, an active feminist, said, “Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations”. This can be applied to the paper played by the Aunts who act as willing agents of the Gileadean state, indoctrinating other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule. In addition, a woman like Serena Joy, the wife of the Commander whom Offred serves as a handmaid, exercises authority within her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over the handmaid. Even the same Offred at some point of the narration also succumbs to complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick –with whom she is commanded by Serena to have sex and have a child that could be pass as the Commanders. This allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her former existence before Gilead. The physical affection and companionship become compensation that makes the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes when Ofglen –another handmaid- asks her to gather information about the Commander.
As a society that oppresses women, Gilead is completely patriarchal and with no separation between state and religion. As Pettersson states, “(…) all these different aspects of human life are controlled mainly by men, that they mainly work to be beneficial for men and that men use language, truth, and action as means of maintaining the control all feminists strive to acquire.”
