Monday, February 21, 2011
The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood's novel discusses some serious issues of a dystopian society centered on misogyny. Not trying to sound like a feminist, but this futuristic horror is quite literally a women hating society. There is an ultimate form of patriarchy where the male is favoured. The government system is ruled by men and only they are in control of the most powerful positions. Unfortunantely, women act as the scapegoat for human vices and are punished as a result. Not only are they referred to as "two legged wombs", but they are "enchained to their biological destinies". This sense of "Biological Essentialism" defined women's nature as weak and susceptible to folly. While men are sided with the positive binary aspects such as mind/spirit, women are sided with body/matter allowing the control of their bodies for state purpose within the novel.This satirical work targets women instead of using them as agents of exposing some flaw in society. The feminizing of the target further humiliates them. I really enjoyed this novel despite women being pitted against one another to reproduce in order to better their circumstance in life. The social rankings of handmaid, nurse, all come about according to their function. There is more to this novel than I am mentioning. It serves more as a warning to societies who seem to be on this pathway to an extreme. On the flip side, despite men being in control, their are patriarchal social values that restrict them. All the classes of men have their sexualities regulated, the top ranking or "Commander's" are lonley despite their freedom, it is only to regenerate the population, so there is no genuine interaction. Furthermore, both sexes are infantilized. Even as adults, no one is taken seriously. The characters/citizens within the Republic of Gilead are surpressed that at any minute a reader would imagine them to explode. Anyway, this was just a little interpretation of my reading of the novel. I definitley promote it to anyone who likes to challenge their familiarity with satire and feminism and have the two combined in one spot.
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ReplyDeleteAtwood is a known feminist and she frequently writes about woman. In Alias Grace she wrote about Grace Marks who was an Irish serving girl guilty of murder and serving time in the 19th century Kingston Penitentiary.
ReplyDeleteThe Handmaid's Tale sounds like another interesting read.
Atwood describes the novel as "speculative fiction."
Obviously the genders in this world have not been segmented to that degree however there is still a gender divide. There is a stigma attached to older single woman as if there is a issue with them not being married as well as single mothers.
I feel that in "The Handmaid's Tale" women were actually looked down upon as well as degraded. The handmaids specifically, a group of women portrayed in the novel, were forced to survive under harsh circumstances where each one of them was assigned to a commander and was to at least have one child with the commander. Also, if they were unable to do so due to any impediments and sought help in conceiving a child from a male doctor, those doctors would be punished and hung over the church as an example. This was done to show the rest of the men under a certain hierarchical system that if any of them dared to take the position of the "commanders" they would be punished in a similar form. So basically ,there was a tremendous amount of emphasis on the hierarchical system in the novel and everybody fell into some sort of category. However, it was definitely regarding the handmaids that I felt really bad for because they had been separated from their families and loved ones due to the drastic modifications and regulations that took place in that given society in the novel. Anyway, "The Handmaid's Tale" was definitely not one of the most interesting novel's I read because it was quite complicated at certain points and I was completely flustered by the heavy content Atwood placed in the novel.
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