Theme Of Abuse In The Handmaids Tale

Psychological or emotional abuse - is any action which has an effect on an individual's mental well-being, causes suffering and effects their quality of life and ability to function to their full potential.

In today’s news we see many disruptions and inconsistencies in society, and, according to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, humankind might be headed in that direction. The deterioration of society is a concept often explored biologically in novels, but less common, is the effect on everyday social constructs such as the position of women as a item that can be distributed and traded-in for a ‘better’ product. The Handmaid’s Tale elaborates the concept that, as societal discrimination towards women intensifies, gender equality deteriorates and certain aspects of societal freedoms are lost. Offred’s experience with serving Gilead demonstrates a victim’s perspective and shows how the occurring changes develope the Republic.

In her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has created the fictional Republic of Gilead, in which women are heavily oppressed by the newly installed regime. The new regime values women solely on their fertility, thus objectifying them to no more than a means of reproduction. By confiscating control over the process of and the rights to reproduction, the Gilead regime denies women ‘’any sense of control or independence’’ (Byrne). In this essay, I will argue that, although the female body is the main subject of oppression in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it is also the key to resistance for women in the so-called nation of Gilead, and that women hold the ultimate bargaining power, as they have the ‘’final say’’ on what happens to their bodies.

   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

Within the totalitarian society created by Margaret Atwood in the Handmaid’s Tale, there are many people and regimes centred around and reliant on the manipulation of power. The laws that are in place in the republic of Gilead are designed and implemented so as to control and restrict the rights and freedom of its inhabitants.

The Handmaid's Tale, a film based on Margaret Atwood’s book depicts a dystopia, where pollution and radiation have rendered innumerable women sterile, and the birthrates of North America have plummeted to dangerously low levels. To make matters worse, the nation’s plummeting birth rates are blamed on its women. The United States, now renamed the Republic of Gilead, retains power the use of piousness, purges, and violence. A Puritan theocracy, the Republic of Gilead, with its religious trappings and rigid class, gender, and racial castes is built around the singular desire to control reproduction. Despite this, the republic is inhabited by characters who would not seem out of place in today's society. They plant flowers in the yard, live in suburban houses, drink whiskey in the den and follow a far off a war on the television. The film leaves the conditions of the war and the society vague, but this is not a political tale, like Fahrenheit 451, but rather a feminist one. As such, the film, isolates, exaggerates and dramatizes the systems in which women are the 'handmaidens' of today's society in general and men in particular.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is set in a future time period where the United States is under the control of the Gileadean regime. A terrorist attack leads to the collapse of Congress, the suspension of the Constitution, and the establishment of a theocratic totalitarian government. Men and women are given roles within society; they are Commanders, Eyes, Handmaids, and Marthas. In this novel, Atwood explores a prominent social issue, feminism. The suppression and power of women are examined through the setting and characterization of the novel to help understand the meaning of the novel as a whole.

Hungry for power. Metaphorically querulous. Weak. The Commander is the representation of male insecurity. This character is derived from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s novel reveals that hunger for control can lead to the oppression of women, this is demonstrated through the Commander’s characterization, the Aunts attitudes, and some of the Gileadean rules/laws.

Desire is a powerful and dangerous emotion which has the ability to overtake and disregards any rational state of mind, creating disorder and life-threatening consequences, thus making it feared as a form of disorder or misdirected imagination. However, desire cannot exist without a lack of satisfaction, allowing the once forbidden to become desirable. These illicit desires which are in conflict with social laws and norms are often repressed into the unconscious. Emerging in forms which are disguised so that they may be unrecognisable to the conscious mind due to the dangerous, forces and consequences they present. Such desires can be identified in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) which mirrors post-war social and political issues, portraying the devastation, destruction and control on the outer limits of humanity in a dystopian world. In a world where thought, history and relationships are manipulated and governed, romantic and autonomies desire become a means of rebellion in order to maintain sanity, truth, and an objective reality as a means of resistance against the governing party. Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) is a speculative fiction which explores the need for a sustained political, feminist consciousness and activity among woman by exploring the political and social consequence of their absence. In The Handmaid’s Tale, we see illicit desire through the use of language and literature in a dystopian world which governs class

When dystopian societies are featured, they often show the domination and inferiority of women by men. In Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the establishment of the Republic of Gilead, which projects strict christian polices, addresses the restriction of freedoms from women. This restriction can be shown through the recurring presence of the color red, which constructs an association between femininity and violence. The color red signifies pain, violence and fear. Yet, the undeniable expression of red in“The Handmaid’s Tale,” highlights the inferior circumstances of the women suffering in this male-dominated Gilead society. In comparison, Octavia E. Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” is set in a community that greatly enforces traditional gender roles, hindering the ability of survival for women. The status of being a woman alone, fabricates an intense state of vulnerability and exposure to sexual violence. Through the apparent existence of Gilead, in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and the gated community highlighted in the “Parable of the Sower,” the presence of power and freedom are emphasized through the major oppression of women figures.

According to statistics found by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Every nine seconds a woman is abused by her husband or intimate partner. At least 1 in every 4 women and 1 in every 9 men have been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in their lifetime. Most often the abuser is one of their own family. Domestic violence is a problem that somehow affects every one of us in this room at some time and is actually the leading cause of injury to women -- more than car accidents, muggings and rapes combined.

“Abuse is not love. Abuse is about control.”- Domestic Violence Survivor. Domestic violence is a continuous struggle for men and women alike. Currently, domestic violence is when one is in a relationship where their partner manipulates them through physical, mental, and emotional abuse. Signs of an abusive partner include extreme jealousy, forced sex or disregard for their partner’s unwillingness to have sex, constant verbal abuse, and acusing the victim of cheating on them. Victim of domestic violence lose nearly 8 million days of paid work per year in the US alone—the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs. 45% of female victims subjected to sexual assault are raped by an intimate partner, and only 34% of victims injured by an intimate partner

Though the English language has its roots in a male-dominated society where the true meaning of words are now taken for granted. In The Handmaid’s Tale, language facilitates power. In order to effectively rule over class and gender the level of censorship on literature and control of discourses runs high. Atwood uses word choice to expose the shocking structures of the Gilead society and how faulty its foundations are as it was built upon gender inequality. The repercussions of gendered language are evident throughout the novel, implying that the sexist structure of Gilead is a result of oppressive language modern Americans accept and use in every day talk.

Living in a totalitarian state that limits the right of women, due to theocracies, and takes away their freedom is heartbreaking. For the narrator in Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaids Tale, escaping reality with memories of her past life made life bearable. While under the control of the Republic of Gilead, women were forced to have sex occasionally to not only please their commanders, but to bear a child for their household. Atwood wrote this novel to expose what the world would look like if it were ran by false theocracies of men being superior and controlling over women. What is so profoundly unnoticed in this literary text is the separation of church and state. Throughout the novel the narrator informs the readers how women were taught to

Physical abuse is perpetrated mainly by men on women as a response to actual or suspected infidelity, relationship inequality, financial issues, over indulging in alcohol or substance abuse and rejection of sexual advances. Physical violence against women may occur in the form of acid attack, molestation, female genital mutilation and battering.