The Handmaids Tale: Losing Stability and State of Mind.
Picture this, a society in which women are to be more secure then they have ever been, their .
bodies and their ability to reproduce are worshiped by society, and there is no longer rape, or domestic .
physical and mental violence against women. Would this be an Ideal society? For women to exist in a space .
like this, one would think that they had the freedom to be powerful, strong women. In "The Handmaids .
Tale" by Margaret Atwood, women are enslaved to this idea of being "protected." Through her depiction of .
a futuristic puritan society, Atwood tries to define a woman's security as being powerful, but really she just .
contributes to the idea that women are incapable of taking care of and protecting themselves. Gilead, the .
society in question is the basis of this novel. Atwood gives this sexist society life by defining roles, and .
women have absolutely no definitive position in power. The main role in this novel is that of a Handmaid .
in the Republic of Gilead, and their position is ultimately to breed, and nothing more. Cooped up in a non-.
descript room with nothing but her own thoughts and painful memories for company, the narrator, Offred, a .
handmaid herself, shows many signs of retreating further and further into her own world. Throughout "The .
Handmaids Tale", symbolism and imagery are reoccurring themes, and we see different thought processes.
through dramatic events and everyday situations. .
In reading "The Handmaids Tale" I noticed that everyday items and observations are likened to .
some kind of sickening or violent image, which indicate that Offred's thought process isn't really all that .
stable; for example a removed light fixture is described as being "like the place in a face where the eye has .
been taken out." Other examples of this are describing a Guardian of the Faith's face as "unwholesomely .
tender, like the skin under a scab" and likening "half-dead, flexible and pink" worms to lips.
