Gileadean Orthodoxy in the Islamic State
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, the protagonist, Offred is a Handmaid, one whose sole role is to provide a child, in a misogynistic totalitarian regime. Although Gilead society seems unrealistic, a similar orthodoxy has been imposed in Syria. The ISIS brides’ situation directly mirrors the societal roles, restrictions, and methods of coercion of the Handmaids, illustrating that Gileadean society can be achieved in the modern world.
The Syrian women are forced to become wives of ISIS fighters to protect their loved ones, just as Offred does her duties and hides her tapes to protect her loved ones. When ISIS militants took her father, Hanan was told that “they will release him if [she marries] the head of the Sharia police.” She stated that she “had to accept.” In The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred performs her Handmaid duties with her daughter and Luke in mind. When Offred sees a picture of her daughter, she calls her “[her] treasure. (228)” Also, as noted by Professor Pieixoto, Offred most likely hid her story because
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In the Historical Notes, Professor Pieixoto notes that Judd, one of the creators of Gilead, “was of the opinion from the outset that the best and the most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other purposes was through women themselves. (308)” This idea created the Aunts, whose role was to control and “re-educate” the women who were to become Handmaids. This is similar to the female envoys who were sent to set up Hanan’s second marriage. Hanan notes that, “they were authoritative, abrupt, and unsympathetic, and seemed to have no qualms about the role they were playing.” The Islamic State employed these women to control and recruit brides for ISIS fighters, just like how the Aunts control and teach the Handmaids to prepare them for a household posting. This
Due to the fact that the Wives are not allowed to sleep with their husbands, the Wives are all extremely envious of the Handmaids. In Gilead, Serena is deprived of a life of genuine freedom and is forced to watch her husband sleep with his Handmaid. This makes her extremely bitter and jealous and so she takes this out on the Handmaids–including the main character–although it is not exactly their fault. Although the reader is sympathetic to her emotions, they are still completely unfair. The fact that Serena feels hostility towards the Handmaids is ignorant because she knows that they have not chosen their position in society, but rather they were forced into it. At the end of the novel, Serena finds out about Offred’s secret visit to Jezebel’s. She is mostly upset with Offred, which is completely unreasonable because the Commander had forced her to accompany him to Jezebel’s. This is a direct example of the feminist way of thinking: it’s always the fault of a women’s promiscuity, not a man’s. Serena’s attitude supports the order of Gilead, because she tortures the Handmaids, who cannot help themselves. She knows that these women are forced to become Handmaids, yet she still continues to envy them and punish them. Although she should, she has no sympathy for other women and plays the exact role that society requires her to. Women like her allow Gilead to function because they enforce the
In the novel The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood the themes of Religion and inter-human relationships are the themes that are most evident in the text. This novel shows the possibility of the existence of an all-powerful governing system. This is portrayed through the lack of freedom for women in society, from being revoked of their right to own any money or property, to being stripped of their given names and acquiring names such as Offred and Ofglen, symbolizing women’s dependant existence, only being defined by the men which they belong to. This portrayal of women demonstrates the idea that individuals are unimportant, that the goals of the society as a whole are more pertinent. “For our purposes, your feet and your hands are not essential” (chapter 15) is a quote revealing that Gilead denies rights to individuals and to humankind. In The Handmaids Tale, handmaids are only considered of value for their ability to reproduce, otherwise they are disposable. Religion is an aspect very prominent in the society of Gilead. We see this in chapter 4, where Ofglen and Offred meet and th...
The ability to create life is an amazing thing but being forced to have children for strangers is not so amazing. Offred is a handmaid, handmaid's have children for government officials, such as Commander Waterford. Offred used to be married to Luke and together they had a daughter but then everything changed; Offred was separated from her family and assigned to a family as their handmaid. The society which Offred is forced to live in shaped her in many ways. In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood uses cultural and geographical surroundings to shape Offred's psychological and moral traits as she tries to survive the society that she is forced to live, in hopes that she can rebel and make change.
laws is to keep the bad things out from the old society out such as
Feminism as we know it began in the mid 1960's as the Women's Liberation Movement. Among its chief tenants is the idea of women's empowerment, the idea that women are capable of doing and should be allowed to do anything men can do. Feminists believe that neither sex is naturally superior. They stand behind the idea that women are inherently just as strong and intelligent as the so-called stronger sex. Many writers have taken up the cause of feminism in their work. One of the most well known writers to deal with feminist themes is Margaret Atwood. Her work is clearly influenced by the movement and many literary critics, as well as Atwood herself, have identified her as a feminist writer. However, one of Atwood's most successful books, The Handmaid's Tale, stands in stark contrast to the ideas of feminism. In fact, the female characters in the novel are portrayed in such a way that they directly conflict with the idea of women's empowerment.
In Night, the Jews were confined and imprisoned in the concentration camps because they were destined to be murdered in a systematic manner by the Nazis. An example of the systematic murdering tactic used is the selection process. This was the process in which the Jews had their age and fitness checked to determine who was old and fit enough to work, and who was to be murdered. An example of this is when Elie and his father first arrived to Birkenau an inmate said, “Not fifty. You're forty. Do you hear? Eighteen and forty”(Wiesel 30). The inmate said this so the father and son could avoid death upon entry. In Night, The Jews represented resentfulness and disgust in the eyes of the Nazis. However in The Handmaid’s Tale the Handmaids are
In Gilead, censorship forces Handmaids into a narrow minded thinking regarding the Holy Bible. They are trained to be religious and then are
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood creates a society of oppression in which she redefines oppression in common culture. Gilead is a society characterized by highly regulated systems of social control and extreme regulation of the female body. The instinctive need to “protect and preserve” the female body is driven by the innate biological desires of the men. The manipulation of language, commodification, and attire, enhances the theme of oppression and highlights the imbalance of power in the Gilead society.
Also, religion is the basis for most of the gruesome laws that Gilead has such as the Handmaid’s job. Their only job is to reproduce which comes from the story of Rachel and Leah where servants can have relationships with their owners in order to give the infertile wives a family. “Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” (283). This illustrates that people can adapt to anything even just a job at reproducing which, in itself, is a gruesome way to live. In addition, before the ceremony where the Commander and Handmaid have intercourse the Commander reads from Genesis the story of Rachel and
In Some societies extreme religious laws and rules is followed as a solution to problems. Allowing religious fundamentalists to run a regime can lead to injustice, for certain people in the regime. In the Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaids tale such things like these take place where freedom is revoked and nightmares are reality for the women of Gilead. The novel presents as a totalitarian society where there is a governing system in which a ruling command holds all power and controls everything in the society. The regime takes it laws very strict because these laws are said to be of god and by disobeying the government the people are disobeying God. The narrator reminds us that there are freedom but
In Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaids Tale’, we hear a transcribed account of one womans posting ‘Offred’ in the Republic of Gilead. A society based around Biblical philosophies as a way to validate inhumane state practises. In a society of declining birth rates, fertile women are chosen to become Handmaids, walking incubators, whose role in life is to reproduce for barren wives of commanders. Older women, gay men, and barren Handmaids are sent to the colonies to clean toxic waste.
This extract shows the us that even the Aunts with there limited power can not carry guns as the regime will not trust them with that amount of responsibility or power due to their gender, it is even remarkable that the aunts are given the little power that they have considering how the regime feels about the role of the woman in their society. This little amount of power gives the aunts the feeling that the are superior to the other women in the society it also allows them to push their views and opinions onto the handmaids that they are also entrusted to look after by the regime which from what we see they do well and try and treat the handmaids like daughters that they will punish if the women disobey any of the rules of the regime. As seen by the way they treat Moria after her first attempt to escape from the red centre. The aunts are also very confident within them selves and the position that they h...
Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, the author Margaret Atwood gives the reader an understanding of what life would be like in a theocratic society that controls women’s lives. The narrator, Offred, gives the reader her perspective on the many injustices she faces as a handmaid. Offred is a woman who lived before this society was established and when she undergoes the transition to her new status she has a hard time coping with the new laws she must follow. There are many laws in this government that degrade women and give men the authority to own their household. All women are placed in each household for a reason and if they do not follow their duties they are sent away or killed.
Even today there are places in the world where there is startling similarity to this fictitious dystopia. In Pakistan, women's rights are non-existant, and many policies are that of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale. In Gilead, the handmaids must cover their bodies and faces almost completely with vales and wings. In Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Bahrain, and similar South Asian countries, this is a must for women. Other Gileadean-like persecutions take place towards women. In Pakistan, women can be raped, and unless there is full proof that there was no consent, the man will get off scot free, and the women charged with pre-marital sex and sentenced to a prison term. In Afghanistan, the police force has and continue to torture and rape innocent women for unnecessary reasons. This is similar to The Handmaid's Tale in that Offred, and other handmaids, not only go through the devestation of "The Ceremony", but also can be used and possibly even raped by their Commanders, and there is nothing the handmaid can do about it. If she speaks, she is usually not believed, and then she is sent away because she broke the law. The handmaid would usually die for making such accuasations.
As The Handmaid’s Tale is considered an allegory of the social injustice women face against traditional expectations of their role in society, the symbolism of the Handmaids and other women as a whole for repressed feminine liberty and sexuality allows Atwood to connect her work to the theme between gender and expectations in her society. As Handmaids in the Republic of Gilead, females are stripped of their previous identity and are defined as a tool of reproduction for the men who is assigned them. At its core, these females are forced against their will to be mere tools, experiencing unwanted sex at least once a month, which Gilead names “The Ceremony”, hiding its true nature as a form of rape. Offred