Gender Roles In The Handmaid's Tale

In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the author portrayal of matriarch system of women and sexism conveys a deeper meaning of the characters’ social and moral understandings as they find their own identity, representing the idea that nothing can stop one from changing themselves. Atwood utilizes gender and class to alienate the protagonist, Offred, illustrating how women and their position within society are used as an instrument by men to gain dominance. Throughout the novel, the main character Offred, once had a normal life, working and living happily with her family, but after her society had been taken over by a religious theocracy then renamed to the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state, Offred is force into being a handmaid, whose sole purpose is for reproduction in an increasing sterile society.
However, there is a differentiation between class within the gender of women that illustrates how power affects what roles the women play within their society and how politics affect moral issues. Offred, within the novel, is seen as being in one of the lowest classes within the hierarchy of women only putting her above the women who are sent to the

A main theme in Atwood’s novel was feminism, yet according to AUTHOR, that the black women, who part of the history of the feminist movement during the early ages “went underground or were ignored, erased, or divide” due to the racists tensions it “prevented black women from becoming feminist.” ANALYSIS he hatred of the white women to the black women, was similar to Wives to the handmaids. One group hating the other for race, and the other group hating the women for being fertile, both things that are uncontrollable, nonetheless spark hatred into the