The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

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Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments: Sacrificing the Rights of Women for the Benefit of Men In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a Handmaid’s life is based solely around her ability to bear children. In the society of Gilead, it is a Handmaid’s duty to her state to be fertile. If she does not get pregnant after so many tries, she may be sent to camps where she will be worked to death. The pressure on Handmaids is immense. They are seen only has “sacred vessels” or “ambulatory challises” (Atwood 136). A Handmaid, is only valued by her ovaries; she has no other purpose in this society. They are not allowed to read, own property, have a name, or even be a mother. Once a Handmaid gives birth to a healthy baby, if she is so lucky, she …show more content…

Not only do the men control the women, but the higher ranking females in pre-Gilead society control the lower ranking women: the Handmaids. There are two ways in which this female system is enforced: the Aunts and the Wives. When Gilead was first forming, the women who were arrested for having non-traditional relationships, like Offred with her husband, Luke, who was already married when they first started seeing each other, are given to the Aunts for training. The Aunts’ duty to Gilead is to brainwash the Handmaids. They have this power over the Handmaids because they “rank among the most powerful female agents in the patriarchal order” (Callaway 50). The Aunts will do whatever it takes to tame these girls and put them in their place. The Aunts’ goal is to convince the Handmaids that they are important to the society to get them to cooperate. They have many methods for getting the girls in the right mindset to be able to go into society to be Handmaids. These methods include “brainwashing, humiliation, and torture” (Callaway 52). Janine, one of the girls in the Red Center with the narrator, was a common target for humiliation. She was coerced into admitting that she tempted the men who gang raped her, and it that was her fault. They refused to let her use the bathroom and she peed her pants in front of the other girls (Callaway

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