Handmaid Selected Passages From the

Handmaid Selected Passages from the Handmaid's Tale The feminist era, which began in earnest at the tail end of the protest age, entered American society into a period of mounting awareness of the imbalances which had inherently persisted in the home, in the workplace and in the images presented by the media.

Gradual shifts began to take place, both in the way that women communicated for the first time as a collective their individual hopes and dreams and in the way that women fought for access to the same social opportunities which awaited American men. These changes, still quite certainly observable today by the presence of women at every level of government, professional occupation and social strata, have been nonetheless diminished by what we may suggest through the lens of Margaret Atwood's groundbreaking 1985 satire, the Handmaid's Tale.

The novel's examination of the sexual objectification and social subjugation of women at an extreme pitch on par with Orwellian conceptions of social decay helps to demonstrate the continued urgency for women to be treated as equals. Though certainly the dystopian nightmare of Atwood's story has not come to pass, the persistence of prescribed gender roles, of governmental patriarchy and of the fostering of both of these by religious conservatism to impact the shape of American society is worthy of alarm.

The notion of the government as a 'bigger brother' in this story is produced in the ironic insidiousness of 'family' as it is formed in the handmaids' quarters in Gilead. Here, we are given the impression of a society that is rigidly imposed upon its inhabitants by force presenting itself as simultaneously benevolent and formidable in its authority. From the perspective of our protagonist, we learn both of the oppressive nature of this society and of brand of sardonic observation which Atwood will bring to the proceedings.

Describing her surroundings, Offred observes that "Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts." (Atwood, 4) the seamless convergence of the warm familial title 'aunt' with the image of this corporal mode of enforcement helps to underscore a society that is violently hostile toward independence, particularly contextualized by its treatment of women.

There is an element of forcible control over these women that smacks of government imposition, a key element of the society and the primary mode through which the rights of women are disrupted. Certainly, the aggression which seems to be an increasingly inescapable aspect of the is channeled toward the female gender as a whole in Atwood's novel, even as Offred struggles to recognize this. She herself ponders the meaning of the valued traditionalism in her society; "A return to traditional values. Waste not want not.

I am not being wasted. Why do I want?" (Atwood, 7) it is clear that, far separated from the notion of femininity as something more than an object through which sex and procreation are performed, the protagonist is veritably incapable.