A Reading of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Based on Jasodhara Bagchi's Interrogating Motherhood: An Indian Radical Feminist Perspective

Abstract

According to Jasodhara Bagchi (2017), "It is as a mother that a woman gains some agency". Contrary to popular belief, the womb is not an 'inert receptacle'; it can allow or prevent sperm invasion, but only when the woman can decide the same. The extreme onslaught of patriarchy and totalitarian supremacy in the Society of Gilead has resulted in the manipulation of motherhood. By proposing an alternate reality in which women's lives are controlled solely by procreation and gender roles imposed strictly and violently, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) investigates the nature of human existence, particularly for women, in a culture bereft of free will. The novel pertains to both historical and present social challenges, particularly those affecting women. Though there are several research studies on the novel's western feminist perspectives focused on women's identity, status, role, oppression, womanhood, and surrogacy, there is a lack of studies focusing on the Indian perspective of the novel. The present article focuses on the problems of motherhood, its connection with Indian society by analysing the major feminist concerns and the contemporary issues based on the novel. The study explicitly aims to analyse motherhood based on the feminist perspective of Bagchi's Interrogating Motherhood and bring together radical feminist theorising in the broad sense of conceptualising social reality from an Indian perspective. The novel reinforces marriage and motherhood's social and biological ideals and its role in depriving female agency. From the Indian radical feminist perspective, the novel reveals women's complicity in upholding male dominance.