Brave New Worlds: Sexual Slavery in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Slavenka Drakuliċ’s S. A Novel about the Balkans

Abstract

First in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Paternal Tyranny and then again in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” we encountered a critical difference when it comes to a woman having a room of her own. If she is forced into this space, whether it is an entire “women’s world,” like a convent, or just a single room, like a nursery with yellow wallpaper, then it is a hell on earth, a place where a woman’s dream of freedom turns into a nightmare. In this chapter, we will examine two versions of women’s dreamworlds gone horribly wrong. In the first, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a woman finds herself confined to a single, bare room at the top of the stairs; she is a “prisoner,” although she is supposed to believe that she is one of the lucky ones. “Where I am is not a prison but a privilege,” she is told. In Slavenka Drakuliċ’s S. A Novel about the Balkans, a woman is locked into a special “women’s room” inside a prison camp for women and children. She too is one of the “lucky” ones—she lives through her ordeal.KeywordsRefugee CampSwedish HospitalYoung WifeSexual SlaveryEmpty RoomThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.