The Serfdom of Women Portrayed by Margaret Atwoodin The Handmaid’s Tale

Abstract

The aim of this paper The Handmaid’s Tale is to scrutinize issues. As there is plenty of traditional feminist critique of male power structures in Atwood’s works, The Handmaid’s Tale argues the power structure of Gilead also analyses the feminine roles that support and allow the suppression of other women. Placing the novel in the contexts of Atwood’s career, feminism, and dystopian literature, provides a fuller understanding of how the novel functions as an expression of the divergence of women. Margaret Atwood focuses on the problems such as gender equality and the dangers of a hierarchical- structured system for women’s oppression. Her focal point is to mention the subservience of women in a male-dominated society and women’s enslavement in a consumer society in which women’s body is handled as object, an instrument and also as adorable item. Margaret Atwood is one of the foremost vivid writers in current Canadian literature. She has vigorously contributed to Canadian politics and its cause. Her works are mostly associated with social and political issues. She contemplates the relation between men and ladies and human basic rights. the topic of gender is the author’s major concern. She depicts the ladies in her novels that always search for their identity which is lost within the male-controlled societies. Oppression of ladies is another theme for her novels and it may be seen evidently in her writings. She encounters the lower position of girls in society. Atwood’s images of gender, the mistreatment and coercion of ladies, predominantly women’s bodies. She signifies the misery of her female characters limited in their feminine roles in her novels. Moreover, femininity is the main fear for examining The Handmaid’s Tale. In Gilead society, women are depressed about their freedom and ordered to serve the state in numerous ways and functions.