What Is The Feminism In The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood did not set out to be a “feminist author”. Despite this, her books are seen as some of the most significant and relevant feminist novels of the twentieth century. Atwood has accepted her reputation as a feminist author, but has said that many of her books are actually pointing out other significant societal issues as well, such as those of environment, religion, and race. Atwood’s mash-ups of reality are always going to be considered feminist, she says, because they contain real life events. Since our real life events need feminism, the evens in her books do as well.
The Handmaid’s Tale is often lauded as a feminist novel, and sees most of its discussion based upon its idea of a female dystopia. According to Margaret Atwood, however, this was not actually the intended purpose of the novel. Instead, it was supposed to be an in-depth look at power, how it …show more content…
The bands served to separate the Jewish citizens from others, to remind them they had no rights, and were at the mercy of the law. The women in The Handmaid’s Tale are dressed for similar reasons: they are constantly reminded they have no rights, they are established in a particular social class they cannot break out of, and they have lost all control, even for something so simple as picking clothing to wear. These real life applications and parallels in The Handmaid’s Tale not only make the story more relevant, but also show that it, as a dystopian future, is far more possible than we realize. This, rather than feminism, seems to be Atwood’s main point in writing the novel, as a focus on what power has done to societies in the past, and could do to our own society in the future, if we continue down the same path that was followed in The Handmaid’s