Isolation In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

handmaid’s become walking billboards advertising the scarlet woman” (Snodgrass). With this allusion to Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter, Atwood clearly displays the isolation that comes along with the name tag of “handmaid”. In this society women are judged on what color they wear. Yet, if none of them were to wear a color, no man or authority figure would be able to tell the difference between them. Once again looking back on the American Gothic era, the Puritans held a similar class system to this one. With a government of both combined church and state, men held the most authority and women come in a far-off second place. It is cruel for anybody to judge a person 's ability on the clothes let alone the color of what they wear. Atwood warns …show more content…
The name Offred or “of Fred” can also be read as off red. This reading and changing of names allows a female to only be consumed with the one action- giving sexuxal service to only one man, her Commander. “This forces the Handmaid’s into ambiguous social positions where they live simultaneously as bourgeoisie, proletariat, and mere machinery in the new economy,” as stated by Baker and Bickford. As shown in the chapter titled “Birth Day”, handmaid’s must persevere through the pains of birthing a baby only to be rewarded with little interaction with it. This description is much like men working on assembling a car; they make the car but do not get to enjoy the outcome of their labors. “The women are just workers on their own assembly line” (Baker and Bickford). What these women do not realize is that they are running and producing the entire economy on their own, they are just letting the men threaten them. By mocking these women with such belittling names, they are daring the women (handmaids in particular) to fight for their equality. These women should act as a warning for future generations- just because you fail once doesn’t mean you surrender immediately after. If the government can easily diminish an entire gender (half the population) then one person can easily turn the whole society into a