How Does Margaret Atwood Use Feminism In The Handmaids Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood follows a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, formerly known as the United States of America. This society is plagued by low birth rates and birth defects, and in order to solve this, has reverted to a caste system, in which the sole role of a Handmaid is to produce a child. Women, especially Handmaids, are given no human rights. Offred, the protagonist, is a Handmaid who had a family of her own before the rise of Gilead. The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1986, a time of a resurgence of traditional values in response to the sexual revolution and feminism of the 1960s and 70s. Atwood explores the effects of this on a women. In this passage, which describes a bathtime scene, Atwood uses a combination two motifs: depersonalization and feelings of failure, as well as imagery of nature used in conjunction with women’s bodies to show the …show more content…
Offred also internalizes these expectations as her own. This creates the motif of the feelings of failure she feels as a result of not becoming pregnant. She says, “each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.” As a Handmaid, Offred’s sole purpose is to birth a healthy child. With each month she is unsuccessful, Offred becomes continuously more distressed, as she says, “I see despair coming towards me like a famine. To feel that empty, again, again… continuing on and on, marking time” The only motivation for Offred to have a child is to ensure her safety for the future, however she creates an emotional attachment to the idea, and feels it is a personal failure when she is not pregnant. As further evidence of the sexism she internalizes, Offred now sees herself as just a vessel for children, and when she fails in this respect, it causes emotional