In today’s society, women are expected to have all of the rights that men do, and those rights are supposed to be equal. However, this idea is preposterous to some males. This was especially true in the 1980’s, where women’s rights were not as much of a norm as it is in 2017. This period of time, precisely 1986, is when Margaret Atwood wrote her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel describes a society in which women are stripped of all of their rights and forced into social classes that are astonishingly unethical in the real world. Atwood uses this class system as a way to criticize the stereotypical gender role of women in a society. All three of the major classes in the dystopia, or the Republic of Gilead, were constructed by
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In The Handmaid’s Tale, all high ranking officers in the regime are called Commanders. When they first earn their rank, they get assigned wives to marry. The role of the Commanders’ Wives are keep the home in order and serve the husband as a wife, but not to serve him with the intent of pleasure or reproduction. These characters portray the loyalty to the husband that an ideal stereotypical housewife must have. This thought process is clearly exemplified when Serena Joy, a Commander’s wife, voiced to Offred “‘As for my husband,’ she said,’ My husband. I want that to be perfectly clear. Till death do us part. It’s final’” (Atwood 16). This would lead readers to understand that an ideal housewife would be extremely loyal to their husband, no matter the circumstance. Serena exemplified this when she explains to Offred that her husband is hers, even though Offred has the duties to birth the Commander’s child, which is the normal role for a …show more content…
She takes the responsibilities of a housewife and exaltedly divides them into three social classes to show that women can be more than that. This ideal is, for the most part, left in the past. Women and men have equal rights and the stereotypical gender roles have slowly been disintegrating as time goes by. Gender roles in the year 1986 has changed exponentially since early feminist movements, and the current year of 2017 has changed and will continue to transform. All of these changes will hopefully lead to a society that Atwood is trying to describe, a society where genders are exactly equal, and gender roles are completely
In The Handmaid’s Tale, all high ranking officers in the regime are called Commanders. When they first earn their rank, they get assigned wives to marry. The role of the Commanders’ Wives are keep the home in order and serve the husband as a wife, but not to serve him with the intent of pleasure or reproduction. These characters portray the loyalty to the husband that an ideal stereotypical housewife must have. This thought process is clearly exemplified when Serena Joy, a Commander’s wife, voiced to Offred “‘As for my husband,’ she said,’ My husband. I want that to be perfectly clear. Till death do us part. It’s final’” (Atwood 16). This would lead readers to understand that an ideal housewife would be extremely loyal to their husband, no matter the circumstance. Serena exemplified this when she explains to Offred that her husband is hers, even though Offred has the duties to birth the Commander’s child, which is the normal role for a …show more content…
She takes the responsibilities of a housewife and exaltedly divides them into three social classes to show that women can be more than that. This ideal is, for the most part, left in the past. Women and men have equal rights and the stereotypical gender roles have slowly been disintegrating as time goes by. Gender roles in the year 1986 has changed exponentially since early feminist movements, and the current year of 2017 has changed and will continue to transform. All of these changes will hopefully lead to a society that Atwood is trying to describe, a society where genders are exactly equal, and gender roles are completely