Dystopia In The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale confronts Margaret Atwood’s vision of men and women in a controlling light that may infer the way our society would translate in a dystopia. I focus primarily on how the The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a male’s ownership over a female, a male’s undisputed power over women in this particular dystopia, and how that translates to our society today. I will be presenting this depiction in two specific scenes in which the power distribution is obviously in favor of the male figure having authority over the female and the female being submissive to the male. In the first scene I will discuss, the society described in The Handmaid’s Tale discretely asserts a male’s power over females, without the females recognizing it. Despite the undeniable factors that play into the creation of a society, …show more content…
There is a direct correlation between the control the men in this dystopia have and the submission of the women to the men, this is encouraged by the religious setting this society is based in. The encouragement of gender scripts and gender hierarchies throughout the narrative from the religion that is forced into practice adds an uncanny element that this type of dystopia could truly occur among our society. Atwood takes a unique approach when addressing societal issues that we often see. From religion serving as an excuse to flaunt control over women who must obey, to addressing how men sometimes skirt their responsibilities as fathers, Atwood addresses these points discretely and maturely. Granted, there are many interpretations of this narrative, I argue that there is a definitive aspect of inequality that is being portrayed and a criticism of how religion can often be abused and used as an excuse to gain power over