A Handmaid's Tale Analysis

In today’s society, women are not equal. There is still a wage discrepancy. There is still an argument that women’s bodies should be monitored and controlled, such as in the argument for pro-life. In some countries, there are laws against a woman driving or leaving the house. Margaret Atwood wrote A Handmaid’s Tale, which exemplifies how a society ruled by men can also mean a society that oppresses women so harshly so as to take away their wages completely, control their bodies with monthly pelvic exams, and where they are not allowed to leave the house at all without a guard. It is through this dystopian country’s societal and psychological oppressions that the women suffer so harshly. By examining the societal and psychological oppressions …show more content…
Women are blamed if they cannot conceive, for it is never the man 's fault. They are blamed if they miscarry, for they must have done something to cause it. Worst of all, they are brainwashed to believe that it is a woman’s fault if they are raped, for they should have been more careful, they should not have been walking alone, she should have been wearing something less attractive. While in the brainwashing center, the women are talking in a group. One women describes her gang rape and how she got pregnant by one of the men that raped her and therefore the got an abortion. From the novel, “Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison” (72). This brainwashing of women is clear. The men and women in this society are forced to believe that women are to blame for when things go wrong. This is easy to believe because in this society the household is maintained by women, so if something goes wrong in the kitchen, it is obviously a woman’s fault; and because the women rarely exist outside a household, the only faults they see are of their own gender. Thus the women lose their own empathy for one another and begin to blame each other, which only make each and every one of them feel worse and less like