The Role Of Freedom In The Handmaid's Tale

In the past, women had little to no rights, especially political rights. Overtime, women gained the rights to do the things women today are free to do. It started out with women gaining the freedom to divorce and keep their own money as opposed to letting the husband deal with all the finances. This later progressed to freedoms such as the freedom to vote or freedom to have an abortion. The addition of these rights was an attempt to give equal rights and freedoms to both genders and to improve the lives of women. In today’s time women pretty much have the freedom to do whatever they choose, as long as it falls into the legal boundaries of the society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood takes our current society and values and makes it the past or history of Gilead. In Gilead, women no longer have a freedom to do anything. Instead, they have freedom from. This shift in the type of freedom available for women was also an attempt to better the lives of women. Women’s lives are constantly changing, for better or for worse, based on the past and the present in both our world and the world inside Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. …show more content…
These two words have been thrown around for decades in the political world. From recent protests of rights, such as the freedom to live and the freedom to bear arms, to historical protests that shaped the rights of today, like the freedom to vote for women or for colored people. These two words, ‘freedom to’, give us the ability to do things in our world today. In Gilead, however, this is not the case. Instead, the citizens of Gilead have a freedom from. In the novel, Offred looks back several times to when she had ‘freedom to’ as opposed to ‘freedom from’. One example of this is when she is walking toward the marketplace. During this time, she