Some feminist authors, like Margaret Atwood, foresaw to some extent the long-term impact that the politicization of the religious right would have on American society and politics, specifically in regards to reproductive rights. Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, first published in 1985, envisions a world embodying the worst-case scenario of a patriarchal theocracy. Atwood’s Republic of Gilead, so named after a geographic region mentioned in the Scripture that is divided among the tribes of Israel, is what she imagines the future of the United States to look like if the political influence of the religious right continues. Atwood portrays a not-so-distant future in which women are divided into distinct social classes based on their relative
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In Gilead, as a Puritan society based off of the teachings of the Christian bible, that group is women. As a fundamentalist society, they literally consider all women guilty of original sin, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved by childbearing" (221). This quotation reveals multiple things about Gileadean society; perhaps most notably the implication that all women are inherently sinful by grace of their gender. The only way women can “be saved” from their sinful nature is by serving their society through childbirth. These sentiments echo those expressed in Moore’s article and the anti-abortion movement in general, that women’s only value is as a vessel of the image of God. The subsequent conclusion is that men must save women from themselves, and this is accomplished in Gilead through the creation of strictly hierarchical class system headed and policed by men. This subjugation of women is cleverly disguised as intended to protect them, this is best verbalized by Aunt …show more content…
This evaluation of women marginalizes the infertile. In Gilead the infertile, with the exception of the Commander’s wives, are classified as unwomen and are either killed, exiled to the colonies, or forced to work in brothels for the elite. It is part of the hypocrisy of Gilead and our own society that men are not valued by their fertility as well. In fact, in Gilead infertile men do not officially exist, thus if a pair fail to reproduce it is always a result of the woman’s failure at her most basic function. Women are a tool to be used by men, objects of procreation rather than people. Offred describes how this mindset affected her relationship with her body, “I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping” (78). In the time before Gilead, Offred considered herself a whole person in that her body belonged to her mind, the two were almost one and the same. But in Gilead her mind and her body are two distinct entities. Offred
In Gilead, as a Puritan society based off of the teachings of the Christian bible, that group is women. As a fundamentalist society, they literally consider all women guilty of original sin, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved by childbearing" (221). This quotation reveals multiple things about Gileadean society; perhaps most notably the implication that all women are inherently sinful by grace of their gender. The only way women can “be saved” from their sinful nature is by serving their society through childbirth. These sentiments echo those expressed in Moore’s article and the anti-abortion movement in general, that women’s only value is as a vessel of the image of God. The subsequent conclusion is that men must save women from themselves, and this is accomplished in Gilead through the creation of strictly hierarchical class system headed and policed by men. This subjugation of women is cleverly disguised as intended to protect them, this is best verbalized by Aunt …show more content…
This evaluation of women marginalizes the infertile. In Gilead the infertile, with the exception of the Commander’s wives, are classified as unwomen and are either killed, exiled to the colonies, or forced to work in brothels for the elite. It is part of the hypocrisy of Gilead and our own society that men are not valued by their fertility as well. In fact, in Gilead infertile men do not officially exist, thus if a pair fail to reproduce it is always a result of the woman’s failure at her most basic function. Women are a tool to be used by men, objects of procreation rather than people. Offred describes how this mindset affected her relationship with her body, “I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping” (78). In the time before Gilead, Offred considered herself a whole person in that her body belonged to her mind, the two were almost one and the same. But in Gilead her mind and her body are two distinct entities. Offred