Before I begin, I would just like to point out that that this is a bit of an inappropriate image given for the theme. Apparently, according to Margaret Atwood's Wikipedia page, she only experienced about two or three of the experiences shown above, being like a divorce and re-marrying a writer and perhaps owning a cat or two. Or maybe 10...
But, I digress.
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale has a very recurring topic of women being oppressed in society (given that that's the plot of the story). In this dystopian society known as Gilead, women are only given three roles to act out in life: The Marthas, who mainly did all the physical labor that comes with being a mother in a normal society, being cooking, cleaning, other blatant female stereotypes; The Handmaid's, whose main purpose in life is to wish that the Commander chooses you to have a baby with, in a giant, unbearably uncomfortable ceremony right in front of his wife, leading to the final roles; The Wives, who are there to be the "trophy" of the Commanders and to look pretty while giving their husband moral support, should he need it.
The novel basically takes all the common beliefs of women in society, as somewhat laid out by the bible, and exaggerates them past the point of comfort and exaggeration itself until the ideas evolve into a system, a system in which woman are the lowest and men rank superior, which is exactly as awful as it sounds. (Had these roles been reversed, maybe society wouldn't have been that bad. I mean come on, when do men get anything right?) The novel takes the views of anti-feminism and sprints with them. It goes to the point where rape is the women's fault, reproduction is a giant ceremony in front of everyone with an old dude and a random "lucky" handmaid, women aren't allowed to show any sign of beauty or excess skin, women aren't allowed to read, or rather THINK, period, and women are barely, if at all, able to talk to men or anyone for that matter.
This "Utopian" society has nothing going for it that could be viewed as "not that bad" (I mean OneState had the serpent, that moved people down the sidewalks so efficiently. Just think of that with school hallways!). Even the men, who are supposedly the ranking champions in this society, are having an awful time in Gilead. Not nearly as many of their rights are taken away like the women's, but they are pretty much restricted to doing nothing, anyhow, surrounded by nothing but female oppression and suffering. The novel even points out the widely accepted fact that women are more intelligent than men during the Scrabble scene with Offred and the Commander when Offred figuratively beats the living whatchacallet out of the Commander with her important, symbolic words like "larynx" (symbolizing the voice of women being suppressed in society) and "zygote" (symbolizes the idea of women simply being walking uteruses), where the measly old Commander was only able to put "go" and "home", with little to no symbolism on the words he chose. Atwood included this scene to show that even when women in Gilead (or lesser figures in general) are smarter than their commanding officers, their oppression remains, even given the incompetence of the authority, simply due to a set of rules devised by someone or something (this case the bible) saying that the idiot is in charge.
Not only does this novel serve as a prime example of exaggerating anti-feminism to bring forth attitudes of pro-feminism, helping the cause of stopping the oppression and bad views of women in society, it's also full of great quotes! I tried to limit myself to just one quote, but who liked limits anyways? So I chose two. Please don't be angered by this, Sir Klimasthocles the Merciless
"All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard" (Atwood 236). While out of context, this quote is quite humorous, within context, it conveys a very serious matter. While it seems strange and idiotic to tell yourself to "look stupid", the fact of the matter is certain women around the world, even some in America, are expected to be unintelligent and simply there to look at while the men do all the talking. The hidden attitude behind the quote is basically saying how horrible and stupid it really is for men to expect women to be stupid, since, as we stated before, women are far smarter and superior than men.
"We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it" (Atwood 56). This quote spoke a lot to me when I first read it (Figuratively speaking, of course). It shows the change that the women in this society had to suffer through and still continue to, while simply ignoring how life used to be. The didn't have ignorance. They knew exactly how things used to be, but had to work to forget the old lives they had. This quote could also be taking a shot at men and women in today's society, how women have to work at pretending there's nothing wrong with their representation in society, ignoring the oppression still apparent. It could also be a jab at the men, who know that women are oppressed, but simply choose to do nothing, because ignoring is easier than working to fix it, and if they don't do something, the ignoring will evolve into ignorance, and we'll have an actual Gilead on our hands to worry about. Let's just hope we still get our oranges, should that fate occur.
Personally, I found this book to be quite intriguing. I was certainly shocked with the material locked away in this novel (ceremony scene...*shiver*). Not only was the book eye-opening, but the in-class discussions that arose from this novel were quite enthralling as well (not just talking about Matt's comments, by the way). I naively assumed before the discussions that in today's society, most of the oppression that had originally been placed on women was a thing of the past. But, thanks to our good friend Raylan Alleman of "Fix the Family", I learned that the ideas expressed in this novel are still somewhat believed today by a good percent of the population. And that frightens me.
And just as a little side-notion to the on-going rumour about the movie adaptation of this novel being the worst adaptation of a novel to ever exist, let's view the first picture off of google images when "Handmaid's Tale movie" is searched.
Well that proved many theories. I mean for god's sake in the novel would they have ever been able to show that much skin or hair in general? And who casted the Patrick Warburton look-alike as the old dude Commander?
Oh, and speaking of the commander...
...apparently Chris Loos wasn't kidding when he said "Offred kills the Commander". Thank god I read the book instead of watching the movie. I would've failed that essay.
