LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:5 May 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Portrayal of Marginalized Women in Atwood’s
The Handmaid’s Tale

Aarti Sahu, Ph.D. Scholar


Abstract

Margaret Atwood is a widely acclaimed feministic writer of Canada. Her novel The Handmaid’s Tale is a highly provocative, dystopian fiction that points out the subjugated condition of women under patriarchal dominance. She stresses the loss of female identity in a male dominant society. This is Atwood’s futuristic novel which portrays emotional and physical marginalization and coercion of women in a totalitarian regime called Gilead. Atwood in her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale has depicted the later period of twentieth century in which she portrays the end of the American regime. She shows that in the twentieth century the rule of United States of America has been eradicated by the Republic of Gilead, a more oppressive regime, a monolithic theocracy. Though Gilead makes an assertion to provide a better society for human survival, its main desideratum seems to be to re-populate the state in which sterility has become a norm as the aftermath of a proliferative use of sexual and surgical machines for abortion, chemical pollution and of overuse of harmful radioactive products at large. This paper tries to show how Atwood has exposed the terrible oppression that women undergo in many totalitarian regimes in the world.

Keywords: Oppression of Women, Totalitarian Regime, Theocratic State, Coercion of Women

Women – Procreative Vessels Only?

In Gilead male patriarchal authorities have been luxuriating in all divine rights and their only armament of the rule is ‘women oppression’. Atwood has shown female marginalization and subjugation by the absolute patriarchy of Gilead in the form of different leaders as ‘Commanders’, ‘Angels’, ‘Eyes’, and female ‘guardians’ - who are there for prolonging the unjust treatment of women. In this theocratic state women are merely reduced to the status of child-bearing machines. They are merely procreative vessels for Gilead.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Aarti Sahu, Ph.D. Scholar
Department of Humanities
DCRUST, Murthal
Sonipat
Haryana – 131027
India
aarti2980@gmail.com
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