Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood's Dystopic Essay

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Not only do the handmaids have no privacy; they sleep with their masters under the watchful eye of the wives. Their days are segmented and scheduled. Women lack autonomy and their bodies belong not to them but to the oppressors. One of the most poignant reminders of the low position of women in Gilead society is the invasive and coercive medical examination required for all handmaids. "When I'm naked I lie down on the examining table," begins Offred, retelling one of the many days in which male doctors probed her. "He deals with a torso only," (p. 67). The doctor's free reign and his dealing with her as a "torso only" underscore the position of women in Gilead. They are animals. They are machines. "My breasts are fingered in their turn," (p. 67). Using the passive voice, Offred senses the deep impersonality of the situation and just as she does several times throughout her narrative and especially in relation with the Commander, feels a modicum of compassion for men. Gilead is an oppressive totalitarian state that obliterates individual happiness and human joy but which leaves a particularly horrid mark on its female citizens. The doctor's sexual advances stun Offred, bringing to her attention the core of her predicament. Refusing his advances means prolonging her stay with the Commander and yet to give in would be to surrender her last remaining sense of dignity, her only chance for self-respect and self-assertion.

The future is the only temporal period to which Offred is not privy; the nebulous nature of the future allows the reader of The Handmaid's Tale to choose one of several possible consequences for women following the oppression in Gilead. Offred relays fleeting memories of her past with Luke and Moira and her mother, but she never postulates about possible futures. Her narrative trails off: "And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light," (p. 339). Even throughout her interactions with Ofglen and Nick, Offred feels neither hope nor hopelessness.

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Offred retains a sense of dignity and empowerment in spite of her oppressed condition, because she states, "I have failed her," referring to Serena Joy (p. 339). Not knowing what will become of her own life let alone the lives of other handmaids, Offred allows the readers of her narrative to speculate about the roles of women in future society. A pessimist might notice that the male keynote speaker hails from Cambridge, a bastion of the old boy's club. His diction and tone are dry and detached from the handmaid's human suffering and her individuality. Yet Atwood sets the future in 2195 Nunavit, a few days after the summer solstice. Nunavit was a symbolic choice: a vast northern Canadian province recently created in light of the substantial indigenous population residing there. The act of giving back the land to its original inhabitants might suggest returning women's rights and freedoms. Moreover, Maryann Crescent Moon's name symbolizes newness and rebirth and thus the novel ends with a distinct message of hope and salvation. Just discussing the handmaid's tale means that historians in 2195 were concerned with human rights and the rights of women.

Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale reveals a remarkably realistic dystopia in which sexism reaches a deplorable height. Narrator Offred recalls the past as days of anarchy and tension, in which women's roles were not ideal but still substantially better than life in Gilead. The fall of the United States and the rise of Gilead signify a major turning point for women in which they become nothing more than machines for bearing children and in which their rights and freedoms are totally curtailed. After the close of Offred's narrative, historians in Nunavit discuss the handmaid's tale with scholastic intensity, revealing a potentially hope-filled future. Women's rights and freedoms change only little throughout Atwood's novel but reach a definite down point during the ascension of Gilead.

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