The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood

The Handmaids Tale is Atwood's dystopian classic exploring the theocratic nature of the Patriarchal Republic of Gilead. This novel tells the tale of Offred's life within the oppressive parallel Atwood predict's for America's future. The class divisions and excessive oppression within this text raise many questions about the truth behind the likelihood of Atwood's assumptions, and raises great amounts of fear to many critics. This novel, which will reach it's 30th anniversary next year, has become renowned for it's context drawing attention from many feminist critics. There is so much to discuss about this text I'm going to break it down into several smaller blog post.

My brief review of this novel is that it is a fantastic piece of dystopian fiction, with a very hard hitting and often depressing tone. The bounce between memories and the current events in Offred's life can be complicated to understand, but regardless of this it is a reasonably easy read. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction of any age that views themselves as a reasonably mature reader and I would give Atwood a 9/10 and I definitely plan to read more of her works!

The Role Of Women in Gilead

The roles of the females in this novel are crucial to all readings of it and can expose a lot about the social hierarchy by simply looking at their names and their clothing:

• The Wives are always dressed in blue much like the Virgin Mary would wear, suggesting that their only role is to nurture a child and have no part in the reproductive system. This emphasis of keeping the Virgin Mary's image within upper class females is represented in the Daughters wearing white until they get married. White connotes purity and innocence which is promoted among the highest class of women from a young age, a sense that all higher class women should present themselves as a Holy symbol. The top social class in this society is also like the highest class in the bible and should maintain chastity. 
• The Handmaids are characters based off of the story of Jacob's wife in the Bible, Rachel, who when she failed to conceive a child for Jacob insisted he slept with his handmaid, this is used as the society's justification for their treatment of the handmaids. The handmaids continually dress in red; red as the colour of fire and blood is commonly associated with danger, energy, power, passion and love. The red could be interpreted as a reminder of their past, like a sign hanging around their neck pronouncing their shame, due to it's interpretations as passionate and love filled. It is also symbolic of the female body maturing and the Handmaids only use for their reproductive purpose and when that ability ceases to exist and they can no longer bear the child for the Wives they become useless, Unwoman (lesbians, feminists, nuns, sterile women who are politically dissident whom are exiled to the colonies to work and die).
• Later in the text we journey to a 'club' with Offred where we meet a group of women called Jezebel's. This name again is inspired by the bible, where Jezebel was denounced by Elijah for introducing the worship of Baal into Israel (1 Kings 16:31, 21:5-15, 2 Kings 9:30-7). The name Jezebel in the modern context has come to be a female known for their corruption and ill-attitude. The Jezebels in the Handmaids Tale are a mixture of Lesbians or attractive, educated women, something the novel makes clear is unwelcome in this biblical republic, and consequently are disregarded and their only purpose is as prostitutes, they are the corruptive force behind the social hierarchy in the reproductive system. Their only clothing provided is the degrading, sexualised out fits of 'previous times'.
• The Aunts are in charge of training the handmaids taking this role, as they are infact the only literate women still allowed in Gilead. The Aunts are always dressed in brown, a colour which connotes warmth, comfort, a set of connotations that is seemingly contradictory to  the harsh nature of the Aunts enforcing the corrupt regime on these young women. However, brown also connotes conservatism, a political idea we can see reflected in Gilead. The traditional idea that a women's only role in society is to be a house wife; cook, clean and provide a man with child. Aunt's take the place of the handmaid's mothers as it  is believed their own mothers are the corrupting force in their upbringing, the Aunt's are transforming the handmaids into their new lives and training them out of their previous attitudes.