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UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CATAMARCA

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES

LICENCIATURA EN INGLS

Subject: Literatura de Habla Inglesa despus de la 2da Guerra Mundial

Professor: Silvia Luca Fernndez

Student: Heber, Russo

University Registration number: 1537

Academic year: 2012

TP n 8

The Handmaids tale: The aspects of a totalitarian system viewed in the novel

The Handmaids tale (1986) by Margaret Atwood is a novel that explores the

extremes measures which a totalitarian systems resorts to in order to serve the

necessities of a few. In doing so, the procedures taken lead to a process of

dehumanization in which people only serve the purpose as mere objects bound to

be discarded once they are no longer useful. In Atwoods novel the victims are

women whose freedom is taken away to the point of not being of having their own

bodies at their disposal. The moral and ethical issues are completely ignored under

the veil of a traditional regime.

The novel presents a society, the Gilead society, which has undergone a

withdrawal to older traditions in which women were subdued by men, chauvinistic

ideals prevails under the aim of solving the problem of low birth-rate alleged to

pollution. Therefore the achievements done through womens rights are

overshadowed by this hegemonic system founded to the detriment of women. In

the novel women cannot do more than to accept the restraints imposed by the

despotic system. As in any unfair process there are always parts that yield up their

demands of the ones in the power. In the novel this fact is portrayed by the aunts

which at a certain stand are allied to the very totalitarian system which subdues

what they themselves are, women. Thus, one of the aftermaths of this authoritarian

system is the acceptance of unfair rules which leads to betraying those of their own

kind. This process leads women to betray women; they assuming the role of aunts

are serving as executors of the principles of the autocratic regime. Not only womengive up their freedom-even intimate freedom- but they are also somewhat forced to

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forget their own rights to inevitably allow this regime to accomplish its unequal and

unethical aims.

Another extreme measure taken by this system to prevent women from

rebellion is prohibiting women from reading or writing. Not allowing women toexpress themselves ensure the system to have a uniform control of the masses

which without a consistent leader were not very likely to succeed in their objectives.

The novel reveals the effects that how a conservative system may turn into a

autocratic where vales have been completed distorted. Such values have lost their

quality of being ethically and morally correct to the point of leading them to their

downfall. The downfall of those principles can be translated into the replacement of

them for new mutated principles which take no consideration for any moral right in

order to fulfil its purpose.

The control of politics is a necessary tool for the control of the minorities which

might provoke the collapse or the malfunction of the system. In Atwoods novel the

minorities is represented by women who oppose to the regime. Although in the

novel some women, like Offred, somewhat retain some degree of freedom they are

still bound to the will of the system. Although Offred has an affair with Luke, thus to

a certain extent keeping her sexual freedom-or at least the freedom to choose- she

is still bound a greater regime to which she has to respond, paradoxically, to retain

her freedom.

In the novel women are ironically thoroughly taken care, assuring them good

health and an optimal nutrition. The underlying truth is that they are taken care like

animals from which they can profit; the ones who are not suitable for reproduction

are discarded and not considered significant for the system. The disregard for

human life is led to the extreme of considering women like mere containers of life to

ensure the subsistence of the race. Not only womens rights are ignored but they

are also humiliated to the extent that they are used as mere inanimate objects

whose voice is not heard. Atwood presents a society in which women are

compelled to stoop so low that they are at disposal of men in the most degrading

ways. This fact can be illustrated by the how Offred is used to conceive, she is hold

by her hands by Serena while the commander has her at his disposal.

The story presents a fictional society which undermines women in order to

fulfil its unfair purposes. Atwood presents a society that is not so far from reality. If

situations such as women who borrow their bodies in order to give an opportunity to

people unable to conceive. The possibility of a autocratic system using them against

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their will is not farfetched, thus a greatest purpose may lead to breakdown of moral and

ethical principles which end up in dehumanization which affect not only minorities, but

the whole human race.