On Feminist Dystopia in the Handmaids Tale

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Abstract：The Handmaid’s Tale inherits tradition of dystopia novels in twentieth century, the details in this novel maybe happen in the history or maybe in the current society . Exaggerating the real society problem is a means for the dystopian writers to connect the real society and the fantasy world. This paper mainly analyzed the theme represented in this novel: feminist dystopia.

Key words: dystopia novels, feminist, exaggerating

Chapter One Alienation and Prejudice to Women

In this novel, Atwood presents the readers a feminist dystopia, in which women undertake unbearable sufferings. In this society, women have been deprived of all their possessions, their human rights, even their emotions as human beings. And women have totally become the accessory of men, even only the breeding instruments for the male upper-class people. In the handmaids tale, the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian country ruled by the male, does not allow women have any rights and enslave women all the time. The women in such society have been regarded as a slave, which is similar to a machine can speak. Obeying the male is their standard of behavior.

Although women have acquired some equalities with men in modern society. Modern feminist, like Atwood still look at the cultural and sexist structure of power in the society, and they encourage women to understand how these inequalities affected their day to day personal life. Atwood skillfully use the means of exaggeration,(the tradition of dystopia )in the Handmaids Tale, so that offers a feminist “warning” to us :if the phenomenon of so called “masculinity” complex and patriarchal symbolic order continue in our contemporary societies,

Chapter Two the Instrumentality of Women

Atwood insists that women are not the instruments of male and society, and they should behave for themselves and live their own lives. Rather, in the republic of Gilead, totalitarian country all kinds of women have their own functions. “Wives” are women who are married to the commanders.“Daughters” are the natural or adopted children of the ruling class.“Handmaids” are fertile woman whose duty is to bear babies for the ruling class.“Aunts’ are a group of unmarried, infertile often older women, whose duty is to train and monitor the Handmaids.“Economics” are women who have married lower class man .They are expected to perform all the female functions. Handmaids have only one function, bearing children for the wives, which is the only reason of their surviving. In the eyes of ruling class, they are not human being, but child-bearing tools. For the Handmaids, there is no longer any hand lotion or face cream, because the Handmaids are containers, and only the insides of their bodies are important. The outsides, which are useless for multiplication, can become hard and wrinkled, like the shell of a nut.

Chaprer three One of hope, one of fear

“Hope, plenty of hope. “Said Walter Benjamin, “but not for us.” Without hope ――the messianic promise――one fears. In truth, the test of life has two edges, one of hope, one of fear, cutting the heart asunder without shared borders; that is the thrilling power of life and thus of futuristic fiction. From time immemorial, women have been hapless victims of numerous atrocities in the patriarchal society the world over. The male members of the species take it as their unquestionable prerogative to keep women under subjugation and to marginalize their status. A modern version of this subjugation is to consider woman as a mere procreative machine in a future social structure in the Republic of Gilead, presented by the distinguished Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, in her disturbing dystopia, The Handmaid’s Tale. The paper attempts to look at the utter dehumanization of women in a post-nuclear future, when men turn impotent and seek women slaves as reproductive tools. However, one woman, Offered, dares to think differently and tries to escape the trap, raising faint hopes for women’s emancipation. The result of escaping from the nightmare of Offred is a beautiful symbol and brings a powerful hope for modern feminists .It predicts that if human will actively response to the problems in front of us, our future will become better from the fear to hope .this is the successful point for Atwood to apply the metaphor skillfully.

Conclusion

The Handmaid’s Tale presents a feminist dystopia ,Honestly speaking, the suffering everyone undertakes in the novel will not occur in the real world The novel conceives a unique horrible social panorama, exaggerating and magnifying the gender tension in the real world, containing the criticism toward the reality. However, the real inclination of the novel is to warn the people: if we do not cope with the gender relationship well, Actually, the distance between the nightmare and reality is just a step away. We should learn to destroy evils before they become menacing. This is the realistic meaning of dystopian novel.

Reference

［1］ Margaret Atwood, 2001, the Handmaids Tale, Toronto, McClelland and Stewart-Bantam Limited

［2］ 闫国栋，2002，梦魇-《使女的故事》的反乌托邦主题的研究，河北，河北师范大学

［3］ 陈小慰，2001，《一部反映现实的未来小说》，福州，福州大学