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What a Woman Is
By Katelyn Yang, VI Form
What a Woman Is
Student-Submitted Note: After reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, our class was tasked to write a 4-6 page essay about an important theme of the story or design a piece of media and write a 2-3 page reflection on your piece. I decided to construct historical notes based on the comfort women of Singapore during the Japanese Occupation while comparing them to the Handmaids from The Handmaid’s Tale.
Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a dystopian fiction and feminist political novel. It is set in the near future and illustrates a group of right-wing extremists who usurp power and institute the Republic of Gilead, a monarchical state of omnipotence. Gilead’s social structure is constitutionally constructed so that men are favored over women. Each woman in Gilead is designated a stereotypical woman job, such as cooking, sex, and reproduction.
The Handmaids, who belong to the lowest class in Gilead, have no control over their lives. Subject to specific gender roles, Handmaids must adhere to these roles due to social and religious constraints. Women in Gilead are essentially men’s property. Once a month, Offred, like the other Handmaids, is forced to engage in sexual intercourse with the Commander to help reproduce and help the rapidly declining population.
During the Ceremony, while Offred and the Commander are having sex, she describes the Commander as “fucking…the lower part of my [Offred’s] body” (Atwood 94), suggesting that they are not “making love” without any emotional connection, precisely what Gilead wants. The propaganda of Gilead frames Offred’s womb as an essential part of society, where she has no bodily autonomy.
(more…)One Viable Option: Examining Composure as a Means of Survival in The Handmaid’s Tale
By Jonathan D. Hernández, V Form
One Viable Option: Examining Composure as a Means of Survival in The Handmaid’s Tale
Student-Submitted Note: For my American Literature class, students were tasked with submitting a creative project of our choosing (such as but not limited to poem, painting, or video) to take an idea, theme, or motif from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and remake it or interpret through imaginative means. Along with the artistic project, students were required to write a three-page analysis of the idea used and their multimedia project and how the two relate to each other. For my project, I wrote a poem about composure and how in the novel composure is a means of survival for characters such as Offred, the novel’s protagonist. The poem is written from the perspective of a Gileadean scholar and is meant to act as instructions for each member of the dystopian society. It is a reminder of the duty of each member to compose themselves to conform to the society’s standards. In addition to the written poem (after the essay), there is a physical visual representation to better illustrate the theme of composure and duty.
In her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood presents a dystopian future where the Republic of Gilead supersedes the United States of America. The new totalitarian state forces its citizens into strict gender roles. Gilead subjugates fecund women to the role of Handmaid, requiring them to serve as surrogates for the Commanders, the Gileadean patriarchs. The new state concurrently pushes sterile women into the roles of Martha, Wife, Econowife, or Aunt. Throughout the novel, the audience interprets life in Gilead through the eyes of Offred, a Handmaid who remembers life before Gilead and lives through the nation’s reconstruction. Before the Ceremony, a “sacred” insemination ritual, Offred describes that “I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born” (Attwood 66). While Offred refers to the need to compose herself for the Ceremony, she speaks to the larger issue at hand. She is informing the reader about how in the Republic of Gilead, women must compose their speech, actions, and bodies. They must watch what they say and be mindful to not stray from what is deemed acceptable by Gileadean social norms. Similarly, the poem Composure is centered around the idea of composure in Gilead and is meant to reflect how in Gilead each person is directed to abide by cultural norms in the name of duty. This need for composure, Offred reveals, results from necessity and cultural expectations in the Republic of Gilead.
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