Fracturing a Movement before it happens

Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale deals with a society where women are stripped of most of their rights and depending on which category you fit into, they can be completely stripped away. Some women are servants, some can be wives to Commanders or Angels, and some are handmaidens. Many of these groups do not get along with each other and anyone who rises up in this society in anyway is either killed or imprisoned.

I think it's interesting that the oppressing male class is separating women into classes who are really only identified by how useful they can be to the men of the society whether it be Commanders, Angels or otherwise. Anyone without real use (such as trying to start an uprising or going against the rules) are cast into imprisonment or killed. I think this makes for quite an interesting look at how this society could be overthrown or how someone could ever bring about change. Only certain people have access to weapons and the laws of the land benefit those people. There is infighting even between women as wives generally look down on the rest and even Marthas and Handmaidens don't get along well. I think it fractures any sort of way that a movement could take place for change.

Also it's been proven that the country has no respect for human rights and has no problem rooting out people for doing something wrong and using death to get rid of them. It would be interesting how an underground movement can function given the extreme police state exists in the society. It happens in countries now where human rights are disrespected but mainly because of the international incident it would raise as well as the fact that many times force is restrained not to bring attention to it. This society doesn't seem to have any problem with that which makes them more dangerous to any sort of movement going forward.

Propert of ______.

”The Handmaid's tale,” written by Margaret Atwood, is a very vivid & exciting, yet unsettling story so far. It takes my mind into the lives of these women. I feel as though I am a nameless face within the crowd, observing this story in person.

Reading through the beginning chapters, I couldn’t help but notice how the women in this story are placed under systems of hierarchy, men being at the top (of course, ha!) reigning as commanders. The women sleep in a room together on cots, and are forced to wear big, unflattering mu-mu like gowns. The colors of the gowns vary. The lowest of the low (handmaids) wore red gowns, the ‘Marthas’ wore green gowns, and the commanders' wives wore blue. I found it interesting that the lowest women on the totem pole wore red. It reminded me of the book “Scarlet Letter.” Just as Hester Prynne was forced to wear a badge of shame, a scarlet letter ‘A’ for committing the act of adultery, these women were deemed unworthy by wearing a whole cloak of scarlet. The scarlet ‘A’ that Prynne wore let everyone know what she had done. People felt as though they were better than her by seeing this mark of sin, just as the Marthas & commanders' wives, without doubt, felt superior to the women in the red cloaks.

Living a humiliating, isolated life is what these women are faced with. The commanders' wives would garden and knit just so they felt like they were needed or important in some way. They wanted a purpose in life, which these women clearly did not have much of.
The narrator, Offred, demonstrates the degree of her loneliness and longing to feel affection on page 11, where she says, “[…] I would help Rita make the bread, sinking my hands into that soft resistant warmth which is so much like flesh. I hunger to tough something, other than cloth or wood. I hunger to commit the act of touch.” How incredible is that?! These couple of sentences really stood out to be because I could almost feel her pain. She was so desperate to engage in physical human contact. I am never taking hugs for granted.
These women are controlled by fear, just as women today are controlled by fear. Women do not report cases of sexual harassment due to FEAR of not being taken seriously, women do not walk down dark alleys due to FEAR or being attacked or raped, or as Valenti mentions in our last reading, the "rape schedule." Just as women today hold back due to fear, the women in this book do the same. On page 18, Offred sees Nick, a guardian, wink at her. Offred could have used this situation to her advantage, yet she does not respond to Nick, fearing he is an 'eye' watching or testing her.
So far in this book we know there is a class system among the women, demonstrating horizontal hostility, and men being at the top in command. Women are isolated beyond all belief, and long to feel a sense of importance. These women are controlled through fear and live as objects for men, not for themselves. Even their names demonstrate the degree to which they are deemed property-- "Offred" aka "Of Fred." Daily, these women are reminded they are not themselves anymore, but property.

FAITH as an Institution

In an attempt not to summarize I am going to analyze a certain part I found to be very interesting in the book. When the narrator describes the cushion on the window seat and the inscription of FAITH in it I end up asking myself two questions. Is it a positive sign that FAITH is the last remnant of the past society, or is it a negative sign? One could argue that it is positive by mentioning the ability of faith to transcend time and space and the idea that the good and holy prevail. But when the narrator describes the inscription, she doesn’t exactly use any positive connotation words. In fact, she uses words like faded, dingy and worn. While describing the window seat that the cushion rests on, the narrator even mentions that it is too narrow for comfort, and she introduces the cushion as a "hard little cushion". All of these words indicate negativity and therefore lead me to believe that FAITH, in the case of the narrator, is not positive, but negative.
It is also crucial to remember though that handmaids are not permitted to read and they are not required to read in order to function in society. So the fact that she is given anything to read is a surprise in itself, so why the word FAITH then? Why not the word MALE, or PATRIARCHY, or INEQUALITY? Is it maybe that FAITH stands for something similar to MALE, PATRIARCHY, or INEQUALITY, or is it because FAITH somehow embodies all three of these concepts? I think an interesting answer in this case would be that FAITH does embrace all three of these concepts. If so then the author is going out of her way to show the view of "FAITH", or religion, in the eyes of an oppressed women, and in this case it is a negative one.

THE MARTHAS

Margaret Atwood’s novel so far has introduced an imagined world, a world in where women are always watched, alienated and oppressed. In where their every move maybe even detrimental to their safety. As I was reading the book I immediately became concerned with the term “Marthas”. These women are labeled by their assigned duties and apparently given the same title. I felt perplexed by the term and it’s usage. Labeling women and men into categories, It is a deliberate form of ranking; some have some power, others have all the power and most have none at all. To me these “titles” represent another form of taking a person’s identity and sense of power. It is stripping them of their own self. As I read the book when I thought about the titles it is as if you are just like the other one’s, like you do not exist as if you are unimportant or maybe even just replaceable. Like there is not value to your life. Another term that is presented is the term “Wives” which is another form of categorization. It is certainly a better and more prestigious one that has some advantages over the other women. These rankings between women and even in men, I think provoke feelings of superiority and inferiority accordingly and work to maintain everyone in their place. They are today’s gender roles but on steroids. I can only but associate these terms by the ones we use today. Name placements and such reminds me of the usage of words such as mother/father/sister/brother, which in itself remarks a certain gender; and with gender come the assigned roles. It is a scary though but I guess we are not too distant from the Republic of Gilead.

The Maybe Not Too- Distant Unlikely Future?

The Handmaid's Tale is an interesting book that takes place in a dystopian future. Life is extremely regimented and controlled. I believe the book draws many parallels between its own plot and the rhetoric of today. In the book woman are thought of as objects each that are only good for child bearing and working in the home. Woman are separated into different ranks each being distinguished by their uniforms they wear. The main character wears a white hat with a red dress covering up their body not showing any skin. This reminds me of today in that many women are delegated to work in the home and also wear certain clothes because the media tells them to. In one point in the book a woman walks in the market with obvious signs of being pregnant and Offred can't help but think that she is showing off because it is noted that pregnant woman don't have to leave the house. Childbearing is important in Gilead so woman who are fertile are revered. I also found it interesting about how she goes back and forth between her life right now and her previous life before she lived in this situation. People are hanged who used to be doctors and nurses which i am assuming used to do abortions or something along those lines. There is a reference to the fact that it didn't matter if it was legal before but that is illegal now and crimes are retroactive. Overall I like how the character is contrasting her life right now and when she was a child and when she was a mother before she lived in a society that virtually controls all that she does.

The Repression of the Handmaid

In the novel the Handmaid by Margaret Atwood, we meet Offred who we see in the very first pages struggles and is repressed. In the beginning, we learn that she is not to go out in public unless she is completely covered up. Nothing may show: hair, legs, arms, etc. Later on Offred goes to live in the home of the Commander. On page 16, there is evidence of how religion serves as an institution to repress women. Offred had stated that the Commander's wife was allowed to hit her because of "scriptural precedent". This could tie into what we've previously learned in this class about horizontal hostility. The Commander's wife demonstrated this when she looks down on Offred and treats her differently because Offred is of lower class. Religion served as a form of repression because religion was used as an excuse for violence against women. Offred struggled for power due to her class and we see evidence of this on page 22 when she speaks of how she was using her body to attract young men she saw on the road. She says she felt a certain power by withholding her body from them. Offred says that it was like "teasing a dog with a bone held out of reach". Offred longs for freedom and power and this moment gave her a small sense of freedom and power. Another form of freedom was how a woman was dressed. When a group of Japanese tourists came, Offred remembered a time when she dressed that way and said how "that [used to be] freedom". Offred also was not allowed to sing of freedom as shown on page 54 when she sings Amazing Grace. Lastly, there seemed to be a hidden message about the importance of child-bearing. It was very important for women to have children, probably as proof of their femininity. Offred was told that there are only 2 types of women :fruitful and barren. It was law and if women were fruitful they had to have babies. There are many instances of repression against women in this book. It will be interesting to see how this affects Offred and how she will handle it later on in this novel.

OWFI

I was very interested to learn about the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq or OWFI. Since the end of Saddam’s regime this group was developed by women in order to fight for the women’s rights that had been lost due to the Gulf War and Saddam’s embrace of Islamic tribal law. The women of OWFI are very brave and fight for basic rights everyday in spite of personal death threats and the sight of women around them being abused, raped and killed. A fact that interested me was that women were not being attacked by Saddam’s regime, the government or anyone of particular power. These women who were being murdered were done so by regular citizens of the streets. “Now the violence is… being committed by everyone around you” (Fang 2007). Women with professional jobs and those attending university are often targets for death. This control over women in the last ten years has led to a frightening drop in the literacy rate from 75% to 25%. How is the education of women and their basic rights affect the men who are currently in power? Women are not asking to change the world, they simply want what is owed to them. “Often, the first salvo in a war for theocracy is a systematic attack on women and minorities who represent or demand an alternative or competing vision for society” (Fang 20007). When women and minorities are finally controlled, “less vulnerable” people are then attacked. The women of OWFI are not giving up even when the women they know are dying in the hundreds. OWFI women even work to hide abused women and sneak them out of the country in an “underground railroad type of system. This organization is very important for women today and is needed to change society.