stamp 202503300919
Margaret Atwood’s Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale is born from radical ideologies combined with the tendency to romanticise pre-industrial societies and the “good old days”.
But Gilead didn’t just “go back” - it created a never-was society. This is maybe shown the most clearly in the situation of the upper class women, the commanders’ wives.
The rights of the commanders’ wives in Gilead didn’t just go back to early 20th century, late 19th century or even earlier rights.
We can’t even say that they go back to the medieval ages, since feudal age ladies were expected to be able to read, write, do calculus, do correspondence, and understand economics on a level that if needed, they would be able to substitute for their feudal husbands for short times.
Contrary to this, in the fictive fundamentalist state of Gilead, even the highest ranking women are banned from reading and writing, and at least in the Netflix adaptation, we were shown how one was punished for trying to substitute for his husband’s duties when needed.
Related
- Radical fundamentalist tendencies and the longing for the “good old days” sadly is a significant sentiment in today’s global and local (Hungarian) politics.
- The treatment of Gilead women is comperable for Afghan women’s treatment by the Taliban.
- It’s interesting to compare Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Merle’s Les hommes protégés. Both stories stem from a similar fertility crisis, but in one, women, in the other, men become the “protected class”, and patriarchy shows its ugly face in how different the two stories unfold.
- It’s interesting to compare the caste system of The Handmaid’s Tale with the very differently based caste system of Huxley’s Brave New World. In one, female fertility is in the center of the issues, in the other, women are totally freed from their reproductive duties.
- It’s interesting to compare The Handmaid’s Tale with Moskát’s Horgonyhely, where women claimed power based on the powers tied to their reproductive abilities.