Essay On The Handmaid's Tale

Offred is a Handmaid, the handmaid is where the women have to have sexual activities with the commander regularly because there's very few kids in the Republic of Gilead, very few women can have kids and are chosen to move in with the commander to make the commander’s wife happy with a child. Although Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale shows gender rules throughout the book this is symbolized through the handmaid’s lifestyle, particularly how they have to act in front of the commander.

Because the society views the handmaid's as property, they aren’t allowed basic freedoms, “I’d like to be able to open the window as wide as it could go” (Atwood 55).
The handmaid’s rooms are suicide proof, for example, their windows are screwed down for them not to escape. ”They touch with their eyes instead.” Offred knows that the commander bodyguards look at her and they want her, but she knows that they are forbidden to touch the handmaid's as well as even talking to them (Atwood 22). Therefore the commander treats the handmaid’s as property, but is inconsistent with how he treats them, the handmaid’s finally have released them the commander has shown that “Household: that is what we are” (Atwood 81), the commander is the one who has the power of the household. “This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have
Offred saw several women whose “skirts reach just below the knee and the legs come out from beneath them” and she was in shock at first but then she thought to herself, “I used to dress like that. That was freedom” (Atwood 28). Ofglen sees other women with “their heads are uncovered and it’s darkness and security,” Offred is shocked seeing women exposing themselves (Atwood 28). It shows how the handmaid’s have been brainwashed to cover everything to not attract any men because they belong to their