Handmaid's Tale Power
Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. And “Power,” insofar as it is permanent, repetitious, inert and self-reproducing, is simply the over-all effect that emerges from all these mobilities, the concatenation that rests on each of them and seeks in turn to arrest their movement. (Foucault 1978, p. 93)
Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale gives a classical example of this all-encompassing nature of power.
Set in the late-20th-century future, Atwood pictures a male-dominated, theocratic totalitarian society, set on the geographical territory of the (former) United States, called the Republic of Gilead. Due to the impact of several unspecified ecological disasters, most women have been found infertile, which has made procreation of paramount importance for survival of the inhabitants of Gilead. A movement called the Sons of Jacob has overthrown the United States government and has installed an on the Old Testament-inspired hierarchical military regime. Work, money and property are (among most other things) denied to women, literacy is considered sinful. The women have been categorized into different groups called Wives, Aunts, Econowives, Martha’s and Handmaids. Handmaids are women that have been proven fertile: they are assigned to a Commander (a man of the ruling class) and his Wife (the women married to the Commanders) in order to bear children for the Wife. Handmaids have to dress in ankle-long, red, habit-like dresses, combined with a white head-dress – referred to as wings – which restricts their vision. The protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale is called Offred, which is not her real name but is a reference to the name of the Commander to whom she is assigned (of-Fred). As said, the Handmaids are to produce children for the Wives: in order to accomplish this, Offred has to have sex with her Commander while she is lying between the legs of his Wife. This is called the Ceremony. All inhabitants of
Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale gives a classical example of this all-encompassing nature of power.
Set in the late-20th-century future, Atwood pictures a male-dominated, theocratic totalitarian society, set on the geographical territory of the (former) United States, called the Republic of Gilead. Due to the impact of several unspecified ecological disasters, most women have been found infertile, which has made procreation of paramount importance for survival of the inhabitants of Gilead. A movement called the Sons of Jacob has overthrown the United States government and has installed an on the Old Testament-inspired hierarchical military regime. Work, money and property are (among most other things) denied to women, literacy is considered sinful. The women have been categorized into different groups called Wives, Aunts, Econowives, Martha’s and Handmaids. Handmaids are women that have been proven fertile: they are assigned to a Commander (a man of the ruling class) and his Wife (the women married to the Commanders) in order to bear children for the Wife. Handmaids have to dress in ankle-long, red, habit-like dresses, combined with a white head-dress – referred to as wings – which restricts their vision. The protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale is called Offred, which is not her real name but is a reference to the name of the Commander to whom she is assigned (of-Fred). As said, the Handmaids are to produce children for the Wives: in order to accomplish this, Offred has to have sex with her Commander while she is lying between the legs of his Wife. This is called the Ceremony. All inhabitants of