Changes As time progresses, the human race changes the world bit by bit. We try to take matters into our own hands. The changes in the world are either something we are ashamed of or are proud of. From fast-growing technology to wars in Iraq: these make major changes. Throughout time, certain groups of people have been pushed away to the bottom of the power pyramid. They were not given the rights that they should have had in the first place. We, the human race, sometimes forgets that we are all the same. We all sleep, we all drink and we all do our daily tasks for the day. Over the years, women have been shunned and neglected by the judgemental society. We are so busy dealing with our daily lives that we forget that women are, till this day, not given equal right and choices . It might not be an obvious problem, but once faced with it, the problem unveils to its true nature. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood describes scenarios and displays what type of world we would live in if we continued to stay narrow-minded. Along with Atwood’s message, real-world events tie in with the novel’s messages. Margaret Atwood portrays a religious dystopia with the perspective of Offred, the main character.
Offred lives in a society where their rules and lives are based off of The Bible. In America, we are granted the freedom of religion, in which religion and government cannot collide. In the modern world that we live in today, religious dystopian events occur to us, but in a sly way. Taking away women’s personal rights such as, the choice of getting an abortion or being able to have the same job as men, can one day sneak up on us and attack us before we know it. This is why we need to pay attention to everything that is going on around the world. To some, it may seem impossible and that those days will never come, but just like Atwood’s messages, there is a possibility for everything. There are similar events of Margaret Atwood’s religious dystopian society to current modern day news and it is time we keep our eyes and ears open for any signs.
In Atwood’s fictional dystopia, reproduction is a must in their society. With the low birth rate, Gilead felt they had to create their own government where women had no right to choose what would happen with their body. Gilead provides each well-to-do family with a handmaid, a women who’s responsibility is to get pregnant and give birth to a healthy baby. In Gilead’s society, abortion is looked down upon and is a disgrace. Anyone who performs such an act will be hanged at The Wall, such as a doctorwith “each having a placard hung around his neck to show why he has been executed: a drawing of a human fetus. They were doctors then, in the time before, when such things were legal” (32). The low birth rate shows that people were desperate to reproduce, which made abortion illegal in Gilead. Furthermore, Atwood explains that “it’s no excuse that what they did was legal at the time: their crimes are retroactive. They have committed atrocities and must be made into examples… No women in her right mind, these days, would seek to prevent birth, should she be lucky as to conceive” (33). With Gilead’s strict law forced upon the people, even women have been brainwashed by having their own thoughts stripped away from them. What is wrong in Gilead is what is wrong to everyone’s eyes, but a few like Offred. Along with that, Gilead’s rules are influenced by The Bible, thus it states “do not shed innocent blood” (Jeremiah 7:6). The influences of The Bible indicate the base of rules set in Gilead. This innocent blood is that of a fetus. To compare this fictional novel to a current event, Trump has a direct opinion on abortion. According to Donald Trump in an interview with Chris Matthews, women who would have a illegal abortion should “have...some form of punishment”( Trump 1). Looking at our society’s view on abortion, we can clearly say that many of us would be okay with allowing a woman to make her own choice because it is her own body. In our world, having kids or no kids at all means nothing. Women are able to choose if they want kids or not. Unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, the world we live in is different: having a baby is not a requirement and being infertile is nothing to be ashamed about. Reproductive rights are currently being fought by women today.
Women were given the right to abortion since 1973 and zooming past to year 2017, Trump is doing his best to get rid of that law. According to Trump, “the doctor, or any other person performing this illegal act up on women would be held legally responsible” (Trump 2). Trump wants to defund Planned Parenthood as well saying, “Planned Parenthood should absolutely be defunded. I mean if you look at what's going on with that, it's terrible and many of the things should be defunded and many things should be cut” (Trump 3). Slowly, our world is becoming like Atwood’s religious fictional dystopia. First, women might get their right taken away, when it was only given about forty-four years ago. Taking away this option for women can possibly lead to more deaths. According to Nathalie Baptiste’s article This is What Happens When Abortion is Outlawed, “In El Salvador, suicide is the cause of the cause of death for 57 percent of pregnant females between ages 10 and 19” (Baptiste 1). Not only is this more than half, but this is also only in one country. If abortion becomes illegal, the suicide rate will increase drastically. In Gilead, having a baby was the best thing that could happen, but if a women could not reproduce and was infertile, she would be sent off to concentration camps. These women chose to live and do what they needed to do, but they also had the choice of killing themselves. Women in The Handmaid’s Tale have a choice, but it really is not a choice because both choices are to be avoided. Atwood’s lessons should be our guide to what some possibilities of the future might be. Her fictional religious dystopia may be us in the a couple years or one hundred years. Who knows.
Fair treatment has always been a big issue in our society today. In Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, women are bound with so many rules and yet, they have little freedom. Women in Gilead are put into categories where “there are other women with baskets, some in red, some in the dull green of the Marthas, some in the striped dresses, red and blue and green and cheap and skimpy, that mark the women of the poorer men. Econowives,they’re called. These women are not divided into functions. They have to do everything;if they can” (24). Atwood displays a sexist society, in which Gilead’s government places women in the lower rank, far behind men. To be set up into categories, it leaves women no choice of attire, which helped control the choices women could have made. This scene in the Atwood’s novel connects with a Bible verse: “that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing” (1 Timothy 2:9). This bible verse relates to the events in the novel. In other words, the choices of clothing are meant to be limited, unlike men, who are allowed to choose whatever they want. In the world the Offred is in, a household has multiple women taking care of the house because in Gilead, “why expect one woman to carry out all the functions necessary to the serene running of a household? It isn’t reasonable or humane” (163). They are used as an object to clean, to cook, to take care of other house chores. This again ties with the bible which states the following: “to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God” (Titus 2:5). Gilead and its religious dystopia is once again warning us of what may happen in the future if the government and religion collides. Here, women cannot have the same jobs as men because they have to be at a lower rank. Women are seen as powerless when it comes to comparing men and women. In The Bible, it instructs women to do the following: “A woman must learn in quietness and full submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and fell into transgression” (1 Timothy 2). Even in the bible, it teaches men and women that men are to be in more power. If the world or even a country collapsed into a religious dystopia, women will not have a voice. Just like The Handmaid’s Tale, they will be placed into categories and will be objectified. Our society allows women to have any job, but compared to men, women still make less money and are sitting at a low 20% government representative rate.
In connection with our world today, “The Denver Post found in 2017 that the total number of children wed in the United States from 2000-2010 was estimated around 248,000, and that ‘almost all of them were girls, some as young as 12’”(Friedmann 1). Young girls’ right of choice are taken away by making children wedding legal. In the Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, arranged marriages are part of their society, in which “some of them are no more than fourteen” (219). In comparison to the novel and to today, both are very similar by allowing young girls to be in an arranged marriage, which leaves them no choice and no voice. According to Sarah Friedmann’s article 7 Shockingly Sexist Laws In America That Can Be Used Against Women At Any Time, this does not only happen through the “judicial approval”, but also through “parent consent” (Friedmann 2). Furthermore, another sexist law that is currently used today is specifically in Georgia. According to time, in Georgia, if a man takes an upskirt photo, it is legal and he is not breaking the law. This is only legal if a woman is not in her home or on her property. In other countries like Nigeria, “it is within a husband’s legal rights to beat his wife ‘for the purpose of correcting’ her, as long as it does not cause grievous bodily harm” (Global Citizen). If the world was a religious dystopia, this law in Nigeria would apply to the bible verse about women being all submissive. The man has the power to do anything he wants simply because he is a man. In Yosola Olorunshola’s article titled 10 Ridiculously Sexist Laws That Have No Place in the 21st Century, in places like Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive. Here, men are clearly at the top of the power pyramid. For women to not be able to do something so simple shows how a religious dystopia is possible. When we look at the world, we know that it is not perfect at all. We hear news of people dying, but we also hear news of people celebrating various events. Is it possible to have a religious dystopia in the following years or is this just a saying to scare each other? In Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, Gilead’s society portrays as a dystopia in which the government had fallen and those who set run it now base their rules off of The Bible. Through Offred’s perspective we see the the life of a woman, specifically a handmaid, living in Gilead. A Handmaids job is to reproduce because of the decreasing birth rate. In the novel, Atwood, the author describes similar scenarios to the modern day world. These can serve as warnings to all of us, especially women. Through Margaret Atwood’s lessons, we can journey on closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. Atwood asks us to open our eyes to see beyond the black and white picture. When Atwood sends her messages through her writing, she is trying to deliver the message that if we fall into a religious dystopia, women’s right will vanish completely. It is time wake up and realize that the world we live in can suddenly change within a day.