Handmaids and Modern Days

Many of you readers are already acquainted with the Margaret Atwood masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale, and for those of you who are not, allow me to introduce you. The Handmaid’s Tale is meant to be a dystopian novel about what can happen when government and religion combine and take things a step too far; sound familiar?

With birthrates at an all-time low women are forced to become sexual commodities. They are forced to give birth to children for wealthy families, their names and identities stripped away, any family they had taken away or killed. Girls being trained from the time they are young that their purpose in life is to bear children, nothing more. The fictional Gilead which was formerly the United States shows what happens when the lines are blurred between church and state, and when all morals and ethics are removed.

Atwood writes about the societal and government mandated roles of six different types of women. These roles are antiquated and reminiscent of those in years past. Unfortunately they are also representative of the current ideas that are reemerging today .

For example we see the right of a woman's right to choose whether or not she has children being revoked in her novel. In America today we are seeing abortions being made illegal in several states and being pushed out in several more. With protests spanning the US this seems awfully close to the beginning of Gilead’s takeover in the book.

One of the main differences between Atwood's novel and the present day appears in the form of women having the ability to choose what they wanted from life. Currently women have the choice as to whether or not they want to work, stay home with their family, or even have a family although societal expectations still play a large role in their decision. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the women did not get to choose; their roles preordained by the government, though the structure of the roles remained consistent whether in reality or fiction. For how long though will these differences stand? Are we the beginning of Gilead or are we what stands against it?

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