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At the heart of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale lies a futuristic, Orwellian vision of a theocratic, fundamentalist-- inspired empire in which women are the principal subalterns. Recalcitrant or defective women are exiled to 'colonies' on the edge of empire and henceforth known as 'Unwomen'. Atwood's late twentieth-century American empire has disempowered half of its members. Women are oppressed and forced to occupy a number of rigidly defined subject positions: frustrated house-- bound Wives, official substitute wives known as Handmaids, half-mistress, half-whore, domestic helpers called Marthas, educators and disciplinarian, sadistic propagandists called Aunts and, lastly, unofficial prostitutes who remain on the hidden underside of the regime.
Atwood's interest in The Handmaid's Tale is overtly political. The author imagines a dystopian fable in which gender politics occupies the centre of attention. In response to the 1980s backlash against women's rights in the United States, Atwood speculates on the nature and consequences of a masculinist, totalitarian and puritanical takeover. In this ultra-conservative neo-Christian regime, all women are slaves of the system. Anatomy is destiny. Women's wombs are state-owned, personal liberty for women has been abolished and strict divisions according to gender are respected. Atwood's nightmare is possible when to be a master, it is sufficient to be a man, and when women are two-legged wombs, slaves of their reproductive organs.
The characters of The Handmaid's Tale tend to fall into easily recognizable categories based on gender and sartorial distinctions. As all men are uniform (they are the ones in control who possess power), Atwood presents them in uniform: the Commanders wear a black uniform, the Eyes and Angels are similarly dressed in military fashion. According to their status, women are forced to wear a uniform denoting their particular function in society. The extensive use of analepsis in the novel, showing the 1970s and 1980s, allows the reader to compare women's attire before the takeover with the new regimented and controlled state uniforms. The mother of the protagonist and central narrator of The Handmaid's Tale, Offred, is shown in an old film to wear overall jeans, a green and mauve plaid shirt and sneakers. Moira, the lesbian activist, used to wear purple overalls, a denim jacket and one dangly earring. In one analepsis she suggests having an underwear...