Thinking back to all of our classroom discussions and readings it was hard to narrow down what to blog about. I decided to focus on the Handmaids Tale. Our last class discussion we focused on the color red and its association with fertility. This is essentially the focus of the handmaid’s existence. Why are these women seen as fertility objects? I like how Lauren brought up how the fact that the handmaids actually do represent an antifeminist lash. Which makes me wonder how this book will end.
Reading the Handmaids Tale I found many one-liners that stuck out to me and made me question the text. One that particularly stood out to me was on
p. 9 “ She puts on a veil to go outside, but nobody much cares who sees the face of Martha’
Why do household servants/ Martha’s have to be women? More importantly why are these women not aloud to talk to handmaids and other people. Martha’s and handmaids follow these norms, so what is the author saying about even women following the norms of society?
I like your last comment, Alyse, where you ask about women following the norms of society. This was a part of The Handmaid's Tale that I found frustrating at times, because you just wanted them to be free! I think the purpose of that is to demonstrate, like you said, that we often do follow the social norms of society, possibly out of fear. I think it's an interesting concept to think about. In a country and society like ours, we maybe don't feel it's "as bad" to follow certain social norms, because we are "free" in so many other ways. I wonder what we would do if some of those freedoms that we take for granted were no longer there. How would we feel about following social norms, then? And why does it feel like we judge the women that do?
ReplyDeleteI think Lauren makes a good point to think about how our society would be if we took out some of the freedoms we take for granted such as owning our own homes and cars or being allowed to have locks on our doors. What if the whole public was a part of our lives and we had no privacy from it?
ReplyDeleteI think that is kind of how the Handmaids are treated in the novel because they have no privacy, they are not even considered people really because they are labeled with a color (red), and are just bodies to make babies. They cannot even keep their own babies.
The Martha's are not people either. To me they just are seen like cleaning devices. Why would the cleaning device need to talk to something else that's not a person?
Then even the Wives are put down. They seem like complete bitches and their husbands cheat on them.
I think the author is putting down stereotypes of women having babies instead of pursuing careers with the Handmaids, women staying home and cleaning with the Martha's, and wives only pleasing their husbands to get cheated on in return instead of treated with the same honor and care back with the Wives in our society possibly. I don't know if I necessarily agree with the author, but as Hayley spoke of in her post about extremes maybe she was showing the extremes of these stereotypes.
Gilead is really does take these stereo types of women to an extreme. I mean really all women are good for is reproduction, cleaning and like Aimee said "being bitches". I also find it quite odd that these women are following such new strict social norms, it would be so hard to have such a setback in life especially after knowing what it was like before. I feel like they are forbidden to talk to one another because I'm sure they do worry about these women coming together and going against everything that has been put into place. Sure one person acting out is easy to take care of but you get a whole group of them together and this becomes a way bigger issue.
ReplyDeleteI think the author is exploring the stereotypes of women, but she really takes them to a new extreme to get her point across. I wonder if her portrayal of women in this book is sort of a warning message for all women? Perhaps she is saying that this scenario of women being seen strictly for the use of reproduction is not all that impossible in our own society. Like you mentioned, the Marthas and Handmaids follow these norms, and I think this signifies how easy it can be to simply step into the typical role of a woman as seen by society. While many women have fought for women's rights and feminism, there are other women who see nothing wrong with the stereotypes of women or just choose not to question them. I think the women in this book do not speak to one another or plan a revolt because of fear, but if some of our basic rights and freedoms were taken away I would hope that we as women would speak out.
ReplyDelete