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Essay / Theme of desire in The Handmaids Tale - 1159
Kandace NassirProfessor DoucetApril 17, 2014Gender, sexuality and desireThroughout the novel “The Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood, she describes how Offred and other characters desperately use desire, gender, and sexuality in the novel to convey the theme. It begins with the first-person narrator, Offred, describing the old school gymnasium where she sleeps and how she feels lost in the atmosphere. She works in a household run by a married commander, and the narrator must have sex with the commander regularly every day, in a standard ceremony, while trying to get pregnant and also give birth to a child at home. She wears a uniform which is a red dress because it represents blood and all the handmaids wear red. She has assigned tasks and very little freedom as she is essentially in prison. She is confined to her room except when she goes out, while she is watched and monitored when she goes shopping or goes to prescribed events. Throughout the early chapters, she has frequent flashbacks to different points in her life. She remembers her husband Luke and compares life before, their daughter and her mother. Offred has desperate desires for knowledge and languages that the regime denies her. The main goal of the Gileadian regime is the control of sexuality, sex and gender. Early in the novel, it is very evident that Offred's desire to have language to help her communicate and maintain her identity was strong. The Handmaid and Offred learned their real names, for example in the first chapters, when this was not allowed by passing bed-to-bed messages in the center where she was. She explains how: “We learned to read lips, in our heads... ... middle of paper ...... I would sometimes want many things like language, love and his sexuality. Offred's desire to read is linked to when the Commander gave her a Vogue magazine, which made her think about her childhood memories. Her gender indicates how the characters were divided, whether they were handmaids, wives, or commanders; they had their own role in society. These women are prohibited from working outside the home, reading and spending money. These women are either baby-making machines or servants, essentially known as slaves, who are part of a dystopian society. This society is created by a large group of people who maintain and strengthen their power by including torture and death in the lives of others. This world of Gilead is a group of conservative religious extremists who took power and completely upended the sexual revolution..