The Consequences of Patriarchy in The Handmaid’s Tale

What horrors will befall the women of the western world as long as they continue to face inequality and oppression at the hands of the patriarchy? Atwood portends a not-so-distant future of complete subjugation, objectification, and suffering in The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the role of women in society is reduced to their reproductive organs and servile capabilities. The novel is a call to action against gender inequality and warns of the consequences of a reversion to traditional values, as was threatened by religious conservative majorities during the height of feminism and sexual revolution in the western world of the 1980s. Through her masterful employment of devices like tone and metaphor, Atwood implicates the patriarchy of its wrongdoings and urges against further mistreatment of women. 

To illustrate, the tone of the passage, and thus the entire novel, is somber and resigned, as conveyed through the dry, terse voice of Offred, the narrator, and the staccato rhythm of her storytelling. The sentences are, for the most part, short and unembellished with flowery adjectives or adverbs, and her clauses are broken across sentences and many times left incomplete: “We watch him: every inch, every flicker. To be a man, watched by women. It must be entirely strange.” The voice with which Offred tells her story reflects directly her experience of it- she leads a miserable life, so her tone is pessimistic; she doesn’t talk much, so her speech is awkward, unconversational. Her reconstruction of a familiar phrase when she thinks to the Commander, “One false move and I’m dead,” imparts to the reader the backwardness of the society Offred lives in- one in which a Handmaid faces the consequences for her Commander’s wrongdoing, because men can do no wrong. Atwood’s deliberate use of uncommon diction and broken syntax create a dreary tone that further emphasizes to the reader the hopelessness her narrator feels in her subjugated societal role.

In further demonstration, Atwood’s use of metaphors and similes conveys to the reader, implicitly, Offred’s worldview as a Handmaid in Gilead. She compares the Gileadean man to an “out of style or shoddy” garment, which women must put on because they don’t have a choice, “because there’s nothing else available,” divulging that, though Offred and her fellow women are dissatisfied with their lives, they stay complacent because they believe there’s no other choice. Offred also describes sex, through metaphor and simile, as an action exerted by a man onto the women who serve him, in which “he himself puts [the women] on, like a sock over a foot, onto the stub of himself.” In a society that has, in a sense, institutionalized rape, the act of sex is no longer a two-person job, nor is it for the pleasure of any but the man, and is only a chore a woman is forced to endure to fulfill their singular role as child bearer. In a simile, Offred compares her Commander to a boot, “hard on the outside, giving shape to a pulp of tenderfoot,” then proceeds to contradict it, with “that’s just a wish…he’s given no evidence, of softness.” She acknowledges again her dissatisfaction with her life, and a desire for change, for a better life, but stays complacent. The comparisons Offred makes to facets of her life communicate to the reader the suffering she experiences, further highlighting Atwood’s urges to prevent the devolution of western society into one like Gilead. 

In a world in which women are subjugated and objectified so extremely that their societal importance is reduced to only the biological functions of their bodies, the entire society will inevitably face the consequences of such an imbalanced power structure. Atwood communicates this warning to the reader, not only through the story Offred tells, but through the bleak, dreary tone with which she tells it and the metaphors and similes she uses to describe her life. By way of a moving story with poignant themes and clever storytelling, Atwood calls her readers to action against gender inequality and to prevent the ominous future she foresees.

Passage

We watch him: every inch, every flicker.

To be a man, watched by women. It must be entirely strange. To have them watching him all the time. To have them wondering, What's he going to do next? To have them flinch when he moves, even if it's a harmless enough move, to reach for an ashtray perhaps. To have them sizing him up. To have them thinking, He can't do it, he won't do, he'll have to do, this last as if he were a garment, out of style or shoddy, which must nevertheless be put on because there's nothing else available.

To have them putting him on, trying him on, trying him out, while he himself puts them on, like a sock over a foot, onto the stub of himself, his extra, sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye, which extrudes, expands, winces, and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again, bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf, into them, avid for vision. To achieve vision in this way, this journey into a darkness that is composed of women, a woman, who can see in darkness while he himself strains blindly forward.

She watches him from within. We're all watching him. It's the one thing we can really do, and it is not for nothing: if he were to falter, fail, or die, what would become of us? No wonder he's like a boot, hard on the outside, giving shape to a pulp of tenderfoot. That's just a wish. I've been watching him for some time and he's given no evidence, of softness.

But watch out, Commander, I tell him in my head. I've got my eye on you. One false move and I'm dead.

Still, it must be hell, to be a man, like that.

It must be just fine.

It must be hell.

It must be very silent.

Work Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. McClelland and Stewart. 1985.