Feminism In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood is an outstanding woman writer in contemporary Canada. Since the 1960s,she has created a great quantity of literary productions, including poems, short stories, novels and literary criticism. She has received numerous literary awards and is honored as "the queen of Canadian literature". The Handmaid's Tale is her sixth novel. Having referred to a great amount of material concerned I find that the novel follows the dystopian tradition of Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. The novel extends the ugliness in reality into Gilead, an imagined world with the intention of warning us of the frightening possible consequence in the future. Many critics call it a "feminist 1984" and have contributed considerable comment upon it. Atwood is usually labeled as a nationalist and feminist. Canadian nationalism and feminism are the two prominent elements in her literary works. Since the late 1970s, her preoccupations with the problem Canada has of maintaining a distinct identity from the pervasive influence of its imperial overlords and with the condition of women in society are getting more and more involved with the survival and development of the entire humanity. The Handmaid's Tale bears testimony to this change. It includes many problems in the present society, such as the threat of wars, conflicts between classes, racial discrimination, environmental pollution, objectification of man. It is my contention that The Handmaid's Tale is also a successful work representative of feminism theme in modem western literature. The thesis consists of four parts with the first one as an introduction of the author and her novels. The second part, the body part, elaborates the feminism through three aspects: the language of the protagonist, the hierarchy in Gilead, nature and nurture in dystopia. The literary devices in the third part are employed to expound the theme in a more vivid and convincing way. In the conclusion part the purpose of the thesis is repeated and more inspiration can be drawn.