Currently, I am studying a book for my English course which is called “The Handmaids Tale”. The book is set in a dystopian setting and it undergoes a fundamentalist theocracy where women and other minorities have been stripped off all their rights which makes them not be allowed to read or write or have any jobs in general. The people in order of the whole regime are the Commanders, which are men. You can already tell that the society that these people live in is very sexist and patriarchal especially in the case of the Handmaids themselves.
In the Handmaids tale setting, the fertility rates are decreasing massively meaning all the fertile women (Handmaids) are basically oppressed and dehumanised in to only existing just for the purpose of having sex once a month in hopes of getting pregnant. The people that they are having sexual intercourse with are the Commanders, which are already married men with upper class Wives. The Handmaids did not choose to have that role in the regime which basically means that they get pregnant, give birth, give away their baby and move in to another household to get raped by yet another Commander.
So the real question is, could this brutal society that is presented in this book ever become reality? Well if you think about it, it already has.
As the author of the book, Margaret Atwood, stated “I would not put anything into it [the book] that human societies have not already done.”. Looking back in to historical events, you can find horrible links that relate to The Handmaids Tale, for example; in the 1960s, due to falling fertility, women were banned from having abortions in the United States and they had to take monthly gynaecological check-ups just like in the book. Additionally, the occurrence of stoning someone to their death also occurs in the text, which conveniently is still allowed by the 15 nations and is looked at as a form of community justice.
Something like this makes me wonder, maybe us as humans should change our ways to prevent such ruthless regimes?
