A society built on Misogyny

In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, the women of Gilead don’t control what happens to their bodies. Their only purpose is to bear children for the commander’s so that they can get promoted. Men run essentially everything in Gilead. They are the guards that watch over the women, they lead them into the towns, and they are the ones in charge. The society is also built on very religious christian beliefs.

In chapter 19, it is mentioned that women are not given anesthetics anymore for child birth as it is better for the baby. They use the bible quote “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” to justify it. When a woman is pregnant, she is seen as lucky and the other women are envious of her. The way that women conceive is called the ceremony where the commander attempts to impregnate them. In chapter 21, Janine is giving birth to her child and the women around her are feeling very intense emotions. “It’s coming, it’s coming, like a bugle, a call to arms, like a wall falling, we can feel it like a heavy stone moving down, pulled down inside us, we think we will burst. We grip each other’s hands, we are no longer single”.

When reading these chapters about Janine, it sounds like a religious cult. The way women are brainwashed into believing that something regular like being pregnant is lucky. It reminds me of the Christian Rights movement in the 1980s. This movement tried to limit access to the medication that women needed for childbirth. They also fought against abortion. They were trying to take away the rights of a woman’s body to control them. The belief is that women really are not important past their reproductive abilities.

The society of Gilead is also a patriarchal society in which the men run everything, as I stated before. The patriarchy is a belief that man should be the gender running everything. The women should have no power at all and only exist to serve the men. They should be more traditional. The man in charge of the “household” is the commander. What is really interesting is that he actually has no real clue about what the women are going through. In chapter 25, he mentions that he had no idea they check the handmaid’s rooms to see if they are hiding anything. It is very ironic that in this patriarchal society, the man in charge has no clue what is happening in his own household.

Another side of the patriarchy is believing that women shouldn’t just not have power, but they should only exist to serve the men. They shouldn’t have jobs, they shouldn’t have a source of income, and they should only be there for the men. They should have dinner when the man gets home, they should be there when the man is feeling sad, and they should have as many kids as the man wants. They must also alway look presentable and pretty. The house should always be clean and nice. The children should also always be looked after by the wife because the man is too busy to care for them. This is called being traditional. They also go against the LGBTQ community. It is very misogynistic and goes against the freedom of women.

In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, the character Moira exists to be the direct opposite of these views. She goes against the patriarchy and misogyny. She exists as the embodiment of freedom for women. Chapter 22 focuses on the escape of Moira and how she got out of the red center. At the point of writing this it is unclear if she actually is free or if she is dead but she did escape. On page 133 they mention the women were afraid of her. They are afraid because she got out. “She is now a loose woman”. The society of Gilead has essentially brainwashed them into these traditional views that anything outside of that is terrifying to them. They are scared to be themselves and who they were in the time before.

Another important part to mention is that for some of these women, this is not their first time having kids. On page 125, it reads “It’s her second baby, she had another child, once”. This is referring to Janine. Offred also had a child before this. The patriarchal society has truly changed these women so much that the time before is almost like it doesn’t exist. They get so excited to see childbirth that they forget how common it was.

In conclusion, Gilead is a society built on extremely misogynistic, traditional views mixed in with religion. It creates a society that goes against women, believes they don’t deserve rights, and that they only exist to serve the men and have their children.