By studying the major characters in a text, readers are able to get a better understanding of the authors own view and meaning behind their construction. This text explores the effects of the creation of a patriarchal society such as Gilead from a first-person point of view that elicits the reader’s sympathy. Offred’s tale is used as a criticism of women’s oppression, in Offred’s flashback to the time before Gilead was created, we learn how the Gilead regime took away women’s financial independence. In the space of a single day, Offred is denied the right to work and to access her financial assets, this immediately demotes Offred and all other women to the status of second-class citizens, making them dependent on the men who now control all household income, “something had shifted some balance, I felt shrunken…He doesn’t mind this he doesn’t mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other’s, anymore. Instead I am his.” Reading these quotes as a feminist I feel sorry for Offred as she becomes a character the reader grows a close bond to throughout the novel. While reading the text we learn that Offred was a successful educated woman with a career able to look after herself, the idea that she would need to rely on a man for financial stability even one that she loved upset me and the fact that this all happened in the period of only a day shows how easily this could happen in the real world to any one of us women.
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