Summary Of The Handmaid's Tale

According to Linda Alcoff in her essay Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory, a woman in society ‘…is always the Object, a conglomeration of attributes to be predicted and controlled…’
To what extent can this theory be applied to the presentation of woman in feminist literature? With reference to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood and ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath.
Stein suggests that the preliminary and concluding material of, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, namely Atwood’s two dedications, three epigraphs and the pseudo-factual ‘Historical Notes’, act as a frame to Offred’s narrative, much like the way in which, ‘a frame around a painting tells us to read an enclosed space in a certain way, as
In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ the feminine physicality dictates the female representation as an object of male sexual desire and gratification, an idea which reaches its climax in the scene at Jezebel’s, in which women are dressed to enhance the physical assets fetishistically valued by men, ‘cut high up the thighs, low over the breasts… olden-days lingerie, shortie nightgowns, baby-doll pyjamas’. Here, Atwood’s use of a syndetic listing provides a fleeting glimpse of each figure, reducing them to solely their physical appearance, whilst such an abrupt syntax projects onto these women an impression of numbed intellect, further acting to streamline their identity into one that consists wholly of sexual attributes. Indeed, these women all serve as prostitutes to the Gileadean commanders, a device which holds a painful relevance to the 21st century reader, familiar as they are with a recent blight of sexual slavery, imposed by dissident military leaders in the Middle