A Handmaid's Tale Paper

Red Gown and the Name “Of,” Would Never Happen Today Life could change in a blink of an eye. The everyday things you have grown accustomed to gone in a flash. As a woman in the story, A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, women are discriminated against. The U.S. Government gets taken over and corruption occurs. Men are considered a dominant race and women are treated like sex slaves and baby makers. All of the luxuries of money, jobs, clothing, and freedom that women had were thrown away in an instant because of the government takeover. This story details how corruption of government completely changed the way women would function in society. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, discrimination is defined as the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people. A Handmaid’s Tale made women inferior and there are some that felt this was ok. It put women back where they were in the old days and the idea put women “in their place.” Atwood’s ideas of changing a woman’s identity to the colors of clothing, the views of sexuality and how women are used for their wombs only, and the disappearance of many basic freedoms that women had become accustomed to in Western Civilization are completely asinine and would never happen in the world today. The identity of any woman is a very important thing. Many things that women do in their lives make up who they are, what they wear, where they work, and even women’s names tell others about their personality. In the Handmaid’s Tale the female body, especially when one can become pregnant, is more important than her mind, knowledge, or personality. One way they stripped women from who they are is by choosing their clothing and the color of the clothing symbolizes who they are. “There are other women with baskets, some in red, some in the dull green of the Marthas, some in the striped dresses, red and blue and green and cheap and skimp, that mark the women of the

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