The Handmaid's Tale

The objectification and subordination of women is central to Gileadean politics and is a recurrent theme in the novel. Following traditional patriarchal social organization, women are seen as members of a man’s household and are, effectively, his property. They are banned from working, owning property or money, and even reading. However, while all women are oppressed, they are not oppressed in identical ways. Rather, a spectrum of oppression runs from the relatively privileged Wives and the authoritarian Aunts down to Econowives, or wives of lower-ranking men; Marthas, or domestic servants; and “Unwomen,” women who do not or will not conform to Gilead’s misogynistic structures and are sent off to enforced brothels like Jezebel’s, or to the Colonies, to live out their short lives “sweeping up deadly toxins” (265).  

The Handmaids experience a particular form of oppression that is intimately enmeshed with objectification. Rare in a world of declining birth rates, their fertility means they are simultaneously precious and subordinated in Gilead. They are celebrated for their fertility in such a way that they lose their autonomy and personhood and are reduced, as Offred phrases it, to the status of “two-legged wombs” (146). Like the other Handmaids, Offred is forced to endure