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“How and Why Does Atwood Portray the Experience of Women as Different?’’

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Atwood has taken the experience of women to the extreme in her novel, however there are still clear parallels between her novel and the society we live in now. For example, women in Atwood’s world are forced to wear ‘wings’ which are to ‘keep [them] from seeing’. This may be seen as shocking to our society which is predominantly a Christian where we can wear whatever we want- but in some religions such as Islam, the women wear a veil or a full body dress to disguise their body shape from other men because they believe that only their husband should see what they look like without their clothes on.
The women in Atwood’s novel wear certain clothes depending on their job in the ‘society’. The handmaids wear red ‘the colour of blood’. Atwood could have used red because it symbolizes fear, evil and lust however the handmaidens are employed ‘to breed’ and their red clothing could symbolize, love and passion rather than the darker connotations associated with red. The handmaids are not allowed to be looked upon by men, they wear ‘wings’ which cover their faces and prevent them from ‘seeing’. In the society that we live in now we have the freedom to see what we want without censorship, compared with Atwood’s ‘society’ where the women are given a distorted vision of reality which restricts their perspective. The women in Atwood’s novel have no freedom and their lives are sheltered from what is actually going on around them, this could have been done to protect them from the harsh truth of the war or to stop them from having any independent thoughts or feelings for themselves.
The women in Atwood’s society have no freedom. They do not even have the freedom to think for themselves; ‘thinking can hurt your chances’, every aspect of their lives is controlled in some way, they are told what to wear; how to act; what their job is and finally how to think. Atwood has done this

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