Contextual issues Atwood is addressing Flashcards
1949 - Simone de Beauvoir publishes “The Second Sex”, a book that argued that women had been constantly treated as secondary and inferior to men in a host of ways.
- Handmaids’ names derived from their Commander’s name and normalised.
- female roles are supportive rather than active.
- the Commander’s power over rest of the household.
1963 - Betty Freidman publishes “The Feminine Mystique” which included the stories of women who were stuck in the household and deeply dissatisfied with that life.
- Serena Joy’s garden.
1964-65 - several laws were put in place in the US, including making discrimination in the workplace based on sex illegal and making the prevention of women accessing contraception also illegal.
- Offred has all her freedoms stripped away, but the first is the right to work.
- she can no longer purchase her own things.
1969 - Gloria Steinem publishes an expose on the treatment of women by the men’s adult magazine company Playboy - she attacks the sexual objectification and mistreatment of women that was normalised in the industry and elsewhere.
- large organisation influence
- Jezebel’s - Moira and Playboy bunny.
- Jezebel’s - school uniform and cheerleaders.
- the Guardians at the gate normalise it.
1973 - Rode vs Wade - it was ruled that abortion was a kind of contraception and therefore women should have access to it.
- bodily autonomy = Offred and the Ceremony.
1970s - the phrase “take back the night” gains popularity and recognition - it calls out how women do not feel safe at night on the streets following a series of highly publicised news stories about women being physically and/or sexually assaulted in public spaces.
- walk in pairs
- the Eyes
- solutions often resolve around restricting women rather than men.
1984 - Reagan runs for president on a platform of returning to traditional Christian values - notably he was pro-nuclear family, anti-abortion (unless women’s health was at risk).
- reversal of progress (the Commander’s household).
- the society of Gilead (what they view as ideal).
Rape laws in the US –> The ceremony and Janine in the red centre
- a woman’s sexual history could be used to discredit her testimony by the defence, implying that, since the woman was sexually active, how could it be rape because she was probably asking for it.
- Rape charges could be dropped if the victim didn’t “resist the assailant”. If a woman was too scared to fight back, was drugged or coerced in some other way, it wouldn’t be considered rape.
- A third party would have to corroborate the story despite the fact that no rapist is ever likely to assault a woman with witnesses around.
- Rape couldn’t, legally, be committed by a spouse, suggesting that as a woman married somebody she was effectively giving consent from then on (the state of Georgia up until 1966).
