Disciplining the Body: surveillance, power, and Violence in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Abstract

The world has gone with too many aspects: repression, doubt in religion, dictatorship, and so many other universal aspects. The misunderstanding of religion changed people's perspective over others; it dislodged truth and replaced it with fanatic thoughts. The treatment of authorities toward others became preternatural, the division started off to appear as a necessity, men were regarded as the God power of every rule and misogyny was the upmost clear portrait. Margaret Atwood (1939), the Canadian speculative writer, who witnessed a radical change in the fundamentalist religion in the U.S and through her historical background, showed an interest in women who were the first targeted tool by the new republic Gilead. In her novel, The Handmaid's Tale (1985), she offered a new relationship between totalitarianism and the body, wherein the patriarchy is the featured aspect; through her narrative lenses, she drew what probably would happen in the nearest future by depicting the change from religion to politics. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate what a totalitarian state can do to mark its disciplinary power over women bodies. In addition to this, it targets to show how religion can be sometimes dangerous against the docile and the illiterate creatures.