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The power dynamics of society often align with traditional gender roles, as women are often devalued and degraded by men in power.

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“Social control and the very existence of Gilead depend upon suppression and manipulation of human feelings. With feelings denied, Gileadeans have no experience of knowing they belong in a human community.” (Armbuster 148)

The restrictions on handmaids specifically have the reader seeing Offred spending time alone more than with other people. This is a method of suppression of free thought by Gilead because she will have to think less if she is generally limited in her communication with others. Since Gilead prevents outright expression of emotions, such as Janine being shamed for crying about being previously raped, it allows the government and the eyes to determine who has power and keeps the women in society especially subservient to the men. This is due to how women fear expressing themselves in order to prevent being the next person taken by the eyes.

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"Gilead also adopts measures specifically aimed against women, their individuality, and their identity... lost rights of abortion and birth control... arranged marriages... bank accounts placed in the hands of their fathers, husbands, or other male custodians" ( Stillman and Johnson 73).

In this academic source, the authors establish how Gilead purposefully decreases the rights women have quickly to give men full control of them. This is shown in the book when Offred loses her job and access to her bank account, and then has to wait for her husband Luke to return home as he has full control of everything that was previously hers. Luke's response to her realization that she has essentially nothing that is Offred's anymore is minimal as he believes it will all be okay, but this is due to his role as a man, which automatically gives him power over her in this society.

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"While I read, the Commander sits and watches me doing it, without speaking but also without taking his eyes off me. This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it" (Atwood 184).

Within this scene, Offred feels extremely uncomfortable while the Commander gawks at her. The Commander is being kind to her only because of malintentions viewing her as an object or prize he needs to win. The Commander has power over her and is abusing it to get what he wants from her because he knows she doesn't think we have a choice.

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"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better" (Atwood 211).

This quote shows how the commander doesn't mind hurting some women to make the scenario better for men. This shows how there is an unfair power dynamic that allows men to simply make such decisions. This specific quote occurs right after the commander asks Offred for her opinion on how things have changed from the past to Gilead. This is significant as the commander highlights his views here that things are better overall, despite the situation that it puts women in. As a man, the commander is given immense power over several women, from his wife, Serena Joy, to a Handmaid and two Marthas. This allows the commander to have full control of his household, while women are degraded to specific roles that restrict free thought, which is why Offred is so reluctant to give an opinion. The commander makes sure to highlight that constructing Gilead was heavily involved and tries to justify the reduced roles of women this way by saying that something like that was bound to happen to establish such a nation. This is nothing but an excuse from the commander as a man to justify his role of power, solely based on his gender considering how women were previously educated and just as capable as men.

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"My presence here is illegal. We are for breeding purposes: we aren't concubines, geisha girls, courtesans... We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices" (Atwood 136).

This represents the concept that women's status in society is determined by their reproductive role. Child care and childbearing are the only valued qualities women present in Gilead, as these factors have created significant implications for women's participation in society.

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"I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will... Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping" (Atwood 73-74).

Through this new society that suppresses women, Offred has lost her sense of self and her body has lost its meaning to her. Offred is constantly abused through events such as the ceremony and because of this, she views her body as Gilead's property and only her heart remains. For her to start to be convinced by what Gilead has been brainwashing her to believe means she has truly lost herself.

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"The regime created an instant pool of such women by the simple tactic of declaring all second marriages and nonmarital liasions adulterous, arresting the feale partners, and, on the grounds that they were morally unfit, confiscating the children they already had,who were adopted by childless couples of the upper echelons who were eager for progeny by any means. (In the middle period, this policy was extended to cover all marriages not contracted within the state church.) Men highly placed in the regime were thus able to pick and choose among women who had demonstrated their reproductive fitness by having produced one or more health children, a desireable characteristic in an age of plummeting Caucasian birthrates, a phenomenon observable not onlyin Gilead but in most northern Caucasian sociaties of the time" (Atwood 304).

This quote symbolizes how when the Gileaden government rose to power, the men immediately gained all power over women in society. The women were put down by men and were accused of being adulterers if they were in their second marriages. This quote identifies how Gilead rose and took control of women's lives, and the apparent reason used to justify this domination. The social hierarchy especially between the different women of Gileaden society (Marthas, Handmaids, Aunts, etc.) was completely based on the traditional religious structure and the basis of fertility of certain women. This provided some women power over others based on their simple existence, such as Serena Joy being a commander's wife, but Offred ending up as a handmaid even though she was married. This is only because religion invalidates Offred's marriage. This establishes a power dynamic among women, as they are focused on pleasing the class above them, rather than the men who truly rule society in order to prevent retaliation for apparent wrong doing.

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The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder these things used to happen. (Atwood 55)

Offred reflects on the time Aunt Lydia said that women deserved the sexual assault that came to them because they dressed too immodestly. This quote connects the theme as it displays how women are blamed for the crimes that men have committed against them. Also, it shows reader how men have brainwashed these women into believing that they deserved rape for wearing clothes such as bikini during a time when it was extremely common.

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There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law. (Atwood 61)

Offred says this quote when she is at her doctor's appointment in Chapter 11. Similar to the quote about how women in Gilead are brainwashed into thinking they deserved the sexual assault they experienced from wearing bikinis to the beach, this quote too displays the same aspect of men enforcing their power over women. This quote is now a regular thought and even a regular concern in the minds of women. In Gilead, women are the punching bag for whatever goes wrong. Although they make up a huge fraction of the population in a house, they still equate to nothing in the eyes of one powerful man. Being barren, also known as infertile, comes with heavy consequences. Women who are unable to bear a child get sent to the colonies, while the fertile women are forced to become handmaids. These labels come with an outrageous price as their value is determined based on their reproductive ability.

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"We’ve given them more than we’ve taken away, said the Commander. Think of the trouble they had before. Don’t you remember the singles’ bars, the indignity of high school blind dates? The meat market. Don’t you remember the terrible gap between the ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn’t? Some of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the human misery" (Atwood 219).

The commander shows how naive he is, as he believes women to be as one-dimensional as the paper the magazine is constructed of. The women displayed in the magazine that the commander gives Offred to look at in this scene are all shown as simple, because they are meant to be icons or simple representations of a certain type of women. The commander believes Gilead to be an improvement of society for women despite their demeaning roles because society gives them less to worry about such as love or appearance. This is untrue however because it is his social role that gives him this view, as the women are sorted into classes that group them based on basic things, such as the handmaids being fertile is their main quality. The pressure to fit into roles that they are not meant to be in, actually makes the women's lives harder as it pressures them, which is why a lot of them commit suicide.

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"If I may be permitted an editorial aside, allow me to say that in my opinion we must be cautious about passing moral judgement upon the Gileadeans. Surely we have learned by now that such judgements are of necessity culture-specific. Also, Gileadean society was under a good deal of pressure, demographic or otherwise, and was subject to factors from which we ourselves are happily more free. Our job is not to censure but to understand(Applause)" (Atwood 302).

This quotation comes from the historical notes, which is significant as Professor Pieixoto in this quote provides an excuse to Gilead for the horrible power structure and gender-based oppression present in Gileadean society. This justification is unfounded as he also judges Offred's account of her own story, believing it to be untrustworthy. By judging the worthiness of Offred's account, but failing to condemn the faults of Gileadean society, Pieixoto shows how little society has learned from Gilead and how gender plays into roles of power. Pieixoto says they should not censure anything, yet by discrediting Offred's account of Gilead to a degree he is censuring her story, a story that highlights the power that men used to control and demean women as objects of reproduction. By not seeing the complete failure of this power structure in Gilead and condemning it, Pieixoto and his applauding colleagues are effectively supporting the oppression of women as they fail to see the problem with the male domination of women in Gildean society.

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The scene in which the Handmaids kill the guardian because of his deceit is the most powerful scene and represents a shift in the attitude of the story, preparing for the dramatic finale. The guardian was accused of rape too, which is significant because this is a crime largely committed against women. This is meant to play on the anger of the handmaids, especially since they have reserved their emotions for so long, and this is a chance to feel free. Even so, this actually just makes the handmaids and their anger the pawns of the powerful men in Gilead, as the guardian was truly part of the Mayday movement, which was liberating handmaids. The fact that they are lowered to killing and ripping this man from limb to limb just to feel some freedom and express themselves is proof of how degraded in society the handmaids and women, in general, have become.

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"Pieixoto's search is for facts only. His desire for twenty pages of printout from Waterford's computer is unsettlingly reminiscent of the commander's blithe assertion of the power of statistics over human experience. Pieixoto has a compelling record of a human experience, but he wants names and dates; because we don't know Offred's real name, we don't know much about her, according to Pieixoto. He wants history, but Offred gives him only her story, and he is hesitant to accept its validity" (Grace 489).

Piexoto devalues Offred's account of historical events, despite her experience because he doesn't feel it is historical enough. This devaluation of the women's experience is directly out of the book of Gilead, which had no issue with reducing the roles of women to simple tasks and to being reproductive objects. This is meant to represent how the men in society continue to hold more power over women due to their refusal to understand the realities of being a woman.

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Armbruster, Jane. “Memory and Politics — A Reflection on ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’” Social Justice, vol. 17, no. 3 (41), 1990, pp. 146–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29766564. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.

Grace, Dominick. “‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: ‘Historical Notes’ and Documentary Subversion.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 3, 1998, pp. 481–94. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240726. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.

Stillman, Peter G., and S. Anne Johnson. “Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Utopian Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 1994, pp. 70–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719314. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.