The representation of the body and identities in The Handmaid’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale and with reference to Never Let Me Go.
The representation of the body and identities in The Handmaid’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale and with reference to Never Let Me Go.
The Handmaid’s tale, The Miller’s Tale and Never Let Me Go all seem to hold the human form in substantial import, exploring physicality with great significance. The fictional novels all link together and the bodies and identities of the characters are used as political statements in society. Throughout history women have fought to gain the independence they deserve as a member of society and in all three pieces of literature you are able to see that it will always be an on going battle and people feel that women are just there to be used and objectified. Atwood’s dystopian classic was influenced by texts such as George Orwell’s 1984. Atwood creates an imagined world and society ruled by a fundamentalist government and a Christian theocracy in the place of a democratic government; which have enforced actions such as totalitarian violence and the suppression of information to the people of Gilead which would be strongly opposed in today’s society. However, the terrifying and oppressed setting fits well into the genre’s conventions. Atwood’s feminist vision of dystopia is strong and reflects well the contextual issues surrounding society at the time she wrote the novel such as the rise of the second wave women’s movement. They fought for and achieved acts like the 1970 Equal Pay Act and the 1975 Sex Discrimination act. The Miller’s Tale is a parody of The Knight’s Tale, about courtly love; the tale shows the reader about the tension between the social classes. The Knight’s Tale is extremely long, boring and dry whereas The Miller’s Tale is and inappropriate story which openly jokes about a marriage break down. The Miller’s Tale is reflective of the medieval genre conventions of fabliaux. ‘A fabliau is a brief comic tale in verse, usually scurrilous and often scatological and obscene in places’. An example of this is the use of
The Handmaid’s tale, The Miller’s Tale and Never Let Me Go all seem to hold the human form in substantial import, exploring physicality with great significance. The fictional novels all link together and the bodies and identities of the characters are used as political statements in society. Throughout history women have fought to gain the independence they deserve as a member of society and in all three pieces of literature you are able to see that it will always be an on going battle and people feel that women are just there to be used and objectified. Atwood’s dystopian classic was influenced by texts such as George Orwell’s 1984. Atwood creates an imagined world and society ruled by a fundamentalist government and a Christian theocracy in the place of a democratic government; which have enforced actions such as totalitarian violence and the suppression of information to the people of Gilead which would be strongly opposed in today’s society. However, the terrifying and oppressed setting fits well into the genre’s conventions. Atwood’s feminist vision of dystopia is strong and reflects well the contextual issues surrounding society at the time she wrote the novel such as the rise of the second wave women’s movement. They fought for and achieved acts like the 1970 Equal Pay Act and the 1975 Sex Discrimination act. The Miller’s Tale is a parody of The Knight’s Tale, about courtly love; the tale shows the reader about the tension between the social classes. The Knight’s Tale is extremely long, boring and dry whereas The Miller’s Tale is and inappropriate story which openly jokes about a marriage break down. The Miller’s Tale is reflective of the medieval genre conventions of fabliaux. ‘A fabliau is a brief comic tale in verse, usually scurrilous and often scatological and obscene in places’. An example of this is the use of