In Handmaid's Tale, How Does Offred View Her Body?

The Handmaid’s Tale
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The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale is a novel about the life of a handmaid named Offred. This book was written by Margaret Atwood, a Canadian author. In this story, Offred lives in Gilead, a theocratic and dictatorial republic where women rights are oppressed. The Handmaids role in this country is to bear children for the leader's families who have reproduction problems. Offred is assigned to serve the Commander together with his wife, Serena Joy, who was a gospel singer and a supporter of traditional values in Gilead (Atwood, 2017). Offred always has impersonal sex with the Commander in the presence of her wife. Her freedom is restricted, and she can only leave the homestead during the shopping trips.
Offred is an essential character in this story. She tries to uphold her identity, and she explores her strength through her body. Nonetheless, Offred often sees her body as an object of pleasure "I used to think of my body as an instrument of pleasure" (Atwood, 2017), she says she has viable ovaries and thinks that her body has no other important than childbearing. Before Offred saw her body as an object of extension of herself but now her body does not matter, and she is not allowed to read or even talk freely. Furthermore, she thinks her body is only significant because of her ‘'central object" which can conceive. She explains as "a cloud, congealed around a central object, which is hard and more real than I Am" (Atwood, 2017). Her reflections show that she has adopted Gilead's view towards women. She also sees her body as prize pig, and she cannot do anything on her own, "she is washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig." Offred cannot even remember how she used to look like.
The Republic of Gilead controls and oppresses women, for instance; women are not permitted to dress the way they want. However, Gilead vi...