White -washing oppression in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Précis

According to critic Ben Merriman, Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, is a misdemeanor of oppression and the subjects in the novel are mere outlines of age old slavery. In everyday life, to be white is the norm and in particular this norm functions automatically, unless this median is subjected or undermined, racial misrepresentations may take place, even against the conscious intent of the author. These misrepresentations emerge throughout Atwood’s novel; she attempts to provide a conventional presentation of female utilization but in its place stands Offred, a white, college-educated American. Instead of using the usual racial exploitation, Atwood has replaced it with utilization of sexism; Atwood does not acknowledge the “parallels between her own story and the experience of black slavery.” Removing the historically-specific oppressions from their boarder perspective, takes this tale from speculative fiction, which is secured in reality, to a theoretically suspect and politically perilous fantasy.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are restricted from reading and writing and may not meet without supervision; this places meticulous importance on the female victimization presented in the novel. This theme of female victimization is vastly compatible in the enslavement of African Americans. This discrimination does not seem to play out in a historical or causal matter in The Handmaid’s Tale; Blacks are erased entirely in this novel and it’s covered in the Old Testament euphemism, The Republic of Gilead is an all-White closed society. Atwood took a vastly inventive leap in her novel, she wrote a White professional into the position of a Black slave. Back in the Antebellum South, the restrictions on literacy were based on race not gender and here it is acknowledged that Atwood has once again drawn from the pattern of Black slavery. The Handmaid’s Tale is implicated to be a record of a recitation given by Offred on the night of her escape into Canada; this resembles the stories of African Americans escaping to freedom in Canada. Concealed in clear sight, by the implausible but exceptionally compassionate Offred, is the crossroad among race and sex.