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چکیده
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The frightening undertone in the novel of The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a hybrid tradition known as the gothic dystopia. The novel depicts a nightmarish futuristic setting in which brutality and cruelty determines the whole sense of mankind and identity. Offred’s transgressions from the Gilead regime did not help her at all, but she was further imprisoned. Dystopias lack benevolence and tolerance, and they encourage corruption and destruction. In a dystopian society, the individuals are subject to social commands and they are disabled to resist the predominant power structure. The handmaids being oppressed are relegated to the margins of social structure; they are arrested in a state of paralysis under the dominance of a repressive, coercive ideology. In the patriarchal society of Gilead, the handmaids occupy the marginal, ex-centric position through the defiance of social demands. The most significant mission of Postcolonial Feminism is the study of the ex-centric, the marginal, and the suppressed-oppressed minorities. Analogously, the masculine oppression of feminine and the colonial subjugation of the colonized will contribute to the same identity crisis for both minorities. The female subjectivity is determined in opposition to the Other. To define herself, the female must establish a male-female binary similar to Hegelian master-slave dialectics. In this conflictual relationship, each subject relegates the Other to the position of an aggressive alien. Margaret Atwood ‘s protagonist reacts against the metaphorical consumption of her subjectivity in the novel of The Handmaid’s Tale.
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