In The Handmaid's Tale, there are many different social groups within Gilead, all of which have varying degrees of power. The Commanders of the Faithful are the ruling class of Gilead, and are allowed a Wife and a Handmaid, among others. It is their solemn duty to procreate in order to continue the ruling class, and they reached that level of power because of their responsibility to maintain the power structure of Gilead. The Angels are the officers in the Gilead military; they are given the most honorable duty of fighting in wars with the intent of protecting and expanding the borders of Gilead. Given their honorable duty, they are allowed to get married. The book provides a great deal of dystopian science-fiction subtext, the world providing a platform for Atwood to showcase the terrible nature of sexual and gender politics in our own world by showing a place where these ideas are brought full circle (Miner,
The theocratic world of Gilead is one in which love is shown to be an inherently conservative force used to oppress women (Miner, p. 149). Wives are the highest social class permitted to women, and that is reached when they marry a Commander of the Faithful. Handmaids are the assistants of Wives, and are intended to bear their children for them. Whenever fertile women have broken the law, they are reassigned and reeducated to become Handmaids; they are not as important as Wives, and are essentially used to bear children so that Wives do not sacrifice their figure. Aunts are older women who have not married; their duties are primarily to discipline other women, as well as act as midwives to those who are having children. As they have not been married and have passed their fertile age, they are no longer of use except as menial servants. These kinds of rules are implied by Atwood to be ingredients of a dystopian universe, with the government repressing freedoms and suppressing the idea of sex in order to maintain control over its populace (Malak, p. 9).
The world of The Handmaid's Tale can be likened to another near-future dystopian novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In both works, reproductive rights become a major issue, with the Handmaid Class and the permanent population cap of 2 billion being important background details for the novel. Also, class distinctions becoming distinct, concrete castes is a feature present in both novels - the Alphas, like the ruling class of Handmaid's Tale, are concretely placed above the Betas or lower classes in prominence and importance; in fact, physical deformities are forced on Betas and lower classes to suppress them physically as well as mentally. One distinction is the approach to sex; while Huxley's Brave New World welcomes recreational sex, but abstinence except for procreation is present in The Handmaid's Tale. "My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for" (Atwood, p. 94).
References
Atwood, M. (2006). The handmaid's tale (Vol. 301). Everyman's Library.
Malak, A. (1987). Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the Dystopian
Tradition. Canadian Literature, 112(916), 139-48.
Miner, M. (1991). " Trust Me": Reading the Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood's The
Handmaid's Tale. Twentieth century literature, 37(2), 148-168.
