The Dystopian Scourge of Women in Gilead Society as Portrayed in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale Victor Vinoth V Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore – 632014, Tail Nadu, India Vijayakumar M  Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore – 632014, Tail Nadu, India Abstract—The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's most renowned dystopian novel, is one of those works whose memorandum appears to transcend period. It has been analyzed to demonstrate the presence of various layers of feministic and dystopian cultural concepts in the novel. A qualitative investigation of secondary resources reveals that the situation of women in the novel is portrayed as a reproach to the patriarchal construction of the contemporary world. The women characters in the novel position as testimonies of the subjugation that unescapably concentrates them, helpless against a societal and political organisation that interprets the position of women as a reproductive machine. According to Atwood’s novel, by representing the repercussions of the revolution in the United States through the fake theocracy and totalitarian law insists, women must serve the commanders of Gilead society for sexual and biological reasons. Infertile women and working slaves should both serve as servants to the elite couple; the Handmaids addresses both historical and contemporary cultural issues, particularly those affecting women. This study further points out the oppressive, matriarchal position and sexual cruelty, diminishing the autonomy of women. Index Terms—dystopian culture, oppression, theocracy, gender politics, patriarchal society I. INTRODUCTION Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, and has since been acknowledged as one of the prominent works representing a dystopian society with the new world order. The novel revolves around the portrayal of a theocratic and totalitarian state, the Republic of Gilead, which has taken the place of the United States of America, where gender roles are made prominent by dividing society into males and females. The Handmaids are required to reproduce for the elite strata of the Gilead community. These little circles of Handmaids are subjected to lead a wretched life of indignity and ignominity under the surveillance of the High Commander. Offred, the protagonist of the novel, shares her daily life, and gradually The Handmaid’s Tale becomes a tale of rebellion and a quest for freedom and identity. However, such a simple synopsis of the novel does it no justice as each turn of the page promises new information about Gilead and their new world order that is responsible for enslaving the women to a subservient position. The study specifically focuses on the feministic persecution concepts present in the novel and their true significance in demonstrating a world that falls under the unquestioned authority of patriarchy. The novel, in a way, addresses second-wave feminism, marking the thin line between what may be perceived as utopia and what is dystopia (Malak, 1987, p.10). The loss of intellectual property and individual freedom confines Offred and other women of the Red Centre under the illusion of betterment (Joannou, 2001, p.145). The ideologies spread by Gilead offer the promise of salvation from violence and rape against women and consider the confinement of women under the control of male Commanders as the right order of the world. Hence, the study aims to investigate all the elements of feminism in the novel and present an overall feministic concept that can illustrate the novel accurately. “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born” (Atwood, 1996, p.72). These words efficiently eloquent what a woman's life implies in this twentieth-century dystopia. Women acquire independence as mothers, says Bagchi (2017). The uterus, contrary to common opinion, is not an "inert receptacle," and it is capable of either admitting or rejecting sperm invasion depending on the woman's will. As a consequence of the Society of Gilead's totalitarian patriarchy and male dominance regime, motherhood has become weaponized.  The Corresponding Author. E-mail: vijayakumar.muthu@vit.ac.in ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 12, No. 12, pp. 2704-2711, December 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1212.29 © 2022 ACADEMY PUBLICATION