“Where There is Power, There is Resistance”: A Foucauldian Reading of Oppression and Resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale
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2018-08-31
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en
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This thesis examines how in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale and Hulu’s 2017 television adaptation The Handmaid’s Tale the patriarchal totalitarian regime, Gilead, attempts to control society by enforcing one unified discourse and by creating a society that is essentially a panopticon. This thesis uses Michel Foucault’s concepts of and the power of discourse and power of the gaze as a lens to analyse how the regime utilises these tools as instruments of oppression. Moreover, this thesis asserts that in both sources, Offred’s appropriates these very same tools as tools for her resistance. By reclaiming the discourse and the gaze, Offred in the novel is able to reconstruct her narrative, which in turn helps her reshape her identity as an individual, not as a Handmaid. This thesis furthermore asserts that the focus of resistance in the adaptation is not merely on Offred, but on the collective. By analysing these two sources, this thesis demonstrates how power can be utilised.
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