A Look at Gender Roles

Although the Republic of Gilead had monopolizing men as its decision-makers, it looks to females as being the solution. Women are in a perverse equation, equal to them in contribution but inferior in sentiment and position. According to its Gospel literature, it was decreed that "to each,  her ability,  and to each, his need." Indeed, the Handmaid's names bear the sign of being owned by the first names of their assigned partners (e.g. Of Fred). This however, is not to say that all women were the same, or indeed that all felt. The Wives, who fought for the subjugation of the Handmaids, wore blue, the absence of heat and passion, their Handmaid counterparts. The Wives also take a great role in religion, leading the other women (all those except those proclaimed "Unwomen.") in Women's Prayvaganzas, where it was determined that women would be able to displace their frustrations on state dissenters. This is in direct contrast to the preceding sexist ages in the 1920s where the rest cure was often advocated. Wives even gave their daughters off in arranged marriages, whom Offred describes as elliptical angels, to the Guardians, the footsoldiers in the war. Etynmologically, this shows marriage, or at the very least the union between man and women is crucial to completion. It might even explain's Offred's one-dimensional compulsions.