In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the story is set in the dystopian society of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that has overthrown the United States government. Gilead enforces strict social hierarchies and severely restricts women’s rights, reducing them to their one and only purpose: bearing children. The protagonist, Offred, is a ‘Handmaid’ whose sole purpose is to bear children for the ruling class. Through her eyes, we witness the oppressive nature of the regime and how her mentality is slowly manipulated by the conservative views and laws. In one moment, Aunt Lydia speaks to the Handmaids, explaining Gilead’s view on freedom and control. Offred reflects on Aunt Lydia’s teachings about how society has shifted from one of dangerous choices to one of supposed safety.
I remember the rules, rules that were never spelled out but that every woman knew: don’t open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don’t stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble. Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don’t turn to look. Don’t go into a laundromat, by yourself, at night. (…)
Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles. There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it. (p.27-28)
This quotation really stands out to me because it shows how Gilead twists the idea of freedom. Aunt Lydia’s words make it seem like the strict rules are for women’s protection, but they really take away their choices and freedom. She thinks that in the past the ”freedom to” act and make choices based on ones own interests/desires led to chaos and that the current ”freedom from” focuses on the absence of threats against women and makes everybody feel safe and protected. In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, Gilead promotes this ”freedom from” danger as a justification for its oppressive rules (trying to get rid of the ‘freedom to make personal choices’ mindset, that women used to have).
This passage highlights how the regime uses fear to control people, but they hide it behind a guise of supposed ‘safety’ and a strict set of laws which everybody has to follow. This passage really emphasizes the idea that when safety comes at the cost of freedom, it isn’t true safety at all.