On Female Consciousness In The Handmaid’s Tale From The Perspective Of Female Gothic

Margaret Atwood(1939-)is an outstanding Canadian novelist,poet and literary critic.Atwood has many great novels,and The Handmaid’s Tale is the most well-known one.It is narrated by Offred,a previous Handmaid in Gilead.Offred’s narration reflects Gilead’s extreme oppression of the people.This thesis adopts female Gothic theory to explore women’s consciousness in The Handmaid’s Tale,analyzes the persecution of Gilead’s fundamentalist totalitarian regime and patriarchal society against women in environmental,physical and psychological level and discusses the awakening of women’s consciousness.On the one hand,the thesis analyzes female Gothic elements in the novel to explore the influence of the enclosed Gothic spaces and horrible Gothic scenes on women and women’s existential predicament caused by prescribed gender role.On the other hand,the thesis adopts female Gothic theory to analyze women’s hostility as the obstacle in the path of the awakening of women’s consciousness.Then,it discusses female Gothic heroines’ resistance to the social oppression and their accomplishment of the awakening of their consciousness by narrating experiences,escaping from the control and uniting the power of genders.From the above research,it can be concluded that the enclosed Gothic spaces and horrible Gothic scenes lead to women’s anxiety about their identity.The prescribed gender role provokes women’s self-disgust towards female physiology and procreation,which ultimately causes women’s low self-esteem to female identity.But the female Gothic heroines represented by Offred,Moira and Ofglen pursue independence and freedom,accomplishing the awakening of their consciousness and rebuilding themselves by resisting to Gilead’s patriarchy and fundamentalist regime.Women should fight against social oppression through solidarity and mutual assistance,and they need to record and preserve their unique history and memories.And only when men and women eliminate the binary opposition between genders can they liberate from the oppression imposed by the patriarchy and totalitarian society and defend their own value and dignity.