Vol. 5,No. 5, May 2015

Author(s): Navid Salehi Babamiri, Sarvin Negargar, Sepehr Negargar

Abstract: Margaret Atwood‟s The Handmaid’s Tale provokes inevitably the restricted edicts as the new Christian government‟s extreme policies burst forth as bitter and sardonic for the suppression of women. It is a dystopian nightmare which subjugates and subdues women to the point of sexual slavery, [language] impacts and indoctrinates them in a psychologically-damaging manner, and denies them the basic freedoms which most women in Western civilization take for granted (Porfert 1). Atwood shows the intimate and political relation of previous society to the existing one which Foucault includes in his theory. She shows the well-established foundation of Gilead through the discourse and sexuality in a critical mood. She further shows that language and even sexuality in the frames of discourses have great power to penetrate deeply which triggers off in controlling physical, spiritual and even human thought of individuals within the mechanism of the society. Thus the present essay shows how language and sexuality as two higher elements can overlap with power to affirm the suppression. This is done through Foucault‟s approach.

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