How The World of Gilead & Watchman Shapes Males & Females

Kalyn Schofield

Gender & Technology

April 3, 2009

Anne Daulke

How The World of Gilead & Watchman Shapes Males & Females

The female body constantly becomes the standard target for intervention and scrutiny on a daily basis. The idea behind these body interventions whether through exercise, surgery, make-up, diets, or fashion is always the same. These interventions are concepts suggesting to people that they are able to change themselves through changing their bodies, even if this goes against every person’s natural notion, to think that their body is under their own control. Such subtle body scrutiny provides people with an alternative interpretation of how their bodies should be molded. This inevitably influences men and women’s views about their own bodies. So how have the societies of Gilead and Watchman affected the body images of Offred (females) and Night Owl (males) differently?

The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood provides a way to examine the unconscious consequences for women that stem from pregnancy. Atwood’s fictional story solely portrays women as fetal containers. Although this may seem like a farfetched reality people today still struggle to grasp the concept of ownership when it comes to the female body, especially during pregnancy. “Women, like men, want to control what happens to and in their bodies. Women’s ability to do this is being threatened by proponents of the view that their choices should be subordinated to the welfare of fetuses within them” (Purdy, 89). As many men feel they possess a woman, both during courtship and marriage, it makes sense that Atwood would use the female body as the focal point for The Handmaid’s Tale. Women everywhere would recognize the familiar struggle between their men and society as they via for control over the female body as issues such as being a husband’s property and society thinking females greatest contribution lays in being a vessel for carrying life.

In Gilead there was no doubt in societies’ mind what women were good for. Their worth lied in their potential to conceive healthy children. Pregnancy was considered so important in society that any contaminated or barren women were sent to barren and toxic places known as colonies. It’s old women, Handmaids who’ve screwed up their three chances, and incorrigibles like me. Discards, all of us. They’re sterile of course” (Atwood, 283-284). These women were deemed unwomen. “In this way the act of pregnancy defined a women’s existence in Gilead and if she could not do her female duty she was no longer considered a woman by societies standards.

Within Gilead and even society today, it is clearly known by both sexes that there exists certain gendered skill’s. For instance the act of pregnancy in Gilead was a female skill. Even if men contributed to the conception of the child the overall pregnancy was a women’s burden. Society today still finds the notion of pregnancy largely associated with females. “Fetuses live in women’s bodies. This means that what happens both in and to those bodies can adversely affect fetuses and that the only way to get at a fetus is through the body that houses it” (Purdy, 89). Once again from this quote we can see how the female in today’s society can be reduced to a fetal container. Which simply means her existence becomes much more important because of the fetus she carries. Once gendered skills such as pregnancy become predominantly one sex or the other the opposite sex is allowed and encouraged to become distant from an even that does not concern them. “Today men whether as doctors, lawyers, brokers, or sperm sources are the traffickers, the go-betweens, who carry on the exchange in women’s bodies for surrogate contracts, women’s eggs for use in IVF, and women’s embryos for use in embryo experimentation and fetal tissue exchange”(Raymond, 138). Within Gilead they occupied positions of power as soldiers allowed to carry guns and fight wars from a distance and guard Handmaid’s. The other position for males was that of the commander who could be compared to the sperm donors of today as a distant yet constantly present force.

Ideas such as pregnancy are foreign concepts to men. But they are no stranger to the concept of impotency which weighs heavily on all males. The character Dan Drieberg, also known as the fictional character of Night Owl from The Watchman, is like many men around the world. He suffers from impotency which generates psychological hang ups during any attempt at intimacy. “It’s this war, the feeling that it’s unavoidable. It makes me feel so powerless. So impotent.” (Moore, Gibbons, pg 19, chapter 7). His impotency stems from one of the common ways society views masculinity. Masculinity is thought to be an extension of a man’s virility and his ability to impregnate females. Night Owl’s lack of sexual desire is due to his inability to procreate. In the world of Gilead Night Owl would still be considered a man because no one would question his impotency, hence he would never have to come to terms with it. In all societies at some level women are seen as “carriers” of life while men are seen as the “life givers.” When dealing with pregnancy men are taught to create a baby through changing a woman’s body. Once they lose this ability their worth as a man is up for questioning. Depending on the society their concerns of impotency are either swept under the carpet (Gilead) or highly scrutinized (Watchmen).

Through the society of Gilead we have seen pregnancy shape women into nothing more than containers of life. Offred’s final escape leaves her pregnant with Nick’s baby. In this way society has succeeded in shaping her body into a fetal container. While males in Watchman, are made to feel as if they possess the ability to create and change the world and everything in it and must act on this feeling or fail in societies eyes as a man. The duel meaning of Night Owl’s comment regarding his impotency is important. He both feels powerless to save the world and to successfully impregnate Silk Spectra. His worth as a male and as a superhero are both being questioned. In the same way Offred and other women in Gilead are not considered women if they cannot produce healthy babies. In the end both societies used notions of gender as their technology over the bodies of Offred and Night Owl.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret . The Handmaid’s Tale. Random House Group LTD: Everyman’s Library, 1986.

Moore, Alan. Watchman. 23. Canada: DC Comics, 1986.

Purdy, Laura. Reproducing Persons. United States of America: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Raymond, Janice. Women as Wombs. 1. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.