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Throughout Atwood’s dystopian novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, and Duffy’s poems ‘Beautiful’ and
‘Anon’, Individual feminine power is subjectively important; the antithesis between internal and
external power is what defines this power
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This
juxtaposition between appearance and reality demonstrates an innate direction of female power
within a patriarchal society
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Immediately the reader is
introduced to the almost robotic and clinical indoctrination of Gilead
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Janine
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Moira
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’ Demonstrates how the individual autonomy and power
received from having a name has been reduced, leaving the Handmaid’s without a sense of
identity
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The harsh pause
between each name heightens the feeling of disconnect and distortion within Gilead, causing the
narrative to become fragmented
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Despite, their status as a
homogenous group, they are given a small sense of individual power
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In particular, the use of archetypally feminine
roles in Anon further reduces women, implying they are only valuable when they are fulfilling their
generative function, rather than valuing their own Handmaid’s – there collective power as a group
of fertile women is valued far more in Gilead than their individual sense of power
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However, both women in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘Anon’ are stripped
away of their individual power, as they are forced into this communal identity of an archetypally
female homogenous group
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In ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, we are introduced to Offred’s display of female
sexual power in Gilead, a society that demonises desire and sexual deviance
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For Offred, the heightened sense of danger highlights how encapsulated she has become into
the state of id
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However, for Offred, her primal
desire is for power, something that she has had a lack of in Gilead
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Similarly, in the poem ‘Beautiful’ the female figures
have their identities and legacies built upon their beauty and their sexuality
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Cleopatra is
a classic example of a femme fatale figure, someone who is self-aware of their own prowess
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The use of the verb ‘let’ implies she has given the men permission and
consent
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Therefore, in the oppressive and patriarchal
societies that both women reside in, their sexuality is all that can truly give them power
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However, the power that the
women hold could be described as ephemeral, due to the restrictive nature of the patriarchy
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The noun
‘boy’ both forces her into this masculine position, as well as infantilises her
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