" (Atwood, 4) the seamless convergence of the warm familial title 'aunt' with the image of this corporal mode of enforcement helps to underscore a society that is violently hostile toward independence, particularly contextualized by its treatment of women. There is an element of forcible control over these women that smacks of government imposition, a key element of the society and the primary mode through which the rights of women are disrupted.

Certainly, the aggression which seems to be an increasingly inescapable aspect of the is channeled toward the female gender as a whole in Atwood's novel, even as Offred struggles to recognize this. She herself ponders the meaning of the valued traditionalism in her society; "A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?" (Atwood, 7) it is clear that, far separated from the notion of femininity as something more...
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