Carceral maternity and exploitative biopolitics in urban dystopia: an enquiry into the female experience in the handmaid’s tale

The Handmaid’s Tale directed by Volker Schlondorff presents a bleak, dismal future vision of a totalitarian government that subjugates and exploits women according to its need. Women are transformed into mere reproductive tools and their duty is to serve the state. They are treated as a national property. The handmaids have become the objects of sexism in Gilead society. They are the second-class citizens of the state. The only capital they have is their body that is important for the state. They are nothing but ambulatory wombs. They have to give birth not from their free will but as an obligation to fulfil the demands of the state. They are valued because of their body but at the same time, they are suffering because of that body. They are in an imprisoned state because of their special ability to give birth, so their fertility becomes a curse for them. But at the same time, they are alive as they are fertile, otherwise, they will be shifted to the Colony. They are giving birth but they do not have any right over their newborns. This maternity is an imposition upon them and as a result of it, they lose emotional connection with their babies. Their body becomes the site where the state can exercise its power. Women are the playthings for the male chauvinistic society. The present study tries to speculate the issues like suppression and subjugation of women in a male-dominated society, exploitation of women as an object of sexism, use of women as reproductive tools, denial of basic rights of women, and the relationship between power and body. The proposed study will analyze these issues with the help of the theories of Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millet and Michel Foucault.