As it can be seen through the picture below, the dress of Muslim women completely covers the whole body and the head as to not expose the women's body.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/40-women-killed-clothing-iraq-article-1.272312

The Handmaid's Tale

The dress of the Handmaids is very similar to what women are forced to wear in places, like Iraq, today. If women are caught without wearing their traditional dress and head scarves they are arrested and brutally killed in the Muslim culture. The Handmaid’s robes, which are a crimson red, not only represent fertility because they are red, but also represent a lack of freedom and choice. Women in The Handmaids Tale lack simple freedoms like being able to chose what they wear. Women in Iraq today also lack freedom and choice. They are controlled and degraded. The clothing chosen by the leaders of Gilead also represent control of people by the government. Margaret Atwood’s use of the concealing dress and head piece is clearly similar to Muslim attire for women. The patriarchal society portrayed in the novel is also very similar to Muslim culture. 

“Nevertheless Moira was our fantasy. We hugged her to us, she was with us is a secret, a giggle; she was lava beneath the crust of daily life. In the light of Moira, the Aunts were less fearsome and more absurd. Their power had a flaw to it. The audacity was what we liked,” (Atwood 133). 

Moira’s escape from the life of a Handmaid was a flaw in the power and the society of Gilead. Moira made a choice, one of the many things that Handmaids lack the ability to. Lava is such a striking image. It paints a picture of Moira on one side of the lava and the Aunts and creators of Gilead on the opposite side. The metaphor relating to the lava and the “crust of daily life” is meant to explain the fact that Moira escaped was a threat to the whole idea of the society Gilead was trying to create. Moira cunningly escaped and fractured Gilead’s power. Although it probably did not matter much in the long run, it gave Handmaids, like Offred, hope that they may have freedom one day. She gave them something to hope for: escape. 

The way Margaret Atwood portrays an important issue in the world today is creative and extremely effective. Her use of extremism brings across her point-the lack of women’s freedoms in many cultures in modern day- in a riveting way. The speaker of the novel, Offred, is the type of character that is easy to connect with. Throughout the novel, the daily hardships that Offred encounters are so painful that she considers suicide. The idea that a women today is so suppressed that her only choice is suicide is frightening, but Margaret Atwood knew that it was happening when she wrote the novel. Even though it was written in 1998, not much had changed in second and third world countries today. The Handmaid’s Tale exposes what happens when women’s rights are removed and they are seen solely as objects of cleaning, cooking, or carrying children. As vulgar and sadistic as the ceremony appears, in some cultures women are considered to have one purpose: to carry and care for children. When I read this novel, I immediately made a connection to The Great Gatsby where Daisy says that she hopes that her daughter will be a fool so that she does not realize what is really going on in the world. Margaret Atwood does a superb job of capturing the realities of lack of women’s rights and what that causes.