Critique of Cosmopolitan Modernity in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Abstract

Using the concept of flaneuse by Janet Woolf, this research finds the difficulties and crises upon female characters in Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Most of the female characters in The Handmaid’s Tale are deviated from their cultural root and individual identity. They feel that the temptation to follow the westernized thought has distorted the taste and attitude of the young generation. The main character of this novel Offred belongs to the class of handmaid’s fertile women who is forced to bear children for elite, barren couples and rich human. Offred forgets cultural identity and her own background being lost in the value of western technocratic world. She comes in metropolitan American city to search her better life, but she becomes puppet the hands of different males in the city simply because she is a woman. Modernity promises about education, development, and betterment of humanity. However, modernity deteriorates Offered in the level of puppet despite enlightening her.