From time immemorial, women have been hapless victims of numerous atrocities in the patriarchal society the world over. The male members of the species take it as their unquestionable prerogative to keep women under subjugation and to marginalize their status. A modern version of this subjugation is to consider woman as a mere procreative machine in a future social structure in the Republic of Gilead, presented by the distinguished Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, in her disturbing dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale. The paper attempts to look at the utter dehumanization of women in a post-nuclear future, when men turn impotent and seek women slaves as reproductive tools. However, one woman, Offred, dares to think differently and tries to escape the trap, raising faint hopes for women's emancipation.

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, one of the most powerful and distinguished Canadian writers, is not only a prolific poet, a novelist, a feminist, but also a literary critic. She is the winner of many awards, including the prestigious Booker Prize. Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel that explores the theme of oppression and subjugation of women. She calls it a speculative fiction which can really happen. The novel takes place in the Republic of Gilead, where most of the population is rendered sterile because of nuclear and chemical pollution. The protagonist Offred, who is a fertile woman, has been taken as a slave, like other women, and are termed handmaids. Living in a state of constant fear and despair, she at last re-emerges with a new confidence to face the difficulties of life. She refuses to be treated as an object and leaves the society where woman is regarded as a mere fertility machine.

All the novels, poems and essays penned by Margaret Atwood place her in the category of technically accomplished and prolific writers. Her controlled, careful and elegant writing is blissfully endowed with creative imagination. Her numerous works have brought her great name and fame. Atwood's technical concerns have far reaching implications. So wide is her range of themes and techniques that " even within a single work, she can shift from deadpan description to bizarre flights of imagination." Most of her works are written from a woman's point of view and the main focus is on the relationships shared by men and women. She deals with woman's suffering and agony and portrays woman as a victim of male subjugation. She exposes the injustice done to women in a male-dominated society by making her women characters go through very harsh circumstances and by portraying man as a manipulative oppressor. She extends the implications of the word `woman' to include all the exploited and the oppressed people in the world. She emphatically points out that, "For a long time, men in literature have been seen as individuals, women merely as examples of a gender; perhaps it is time to take the capital W off Woman." Woman has been the victim of male domination and oppression from time immemorial. She has always received an exploitive treatment from the world of arrogant masculinity. The complete self-effacement and total submission on the part of the woman is taken for granted in every society. "Though sex differences do not imply sexual inequality and discrimination, the patriarchal society, all over the world, has always asserted man's superiority over woman and relegated her to the margin and obscured her history."

English Studies Journal, Margaret Atwood, Patriarchal Society, Womens Emancipation, Prolific Writers, Traditional Norms, Male-oriented Administrative Systems, Salvagings, Political Structures, Islamic Fundamentalist Societies, Selff-Actualization.