Critical Reactions to The Handmaid's Tale This essay will focus exclusively on critical reactions to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. For the most part, we found two separate opinions on The Handmaid's Tale, regarding feminism. One opinion is that it is a feminist novel, while the opposite opinion is that it is not. Feminism: A doctrine that supports the social, political, and economic rights of women equal to those of men, as recorded in Webster's Dictionary. This topic is prevalent in the novel The Handmaid's Tale. Margaret Atwood, a Canadian writer, spends most of her time introducing women in her books, novels, and poems that examine their relationships in society. In the book Atwood focuses her novel on a girl who appears to be one of the handmaids. These handmaids are essentially women used for the birth of children. According to Atwood in one of her many interviews, "women were inherently good and men bad; to divide along allegiance lines, that is, women wearing high heels and makeup were immediately suspect, those in overalls were acceptable " (Problems of) . These ideas were and are created by our social and political systems and cannot be corrected until those systems are reformed. The feminist ideas expressed in this novel are necessary. Furthermore, these women exist not only in the novel, but women like this exist in real life. Women are treated like property instead of human beings. The only purpose in their life is to have children. The dystopian novel he created isolated certain social trends and exaggerated them to highlight their more negative qualities. Pornography is a major factor in The Handmaid's Tale. It is evident in chapter twenty where Offred describes the films that Aunt Lydia showed her and the other handmaids during their stay at the Red Center. This type of film was used to show “what life was like” for the future handmaiden (Atwood 118). Atwood used Offred to express his ideas about pornography. Atwood obviously doesn't like it. But, in another sense, it highlights the fact that Aunt Lydia lies to Offred and the others when she says that this is how life used to be. Atwood never overlooks the fact that women have been misrepresented both by themselves and by men. She is careful to read the entire novel without assigning blame and leaving the questions to the reader. How did this company get to this point? Could this really happen? Are we doing something to prevent it? In the novel there is no real strong force. Especially no dominant male or female roles, which makes it difficult to decide who is to blame. Feminism is clear throughout the book and Atwood represents women very well. Many readers have questioned the novel's character as feminist criticism. The Handmaid's Tale offers a conservative interpretation of women's ideal social actions, advocating what looks more like traditional femininity, rather than revolutionary feminism. Atwood's main character, Offred, dreams of being free. But Offred's vision of freedom is very unfeminist. For example, at the beginning of The Handmaid's Tale, Offred dreams of things that she is sometimes allowed to do, such as helping bake bread. «Or I would help Rita make bread, sinking my hands into that soft and resistant heat that is so similar to meat» (11). Offred wants to experience touch, but why must Atwood display this need in such a domesticated way? Baking bread, for me, is the emblem of the traditional family, where the mother stays at home to cook for her man and his children. Cases like these lead critics to say that this book is not about the.