Critics to be quoted:

The Handmaid's Tale ● "In the Gileadean patriarchy, a woman is

denied the right to possess or to have control
over her own body. Her body is segmented and
her value is determined on the basis of her
reproductive capability. In The Handmaid's
Tale, Atwood suggests that the society of today
where choices are too many may lead to a
totalitarian future that prohibits choice."-
"Ecofeminist Vision: A Study of Margaret
Atwood's Surfacing and The Handmaid's Tale"
by K. Reshmi
● "Offred's power is in language."-Quote by Carol
Beran
● "The monthly rape 'Ceremony' [which] follows
the scriptural 'and she shall bear upon my
knees/ and grotesquely requires the presence
of Wife, Handmaid, and Commander. It
synthesises the institutionalised humiliation,
objectification, and ownership of women in
Gilead."- Cavalcanti
● "The work women do, conspires to maintain the
subjection of their own kind."-"Reconstructing
Margaret Atwood's Protagonists" by Patricia
Goldblatt
● "Women are at the margins and exist mainly as
a source of frustration, irritation and temptation"
- Paul Bell
● “Atwood demonstrates, through Offred, that
women... may transcend their conditioning,
establish their identity”- Lucy Freibert
● “Dystopias are more like dire warnings than
satires, dark shadows cast by the present into
the future”- Atwood
● “her choice of female narrators turns the
traditionally masculine dystopian genre upside
down”-carol anne howells
● offred ignored, romanticised and
accommodated -stillman and Johnson( offred's
role in rebellion)
● “Gilead controls women by elevating them,
fetishizing motherhood, praising femininity, but
defining it in terms of service to men and
children”-NYT review
● “There is no sisterhood only division and
disempowerment”-wisker

The Colour Purple- ● 'Alice Walker has exposed a country's dark

● When The Color secrets'- Richard Wesley,1986
Purple was published ● “Even though the reversal of gender roles can
in 1982, many critics
recognized the subvert the prescribed gender roles, it causes
ingenuity of the novel. still another polarity between men and women”
At the same time - Pi-Li Hsaio
 however, Alice Walker ● Thus, contemporary critics turned to use
and The Color Purple female bonding along with mothering as a
were also attacked
(largely by Black potential source of female identity -(Humm
critics) who were 122).
insulted by Walker’s ● One of the main objectives of modern feminism
apparently damaging is for women to restore the female body since
portrayal of
African-Americans.
that was the patriarchal culture appropriated
long ago according to Daniel W. Ross’s text
● When The Color “Celie In The Looking Glass: The Desire For
Purple was published Selfhood In The Color Purple” (1988).
in 1982, many critics ● Walker in an article admits that she used past
recognized ingenuity
of the novel. At the experiences."This behaviour - this
same time however, slave-owning mentality, came down into the
Alice Walker and The family, because their sons and grandsons
Color Purple were looked at their behaviour as the behaviour of
also attacked (largely
by Black critics) who
men." - Aida Edemariam, The Guardian
were insulted by ● 'Womanist is to feminist as purple is to
Walker’s apparently lavender'- Walker, In Search Of Our Mothers'
damaging portrayal of Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1983
African-Americans. ● “subservience of any kind is death to the spirit”-
Alice Walker