Democracy and Personal Freedoms in

            
             In the Novel "The Handmaids Tale" the narrator, Offred, guides us through a futuristic, post American, society governed by theocracy. The primary goal of this theocracy is to boost a rapidly declining birth rate through the control of fertile women's bodies, and it does so through strict control of citizen's lives. In Chapter 39 of the novel the narrator says "Bodily functions at least remain democratic". This quote has a number of meanings, both in the immediate context, about Gilead, and society as a whole.
             At the time Offred speaks about this "Democracy of bodily functions" she is referring to the odd comfort she finds in her trip to the washroom of the hotel room. Offred says this to us after an evening in which she has been forced to parade herself around with the General to a forbidden brothel (Jezebels), at a great risk to her own life. Her trip to the washroom is virtually the only thing she has control of, with the exception of her thoughts and memories of life before Gilead. She is reflecting, in an almost sarcastic tone that a trip to the bathroom is one of the last places where the principles of social equality and respect for the individual remain. In other words this is one of the few areas in which the leaders of Gilead unable to interfere with. .
             Offred is criticizing Gilead because she can remember a time in which individual liberties were valued she loathes at them being denied to her now. Our author is also criticizing Gilead's lack of a democratic process. Because the body operates in a very democratic fashion, the "democracy of bodily functions" is a sharp contrast to how things work in a totalitarian society. The Human body can act as an accurate metaphorical model of many aspects of Government, and particularly how an ideal democracy is supposed to operate. This is the model that Offred embraces, while the constructors of Gilead may argue that the body would operate best if the individual were able to harness some kind of mind over body control, in the same way that the totalitarian system dictates over its people.