Women must not speak unless spoken to and if they must speak it has to be a short quick response. Society degrades women because they are unholy. Gilead remains in control by silencing all women and stealing any voice they once had. Not only were the women silenced, men were silenced as well. "The problem wasn't only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore . . . I'm not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy . . . You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage. Do they feel now? I say. Yes, he says, looking at me. They do" (263). The red centre is a place where the aunts teach and try to "redeem" the handmaids and wipe them of their sins. In here, the aunts took charge by showing them videos of the past and pointing out the wrongdoers, one which was Offred's mother. No matter how hard the aunts tried, they could not force the information into the handmaid's brains. Once they tried to bestow the fact that women weren't important, the higher ranked men tried to prove how they were the ultimate sex.
The Bible goes to say that Eve was made from Adam's rib but what was the real reason that she was created? "For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake. Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels" (1 Cor. 11:8-10). Atwood's book is no doubt a dystopia, but could the dystopia be in retrospect that men, who obviously think they are more valuable, are ruining society because they are clearly subordinate to women? Women were thought of as the lesser, but they couldn't be destroyed completely.
If it were possible to eliminate women from Gilead, it seems that the republic would have done so.
