Suppressing Agency: Transitivity Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) explores the notion of female body in the context of a dystopian society, the totalitarian theocracy of Gilead, where female body is considered as the essential source of breeding. Definedby their reproduction ability, the handmaid’s body is constantly controlled, oppressed, objectified andexploited by different means of power. This paper attempts to delineate the power relations between the main characters by analysing the role of participants and processes in different situations. Theories on transitivity introduced by Halliday (2004), Simpson (1993) and Ryder (2006) have been employed here to examine howdifferent processes assign different degree of power to the characters. The focus of current study is mainly on the parts where the protagonist’s body is foregrounded as the sexual object used for the government’sreproduction goals. The analysis attempts to show how the female body is objectified and oppressed by different means of power and how consequently it becomes alienated from the main character who does not directly affect anything or anyone and remains passive throughout the novel

Keywords:

The Handmaid’s Tale , transitivity , female body , agency , power relation