USE OF WOMANHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD CONCEPT IN FEMINIST THEORY IN TEPPER’S GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY AND ATWOOD’S HANDMAID’S TALE

 

Azadeh Mehrpouyan

Department of English Literature, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, IRAN dr.mehrpooyan@gmail.com

 

Abstract

This paper focuses on Margaret Atwood in Handmaid’s Tale and Sheri S. Tepper in Gate to Women’s Country use the same three ‘women type’ characters to explore ideal female gender roles and their relationship to society as well as motherhood concept in feminist perspective Motherhood has always been one of the most challenging themes in both feminist theory and fiction. The reclaiming and celebration of the woman-mother is the defining act of resistance to the repressive Western phallogocentric system. Feminist science fiction produced within the framework of patriarchy is conscious to point out how patriarchy influences the act of motherhood. Tepper in the Gate to Women’s Country tries to deconstruct the Greek myths of mother/daughter relationship. The present study attempts to explore the significance of feminist SF in redefining gender through rewriting the concept of motherhood beyond the borderlines of the Western culture.

This study discuss both authors use these characters as part of their bigger rhetorical engagement with the American gender essentialist political movements of 1980s. In particular, this study extends Atwood’s types, despite her empathy with the feminist movement, distance her from both radical second wave separatist feminism and the American religio-political conservative movement of the 80s, and, against Dopp, that Offred does in fact offer an effective ideal female to be emulated in that, by the end of the novel, she defines and externalizes herself.  Tepper’s women types align her much closer to the essentialism of second and third wave feminism than Atwood.

 

Keywords: Motherhood, Atwood, Tepper, Gender Roles, Women, Feminist Science Fiction, Handmaid’s Tale, Gate to Women’s Country