Doing femininity in the handmaid's tale and the bell jar

Abstract

This thesis examines the concept of doing femininity in The Handmaids Tale and The Bell Jar. Based on the notion that gender is cultural and constructed out of social doings, the thesis explores how the gender norms that combine agents of discipline and the belief in the determinism of nature, hampers womens resistance and emancipation that the feminist theories extol. The Handmaids Tale unfolds Plaths pessimistic views on motherhood regarding womens enslavement and the restriction of their choices, by depicting Esthers bell jar as a dystopian Republic that oppresses women. Gender performances that are imposed on women, once executed and repeated, are internalized. The internalization of the gender norms is consolidated by the agents of discipline, surveillance and punishment that essentialize gender differences. Doing femininity thus becomes a theory of conformity and the female body becomes more as a locus of social control than a tool of resistance. Through the protagonists failure to resist, The Handmaids Tale and The Bell Jar underscore the failure of the utopian feminist modes of emancipation in the face of the social institution, widening the gap between the theory and its practice.