A Sociological analysis of Margaret Atwood's The Hadmaid's Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power

This study aims to analyse Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power from a sociological perspective. While The Handmaid's Tale deals with the oppression of women and the control of their bodies as a policy of an authoritarian society, The Power depicts women in the process of adjusting their sense of identity against the traditional gender roles imposed by society due to an unexpected biological change that solely affects them. Both works are to be classified as dystopian in terms of their unsettling core theme. This study contains three sections. The first section examines the concepts and the history of utopian and dystopian fiction and within this framework, particular focus is placed upon feminist utopias and dystopias. The second section analyses the basic themes and issues raised by the works of both authors, revealing both their characters and social structures. The third section looks at the similarities and differences of both works. Particularly, it focuses on the key aspects as being the concept of power and that of a gender-power relationship, as well as examining the mechanisms by which the structures of power maintain control. In addition, it reveals the natures of the different kinds of distopic futures envisioned by these feminist writers and brought about through a social change that affects power dynamics. In the conclusion, the findings are summarized and an evaluation of the significance of these two works due to the interrelationship between human nature and power is made.