How Effectively Does Atwood Present Offred's Struggle to Establish/Maintain Control Over Her Own Life/Identity

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How Effectively Does Atwood Present Offred's Struggle to Establish/Maintain Control Over Her Own Life/Identity

The Handmaids Tale is a woman's autobiographical narrative that challenges the absolute authority of Gilead, highlighting the significance of story telling as an act of resistance against oppression, thereby making a particular kind of individual political statement. Such as when Offred steals the butter from the dinner table to use as hand and face cream.

" There's a pat of butter on the side of the plate. I tear off a corner of the paper napkin, wrap the butter in it, take it to the cupboard and slip it into the toe of my right shoe, from the extra pair, as I have done before. I crumple up the rest of the napkin: no one, surely, will bother to smooth it out, to check if any is missing. I will use the butter later tonight. It would not do, this evening, to smell of butter."

Offred's freedom, however, is circumscribed and she cannot tell her story within Gileadean context. She can only tell it once she has escaped. We learn at the end, in the Historical notes, that what we have