Den religiöst motiverade könsmaktsordningen : En textanalys av Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid’s Tale

• Main Author: Malm, Albin
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Religionssociologi 2018
• Subjects: popular culture; The Handmaid’s Tale; religion; gender; text analysis; banal religion; gender theory; mediatization theory; populärkultur; En tjänarinnas bekännelser; genus; genusvetenskap; textanalys; medialiseringsteorin; Religious Studies; Religionsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-353047

Through the history have the women been subordinated to the men, structures that still are present in these days even though feminist movements have tried work against them. One platform that is quite common to use for drawing attention to a certain subject is popular culture. Here the author can disguise their thoughts or highlight them through another context. This brought my attention to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale where religious symbols are commonly used through the book at the same time as women’s rights are neglected. I wanted to know how these religious symbols are connected to this kind of structures, how they are motivating them. To answer that question I used a text analysis with the focus to find the underlying factors to this kind of use of religious symbols and how the gender roles are built up. I used two kinds of theories, one is Stig Hjarvard’s mediatization theory with the focus on banal religion, and the other is Yvonne Hirdman’s gender theory that are focusing on the view of women through the history. What I found was that Atwood is using religion as a theme to criticize the patriarchal structures in her time and to comment on the use of religious symbols uncontextualized to debate on questions that affects a majority of people, like questions about sexuality, abortion and sexual abuse.