explore the significance of conformity in The Handmaid's Tale

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood presents the way in which the Gileadean society demands absolute mental and physical conformity to its oppressive regime and how this dehumanises and torments the repressed Handmaids in the red centre at the exposition of the text. Offred describes how in an old high school, the fertile women designated as handmaids are ordered and regimented in a prison-like environment of ‘barbed wire’ and ‘angels’ (guards) to conform to the regime’s need of them as ‘empty chalices’ and ‘two-legged wombs’ to be used by the state in households to produce offspring, and nothing more. This conformity is achieved through the regime’s intense control of the Handmaids through the ‘aunts’ who threaten punishment with their ‘cattle prods’ while the Handmaids are kept from defying this authority by being separated and isolated through how the beds had ‘spaces between them so [they] could not talk’. The use of this structural flashback by Atwood allows her to convey the way in which coercion and intimidation is used to ensure conformity to the regime while the effects are then demonstrated in the next chapter where Offred begins to describe her intensely controlled life in the Commander’s house through how she asserts ‘I try not to think too much’ and how, because ‘circumstances have been reduced’, she is simply ‘alive’, therefore demonstrating how the prolonged time in such an oppressive environment, with no certain hope of escape, has lead to Offred’s acquiescence to the government’s dehumanising regime of women as being a ‘national resource’. This perhaps demonstrates the internalised and deep conformity inspired by this coercion as, although Offred’s flashbacks are perhaps a sign of subversion and a lack of complete indoctrination, she describes them as ‘sudden attacks’, suggesting they are something involuntary and unpleasant and therefore something she is attempting to supress to better conform to her limited and oppressed role as a ‘worthy vessel’ for the state. However, this does expose a level of weakness in conformity to a regime which enforces its totalitarian subjugation and dehumanising propagations via the force of angels as ‘objects of fear’, and thus through threat and punishment, as it shows how Offred, and therefore perhaps others, have not completely conformed to the regime’s need of them as being ‘empty’ and ‘containers’ as they still have a past and emotions, as all humans. This therefore perhaps allows Atwood to expose the futility and inexorable inability for a tyrannical regime to exact complete and utter conformity when this would require a sacrificing of identity and belief in one’s own humanity. To an extent, this is ironically exposed by the regime itself in the text where the such assiduous care is taken to prevent the handmaids from committing suicide where ‘they’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to’ as it suggests the regime is aware of the inevitable depression that conformity to their beliefs inspires. In this way, Atwood demonstrates the way in which total conformity may be impossible if it requires one to forego their sense of self and person as the natural response to such an act is suicide or rebellion, neither of which are tolerated and therefore, despite the intense force and intimidation used, sometimes conformity cannot be attained completely although the semblance of it perhaps can.