Author(s): Tülay AKKOYUN
This paper will focus on determining the presence and the position of women in dystopian novels by comparatively analyzing the situation of the women whose enslavement is sealed with the color red in outstanding feminist dystopian works such as Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and American author Hillary Jordan’s 2011 novel “When She Woke”. A totalitarian regime imposes a male-dominant society ruled by a single person. As nations drift apart from democracy, the freedom and the rights of women are restricted or even removed. Sexuality is dangerous for a totalitarian regime since emotions such as love and desire and family as an institution and family ties are factors that oppose the absoluteness of the dictator regime. (Huxley, 2010, 23) This is why sexual lives of women and their rights to abortion and birth are regulated by the state. * Dr. Ö?r. Üyesi, Mu?la S?tk? Koçman Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Mütercim Tercümanl?k Bölümü. Uluslararas? Sosyal Ara?t?rmalar Dergisi / The Journal of International Social Research Cilt: 13 Say?: 69 Mart 2020 & Volume: 13 Issue: 69 March 2020 - 14 - It is known that dystopia has meanings such as dark utopia or anti-utopia. One can observe that two aforementioned dystopian novels that were written based on their authors’ concerns over their own time period and thus envisaging negative practices in the future coincide in their use of the color red. This paper try to clarify the position of the rebel and enlightened women disobeying the regime and the relation of this position with the color red by using comparative examples from these novels focusing on the color red and the reason for this association. By writing feminist dystopian fiction, the intellectual authors who realize the position of the women in society is worsening gradually, warn the women and the society at large with the prediction that the situation might worsen in the future. Considering the general condition of the world, one can see that feminist dystopian novels can in fact be seen as the women’s outcry.
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