Sob o Olho d’Ele(s): Gilead e o legado das vozes femininas em O Conto da Aia e Os Testamentos, de Margaret Atwood

Abstract

In this work, we seek to draw a brief overview of dystopia as a literary genre, drawing comparisons with utopia. It also seeks to analyze the novels Brave New World (1932) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) as political dystopias, analyzing the dystopian spaces of these novels and the way in which these works conceive concepts such as State, individual and collective freedom, and public and private spaces. Based on these discussions about the dystopian genre and the mentioned novels, we analyze the works The handmaid’s tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019), by Margaret Atwood. In this analysis, the objective is to verify the testimony of each of the narrating characters and their role within the narrative, as well as to verify the dystopian space of Gilead, based on the discussions about Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-four. It is also analyzed the chapters about the symposiums which close both of Atwood’s books. In the analysis of these symposiums, we can see how the narrators' testimonies, both in The handmaid’s tale and The Testaments, is contested by professor Pieixoto, who ignores the human dimension of the narrators' histories.