The Body as the Object of the Gaze in The Handmaid’s Tale and Never Let Me Go

Abstract

Gaze always denotes a reciprocal relationship for humans because it involves the power relations between the gazer and the one who is subjected to the gaze. The Handmaid's Tale, written by Margaret Atwood in 1985, is the first focal point of this study as the novel includes dystopic female bodies that are disciplined through a constant gaze and employed in the service of the nation for maintaining the eternity of patrilinearity. Due to the low fertility rates of elites, the Republic of Gilead—the novel's representation of a theocratic state-assigns fertile female bodies as incubators, and those female bodies are constantly under surveillance. The second focus point of this study is Kazuo Ishiguro's dystopian science fiction novel Never Let Me Go written in 2005, which shares many similarities with The Handmaid's Tale. Never Let Me Go is set in a dystopic world where scientists are allowed to conduct cloning experiments on children in order to harvest their organs. Because the experts must be certain of the 'harvesting' process, the children's bodies are constantly monitored. The goal of this study is to explore how human bodies become the object of the gaze and under what circumstances they are transformed into reproduction machines by being filtered and controlled by the gazing power in the novels The Handmaid's Tale and Never Let Me Go.