Polygamy in the US is something that many people practice through the Mormon religion. Although illegal in the US, it is still practiced in a few states including AZ and UT. This specific way of believing has a lot in common with the way the women in Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale” are treated. In the book and in the religion women are made mainly for making babies and serving the men. The men are the rulers and they have sex with many women so that their babies can be made. The women both wear certain uniforms and have specific jobs. My main question about all of this is why are the women so submissive? Do some of the women actually believe that this is the way life should be? I have always found polygamy interesting in the sense that I never understood how a woman after all these years of equality could be so submissive to a man. I hope that in reading a little more about the religion I can better understand the book we have just read as well and where the author was going with it.
picture source http://needlenose.com/wp/2004/02/page/2/
http://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/ for more info on Mormonism
