Irony and Feminist Criticism on The Handmaid’s Tale
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9584-2023v31n284815Keywords:
The Handmaid’s Tale, Irony, Feminist ReadingAbstract
The current critical analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood (1996), proposes exploring irony as a fertile rhetorical strategy to a feminist perspective. Through identification of the reading levels instigated by the work, we will examine how the consideration of the novel’s ironic advance enables the formation of a community of women readers. The critical work of Wayne Booth (1974; 1983) is used as central theoretical apparatus for a feminist reading which, stemming from the irony, receives the protagonist’s story in harmony with the implied author’s intentions.
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