Passivization and Negation as Markers of Gendered Ideology in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale

Abstract

This study explores how passivization and negation function as ideological positioning markers of gendered ideology in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). The study has three interrelated objectives: first, to investigate how the grammatical structures of passivization and negation linguistically encode and reinforce gendered subordination and power asymmetries in The Handmaid’s Tale; second, to analyze the ways in which the employment of passivization and negation reflect and sustain patriarchal ideology in the discourse of the novel; and third, to explore how Atwood’s strategic use of passivization and negation provides discursive spaces for resistance and identity reassertion within the female narrative voice. The study draws on two analytical strands, critical discourse analysis and systemic functional grammar, to examine selected extracts from the novel. A qualitative textual analysis method is employed, focusing on patterns of passive constructions and negation in the discourse of the selected novel. This study has analytical and theoretical findings. Analytically, it reveals that passivization operates as a grammatical mechanism of control, concealing male or institutional agency and naturalizing female subjugation, and that negation constructs ideological boundaries by defining women’s identities through prohibition and absence. This, in turn, indicates that the use of passivization and negation in the selected novel contributes effectively to sustaining gendered ideology. Theoretically, this study contributes to the field of feminist linguistics by linking literary and discourse-analytic approaches to decipher the function of language as a tool of control and empowerment in gender-related contexts.