Treatment of Sexual and Political Exploitation of Women in Margaret Atwood’s Novel Bodily Harm

Volume 3 Issue 1 Winter Edition 2023

Abstract

Aim: The purpose of this research paper is to bring out the sexual exploitation of women in the male dominated society. As the champion of the women, Atwood has written on the issues of women as their liberty and their rights; she shows how the women’s identity is redressed by the men and they are treated as the mere objects of sex. She represents the complex relationship between men and women and shows how the women are ruled by the men. Through the character of Rennie in the novel Bodily Harm, Atwood describes that what obstacles come in a woman’s way when she wishes to lead independent and free life. The chief protagonist, Rennie has to face the mental and physical problems; and she is tortured at every step in her life by male’s ill treatment. Working for her magazine Visor, she meets Jake, a designer in a packaging company and she finds Jake a good friend on whom she trusts fully and loves him heartily but he leaves her when he comes to know that Rennie has breast cancer. He is interested only in her body. She is sexually exploited by Doctor Deniel in the name of surgery. While living on Carribean Island, she is involved in the politics and she meets Lora who tells Rennie about the victim of her stepfather’s lust and she stabs her stepfather as he has a sexual assault on her. Many persons like her father want to sleep with her. When she goes to boat, there all the men want to have sexual relation with her. Both Rennie and Lora have to go to jail without their own faults. They have been exploited sexually as well as mentally by the prison guards in the prison.