From Page to Screen: Male Gaze, Female Oppression, and Docile Bodies in “The Handmaid’s Tale”

This paper examines Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and its television series adaptation through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, complemented by Michel Foucault’s concept of the docile body. It explores how the visual and narrative strategies of the television series reframe the protagonist’s subjectivity, alternately resisting and reinforcing patriarchal dynamics. The analysis compares the novel’s narrative interiority with the adaptation’s visual language, highlighting tensions between feminist resistance and aestheticized surveillance. By integrating Foucault’s surveillance and discipline theory into the Mulveyan framework, the study offers a nuanced account of how adaptation can reframe feminist narratives for contemporary audiences, by either perpetuating or subverting gendered oppression. The findings suggest that while the television series reconfigures Offred’s character into a more active agent of resistance, it simultaneously risks reinforcing objectification through its visual focus. Ultimately, the paper argues that adaptation is not a neutral process but one that reconfigures both the political and aesthetic meanings of the source material.