Bodies in Control: Gender, Power, and Social Exclusion in The Handmaid’s Tale and “Khol Do”

Lakshita Arora

Bodies in Control: Gender, Power, and Social Exclusion in The Handmaid’s Tale and “Khol Do”

Author(s)	Ms. Lakshita Arora
Country	India
Abstract	Set against the dystopian theocracy of Gilead and the socio-political upheaval of the partition era in South Asia, the texts The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Khol Do by Saadat Hasan Manto respectively focus on how women’s bodies are reduced to functional objects within systems structured by gendered, classed, and socio-political hierarchies. This paper takes a comparative analysis approach towards the representation of women’s bodies as sites of control, violence, and ideological inscription in both texts. By drawing on Michael Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, the paper explores how institutional hierarchy and power, and social forces control, regulate, and produce “docile bodies” through constant surveillance, ritual, and violence. In contrast to The Handmaid’s Tale, where a female’s body is codified under a strict theocratic structure that governs reproduction and identity through religious dogma and ideological discourse, Saadat Hasan Manto’s Khol Do reveals a more chaotic yet equally systemic form of bodily control (that of females), where caste, class vulnerability, and the breakdown of social order during partition render Sakin’s body susceptible to repeated violation. Through Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, this paper further examines the system through which women are compelled to enact according to the state-imposed identities through continuous bodily practices - whether that is through state-sanctioned rape of the handmaid’s of the conditioned response of Sakina to the command “khol do.” Additionally, this paper also includes Barbara Creed’s notion of the “monstrous feminine” that enables an understanding of how the female body is construed as a site of control, fear, and moral regulation within patriarchal discourse. The comparative reading of the texts highlights how literature across different contexts reveals the consistent intersections of gendered oppression with class and social hierarchy, while also emphasising the need to re-examine the conditions under which women’s bodies are held hostage for hierarchies and systems to persist.
Keywords	Religious dogma, ideology discourse, gender, class, social hierarchy
Field	Arts
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 3, May-June 2026
Published On	2026-05-18

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Bodies in Control: Gender, Power, and Social Exclusion in The Handmaid’s Tale and “Khol Do”

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