The Handmaid's Tale - Social Groups

Social Groups

In this novel characters are segregated by categories and dressed according to their social functions. The complex sumptuary laws (dress codes) play a key role in imposing social control within the new society and serve to distinguish people by sex, occupation, and caste.

Read more about this topic:  The Handmaid's Tale

Famous quotes containing the words social and/or groups:

    The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

    ... until both employers’ and workers’ groups assume responsibility for chastising their own recalcitrant children, they can vainly bay the moon about “ignorant” and “unfair” public criticism. Moreover, their failure to impose voluntarily upon their own groups codes of decency and honor will result in more and more necessity for government control.
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)