The Handmaid’s Tale was written in 1985 during a time of rising religious conservatism and backlash against women’s rights. Margaret Atwood based the society of Gilead on real historical examples, like the strict Puritan colonies in early America and modern theocratic regimes that limit women’s freedoms. She was also influenced by fears in the 1980s about environmental damage, falling birth rates, and growing political control. The novel warns what could happen if women’s rights and individual freedoms are taken away by an extreme religious government.
VIRTUALLY from its appear-ance in 1985, Margaret Atwood's futuristic novel The Handmaid'sTale has announced its indebtedness to George Orwell's 1984. Inhis dustjacket "blurb," E. L. Doctorow claims that Atwood's novel"can be read as a companion volume to Orwell's 1 984."
This article explores women’s complicity in and resistance against Gilead’s totalitarian patriarchy in The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019). It approaches complicity from a broader theoretical perspective, according to which individuals cannot escape being complicit with the political system in which they live since they are inextricably implicated in a web of social interactions and structural relations.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale serves as a powerful exploration of the relationship between religion and gender oppression within a dystopian society. Set in the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, the novel portrays a regime that uses a selective interpretation of biblical texts to justify and enforce rigid gender roles, stripping women of their identities and autonomy.
Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel drew on real-life politics but has never been more prescient, writes Jennifer Keishin Armstrong.
Handmaid’s Tale (1985), is one of those stories whose message seems to carry across the ages. The hyperreal patriarchy-asterror-regime that The Handmaid’s Tale portrays has become a well-known shorthand in feminist protest culture. Its presence became even more prominent in response to Donald Trump’s 2016 election, and its visibility as a protest symbol there and at other events aimed at curbing women’s rights was strength-ened by the visual imagery of the novel’s most recent adaptation.
Margaret Atwood on What ‘TheHandmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump.
This article seeks to draw parallels between today’s transmodernreality and the events recounted in Margaret Atwood’s TheTestaments (2019) and in The Handmaid’s Tale Hulu TV series,particularly Seasons 2 and 3 (2017‒19). Addressing issues suchas controlled reproduction, violence, corporeal subjection ofwomen, and environmental injustice, I focus on the body asa site of social construction, vulnerability and control.
Popularized by Hulu’s television adaptation, the allegories and iconography of The Handmaid’s Tale have been used in women’s reproductive rights activism around the world. However, at the same time, the series has been recognized and critiqued as offering white, conservative feminism.