The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Margaret Atwood
Cover artist	Tad Aronowcz, design; Gail Geltner, collage (first edition, hardback)
Language	English
Genre	dystopia, science fiction
Publisher	McClelland and Stewart
Publication date	1985
Publication place	Canada
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	324 (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-7710-0813-9 (first edition, hardcover)

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. The novel, set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain agency, against a backdrop of the establishment of a totalitarian theocratic state. Sumptuary laws (essentially, dress codes) play a key role in the form of social control in the new society.

The novel is often studied by school and college students. The American Library Association lists it in "10 Most Challenged Books of 1999" and as number 37 on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000" due to a high volume of complaints from parents of pupils on these courses regarding the novel's anti-religious content and sexual references.

The Handmaid's Tale won the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. It was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1987 Prometheus Award, and the 1986 Booker Prize.

Plot summary

The story is told from the perspective of Offred, a handmaid. Offred is a patronymic which describes her function in the Republic of Gilead. Offred belongs to her Commander, Fred, as a concubine; her real name is not revealed.

As the novel opens, the government of the United States has been overthrown several years earlier. The country has been taken over by Christian fundamentalists who have renamed it and made it into a theocratic state. Women must submit to men and no longer have any civil rights. Their chief function is childbearing and taking care of their husbands. This has been imposed as a means to improve the birth rate as infertility has become rampant due to environmental pollution. This also makes it a serious problem for the handmaids as the punishment for failing to produce a child after attempts with three commanders is to be declared an Unwoman and then sent to the colonies. Furthermore, Gilead does not recognize male infertility.

Highly placed party men — known as Commanders — in the Gilead government are given handmaids to have sex with and bear their children, just as Bilhah and Zilpah, handmaids to the biblical matriarchs Rachael and Leah, bore children for them with Jacob when they were infertile. Handmaids are drawn from "fallen women" — those who have committed sexual crimes.

The narrator was previously married to a divorced man. Since divorce has been declared retroactively non-existent, she was declared to have been living in sin with him. Her daughter is taken away from her to be raised by another family, and she, with proven fertility, is forced to become a handmaid. Offred is placed in the household of the Commander Fred, and Serena Joy, his wife.

Handmaids spend a maximum of two years in a particular household before they are moved. Those who cannot conceive within three placements are deemed barren Unwomen and sent to the colonies, so that many genuinely fertile Handmaids seek to impregnate themselves using alternative methods. For example, when Offred receives a medical check-up, the doctor offers to "do the job" for her. Similarly, Fred's wife Serena Joy arranges an illicit affair between Offred and Nick the chauffeur, so that Offred may conceive and produce a child for Serena Joy and her husband and avoid deportation. The dual pressure to conceive produces an insurmountable psychosis in the handmaids. Offred frequently refers to the words secretly carved in dog Latin inside her closet where no one can see, presumably left by a former handmaid — Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (Don't let the bastards grind you down). Offred's current assignment is her third after she had failed to become pregnant with her previous two Commanders.

This third assignment differs from her earlier experiences in that she is given, in various disjointed episodes, glimpses that all is not as it seems in Gilead. Through these glimpses she discovers that the people in her life, while paying lip service to Gilead's rigid mores, seek various means of expressing their illicit desires.

Offred initially becomes aware of these transgressions when Fred orders her to visit his study late at night. He wishes to establish a more personal relationship with her, as he is forbidden to converse with her outside of their monthly sex. He offers to play Scrabble with her. Since women are forbidden from reading and restricted to specific duties assigned to them, this is an illicit activity. He also obtains forbidden hand lotion for her and allows her to read books and magazines from the past. On one occasion, he dresses her in a sexy costume and smuggles her into Jezebel's, a nightclub and brothel run by the party. He asks that she keep all this secret from his Wife, Serena Joy.

At the same time, Serena Joy has also asked Offred to keep secrets from the Commander. Resentful of having been deprived of her formerly prominent role as a televangelist and right-wing lecturer, she feels the only thing that can give meaning to her life is a child. Since the Commander is likely to be sterile (his previous handmaids did not conceive), Serena Joy suggests that Offred attempt to conceive a child with Nick, the chauffeur, later revealed to be a member of the Mayday underground resistance.

Nick and Offred begin an emotional and sexual relationship which they continue until the end of the novel where it is left a little ambiguous whether Offred's transgressions have been discovered and is taken away for them or is being smuggled out of the household by the resistance movement. By this time, Offred and Nick believe that she might be pregnant.

Even though her fate is not made clear by the ambiguous ending, since she was able to make tapes on which she recounts her experiences — as stated in the appendix — it seems likely that she was rescued and may have been able to leave the country via the "Underground Femaleroad." Offred's on-tape narrative is treated as a historical document and is discussed at an academic conference far in the future.

Characters in The Handmaid's Tale

Offred

The protagonist in the tale, Offred, was separated from her husband and child after the formation of the Republic of Gilead. Since she has proven fertile, she is considered an important commodity and has now been placed as a handmaid in the home of the Commander Fred and his wife Serena Joy to bear a child for them. She is like a property that belongs to her Commander Fred ("Of-fred"), and serves him.

The story is told from her perspective as a first person narrative put together after the fact. Despite it not being explicitly stated, we are led to believe that she escaped in the end and has recorded this portion of her life onto tapes which have been discovered and transcribed.

Offred's former name is never explicitly given, but it is implied that it is June. At the beginning of the novel, all of the women training to be handmaids recite their names, and all are later accounted for except June. In addition, one of the Aunts tells Offred to stop "mooning and June-ing." It may well be a pseudonym as "Mayday" is the name of the Gilead resistance and could be an attempt on the protagonist's part to make something up; the Nunavit conference that takes place in the novel's epilogue is held in June, as well.

The Commander (Fred)

Commanders are very powerful members of the party running Gilead. They are given homes, servants, a car, access to the government's secret brothel and their own handmaid. If a handmaid is unable to bear a child, the blame is placed on the handmaid and he is given a new handmaid who is called by his name combined with the prefix "Of".

His background is never officially described as Offred does not have a chance to learn of his past, although he does volunteer, in one of their later meetings, that he is a sort of 'scientist' and previously involved in something like Market Research. Later, it is hypothesized—but not confirmed—that he might have been one of the architects of the republic and its laws.

Serena Joy

An ex-televangelist who seems loosely based on Anita Bryant, she is now a Wife in the fundamentalist theocracy she helped to create. All power and public exposure have been taken away from her by the state, as it has for all women in Gilead. Being sterile, she also has to bear the indignity of having a handmaid and being present every month as her husband has sex with the handmaid.

Ofglen

A neighbor of Offred's and fellow handmaid, she has been partnered with Offred to do the shopping for the household each day. Ofglen is a member of the Mayday resistance, and gets Offred involved. In contrast to the relatively passive Offred, Ofglen is very daring, even leaping forward to kill a spy who is to be tortured and killed in a "particicution," in order to save him the pain of a slow death. Ofglen later commits suicide before the government comes to take her away for being part of the resistance.

She is replaced as Offred's shopping partner by another handmaiden, also named Ofglen, who does not share the original Ofglen's feelings about Gilead.

Nick

The Commander's chauffeur, he lives above the garage. On Serena Joy's suggestion and arrangement, Offred starts a sexual relationship with him to try to increase her chances of getting pregnant and saving herself from becoming an Unwoman and being shipped off to the Colonies. She subsequently starts to have real feelings for him. Nick is an ambiguous character, and Offred does not know if he is a party loyalist or a member of Mayday.

Moira

Moira has been a close friend of Offred's since college. She is a rebel, and a lesbian. The two of them are taken to be handmaids together. Moira attempts to escape, while Offred who is passive, declines. Offred then loses track of Moira for several years, but encounters her at Jezebel's, the party-run brothel. Moira has been caught, sterilized and forced to become a prostitute by the Gilead leaders. She is grimly practical about her life of having sex with party leaders. Once her "snatch" wears out, she will be declared an Unwoman and sent to the colonies to clean up nuclear waste.

Luke

Luke was Offred's husband. Offred started seeing him secretly while he was still married to his wife, who he then divorced in order to marry Offred. Luke, Offred, and their daughter try to escape Gilead to go to Canada, but are captured. She constantly expects to see him hanged at The Wall but never sees him there and she never learns Luke's fate.

Major themes

Male Dominance

Male status is a major theme within The Handmaid's Tale. The Commander tells Offred that one of the motivations for establishing Gilead was that in pre-Gilead society "The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore... There was nothing for them to do. [Making Money was] not enough,... too abstract." [Chapter 32] Gilead was an attempt to establish defined roles for the genders -- Men as money earners, protectors, fighters, keepers of knowledge; Women as caretakers, children bearers and raisers. The Giladeans interpret St. Paul's letter to the Thessalonians on women's behavior to mean all women are to be submissive to all men and women are to be silent in the presence of men.

Men have their particular roles and duties to carry out along with the women:

• Commanders or Commanders of the Faithful are the ruling class within the Republic of Gilead. Because of their status, they are entitled to establish a Patriarchal household, with a Wife, a Handmaid if the wife is infertile, Marthas and Guardians. They have a duty to procreate but many are infertile. They wear black to signify superiority. They are allowed cars.
• Eyes - the internal intelligence agency who attempt to root out those violating the rules of Gilead.
• Angels - soldiers who fight in the Gileadean wars in order to expand and protect the country's borders. Angels may be permitted to marry.
• Guardians or Guardians of the Faith - Wear green uniforms. "They're used for routine policing and other menial functions." They are unsuitable for other work in the republic being "stupid or older or disabled or very young, apart from the ones that are Eyes incognito." [chap. 4] Young Guardians may be promoted to Angels when they come of age.

Doctors are also encountered in the story, but their place is not elaborated on.

Dystopia

See also: Dystopia

A revolution has taken place and the United States has become a nominally Christian theocracy, albeit one that does not appear to be modeled on any real Christian-majority society that has existed in history since the declining influence of the Catholic Church during and after the Inquisition. The US Constitution has been abrogated, and a new order has been established: the Republic of Gilead. Gilead is ruled through biblical fundamentalism and rigid enforcement of social roles vaguely resembling current Dominionist thinking. Most citizens have been stripped of their freedoms. Suppression succeeded mainly because literacy among the inhabitants was forsaken. All religions, except the official state religion, have been outlawed. The novel hints that Jews in Gilead were offered the chance to leave Gilead to go to Israel. However, it is later revealed that the boats carrying these people were sunk at some point after leaving port, leaving the people aboard them to drown.

Those who do not conform to the new norms, or who in the past became pregnant and did not immediately embrace the new ways are pressed into service as handmaids and personal servants or deported to "the colonies" (regions where pollution has reached toxic levels). All those who threaten the ideology of Gilead, and those who will not repent — political and religious dissidents, pro-choice advocates (called abortionists) and homosexuals (gender treachery) — are executed by hanging and displayed at "The Wall". The government has proclaimed martial law as "hordes of guerrillas" roam the countryside, undermining the power of the ruling government. This is reinforced by the roadblocks, sandbags, and the sounds of gun and rocket fire that are mentioned repeatedly, yet almost glossed over by the characters, who seem to regard living in a war zone as normal.

The title character is a woman who had married a divorced man before the revolution. As divorces have all been retroactively declared void, she is designated an adulteress and faced with exile to the colonies unless she becomes a handmaid. She has proved her fertility by giving birth to a daughter who survived infancy.

The handmaids are women modeled after Zilpah and Bilhah in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible, the slaves of the patriarch Jacob's wives Rachel and Leah. When the wives could not conceive, each of them had her handmaid couple with the husband to have children on their behalf. Like the biblical handmaids, the title character must have ritualized and unemotional sexual intercourse with a man, with his wife holding her hands. Sexual satisfaction is forbidden. If a child is produced, it will be considered the offspring of the man and his wife.

Subjugation of women

In Gilead, women are stripped of their independence through the reversal of feminist accomplishments. They are no longer allowed to hold property, arrange their own affairs, make reproductive choices, read, wear make-up, control money, or choose their clothes. Women are segregated into categories, and dressed according to their social functions.

Seven legitimate categories (Wives, Daughters, Widows, Aunts, Marthas, Handmaids and Econowives), and two illegitimate functional categories (Unwomen and, secretly, prostitutes), are mentioned in the novel.

Socially accepted and promoted categories of women in Gilead

White women seem to be the default in the Gilead society. In the novel, the main non-white ethnic group mentioned are Blacks. Blacks are labeled as Children of Ham while Jews are called Sons of Jacob. It is an underpinning assumption of the book that the reproductive value of white women in the United States (Gilead) is privileged over that of others. Women in Gilead are categorised “hierarchically according to class status and reproductive capacity” as well as “metonymically colour-coded according to their function and their labour” (Kauffman 232).

• Wives are at the top social level permitted to women. They are women married to the higher ranking functionaries in the new military dictatorship. They are often infertile for unknown reasons, but it is implied that it is due to ecological disasters and the effects of a bioweapon. Wives always wear blue dresses. After the death of her husband, a Wife becomes a Widow, and must dress in black.
• Daughters are the natural or adopted children of Wives. They wear white until marriage (it is mentioned in the book that some of the daughters were being wed at no older than 14, although this is not a set age). The narrator's daughter has been adopted by an infertile Wife.
• Aunts train and monitor the Handmaids. In return they receive—relatively speaking—a degree of personal autonomy. It is implied that they do the dirty work of the men running Gilead—being an aunt is the only way these unmarried, infertile women may have any autonomy. They appear to take out their anger on the fertile women who are their charges. Aunts dress in brown.
• Handmaids are fertile women whose social function is to bear children for the Wives. Handmaids are subjected to a monthly reproductive ritual derived from the biblical story of Rachel and Leah's reproductive competition (Genesis 29:31–35; 30:1–24). Handmaids dress in a red habit with a white head-dress that obscures their peripheral vision. The Aunt system produces Handmaids, by reeducating fertile women who have broken Gileadean gender and social laws. Owing to the demands of Wives for fertile Handmaids, Gilead gradually increased the number of gender-crimes. The Aunt system attempts to promote the role of the Handmaid as an honourable one and seeks to legitimise it by removing any association with gender-criminality.
• Marthas are older infertile women whose compliant nature and domestic skills recommend them to a life of domestic servitude in the houses of the elite. Marthas dress in green smocks. The title of "Martha" is based on the Gileadite reading of the incident recounted in Luke 10:38-42, where Jesus visits Mary, sister of Lazarus, and Martha; Mary listens to Jesus while Martha is preoccupied "by all the preparations that had to be made."
• Econowives are women who have married relatively low-ranking men, meaning any man who does not belong to the ruling elite. Econowives are expected to perform all the female functions: domestic duties, companionship, child-bearing. The Econowife dress is multicoloured red, blue, and green to reflect these multiple roles.

The division of labour between women engenders some resentment between categories. Marthas, Wives and Econowives perceive Handmaids as sluttish, and Econowives resent their freedom from domestic work.

Socially unacceptable categories of women in Gilead

Outside of mainstream society exist two further classes of women.

• Unwomen: Unwomen are sterile women, widows, feminists, lesbians, nuns and politically dissident women confined to the Colonies (areas of both agricultural production and deadly pollution). Handmaids who fail to produce a child after three two year cycles are also sent here. Unwomen as a category embraces all women unable to fit within the Republic of Gilead's gender categories. Unlike members of society who transgress and break fundamental rules (who are murderously punished), unwomen are simply regarded as categorically incapable of social integration as their society rejects them utterly. Males who engage in homosexuality (or related acts) are declared Gender Traitors, and either executed or sent to the Colonies to die a slow death. All those banished to the colonies, men or women, wear grey dresses.
• Jezebels or prostitutes: Informally, the desires of Commanders for mistresses and sexual variety has resulted in a collective form of prostitution available only to them. The women who populate this system are informally known as Jezebels. This category includes some lesbians and attractive, educated women who were unable to adjust to handmaid status. These women are housed in the remains of a hotel and are also used by Commanders to entertain foreign dignitaries. Jezebels dress in the remnants of sexualized costumes from "the time before" viz. cheerleaders' costumes, school uniforms, and Playboy Bunny costumes. While Jezebels have some degree of freedom in that they can wear make up, drink and socialize freely with men, they are still tightly controlled by Aunts. Once their usefulness for sex is over, they are also sent to the Colonies.

"The Ceremony"

Human sexuality in Gilead is regulated by the notion that sexual coupling for pleasure is fundamentally degrading to women. Men are understood to desire sexual pleasure constantly but are obliged to abstain from all but marital sex for religio-social reasons. The social regulations are enforced by law, with corporal punishment inflicted for lesser offences and capital punishment (sometimes inflicted by a group of Handmaids) for greater offences. This latter ritual, known as particicution, is also a means of allowing the Handmaids to let off steam, particularly when the condemned person is male.

"The Ceremony" is a non-marital sexual act sanctioned solely for the purpose of reproduction and unites Wives, Aunts, Marthas and Handmaids in an urgent mission. Sex acts that defile the Ceremony (for example, sexual contact with a Handmaid for pleasure) are punished with death. The sexual position of Econowives is inferred by references to Serena Joy's alienation from the world in which she was a "star," and by descriptions of wives who have been hung for various crimes. Though the narrator has little interaction with them, she is able to analyse what she perceives happening to them, and mourns that none of the various groups of women are able to empathize with the others. Women are taught to hate and fear other women.

The Ceremony re-enacts in rather literal fashion the biblical passage in which Jacob's infertile wife Rachel says to him "Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees" (Genesis 29:31–35; 30:1–24). The Gileadan variation on the passage has the Handmaid lying supine upon the Wife during the sex act itself.

Offred describes the ceremony in the following way.

My red skirt is hitched up to my waist though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for.

— Atwood, pg. 116

Once a Handmaid is pregnant, she is venerated by her peers and by the Wives. After the baby is born, it is given to the wife of her Commander, and she is reassigned to another household. The Handmaid's reward for giving birth is that she will never be sent to the Colonies, even if she does not conceive again. This suggests a reward within Gileadean society that gives some recompense for some women, however minimal. Atwood never explains what really happens to these women, but she does indicate that their reward is not what it seems to be. Moreover, these rewards may simply be a functional incentive for social cooperation, motivated more by a need to avoid disorder than by justice.

Owing to the ecological disasters, approximately one quarter of all surviving children born have physical defects. It is hinted that a nuclear war has taken place, as major cities are mentioned as being contaminated, which may be a cause of the mass infertility and birth defects. Babies born with defects are taken by the government, after which they are never heard of again. They are described by the Handmaids as shredders, a dysphemism that implies their death – perhaps by euthanasia. During the course of the narrative, we are introduced to a number of pregnant Handmaids, yet we do not see a child who survives long after birth. We do not even know the fate of the child Offred is carrying by the end of the novel, presumably while she is making the tapes and waiting for rescue. Atwood's writing allows the reader to presume a happy ending or a less sanguine conclusion, based on the inability of the anthropologists to find any trace of Offred or her descendants.

Pre-Gileadian society

The novel indicates that pre-Gileadian society was not a heaven for women. This society was late 20th century version of the United States as Atwood envisioned it developing at the time of its writing. In this society, women feared physical and sexual violence, and despite long-running feminist campaigns (approximately 1970–2000 within the text), they had not achieved equality. Feminist campaigners, particularly radicals like Moira and Offred's mother were persecuted by the state. In addition, mass commercialization of sexuality had occurred and prostitution had reached a nadir of "fast-food" and "home delivery" sexuality. Women outside of prostitution in "the former times" were subject to a socially-constructed vision of romantic love that encouraged serial monogamy in favour of men's social and sexual interests.

In pre-Gileadean society, despite holding a university degree from an unspecified North American university, Offred was a menial white collar worker. Offred's coworkers were all women, but her boss was a man. Aside from having had to cope with oppressive cultural and social phenomena, women lacked full and meaningful control over their economic lives.

Also, a sharp decline in the birth rate is described as having occurred before the rise of Gilead, when Offred notes that the Red Center she is kept at prior to being assigned to a Commander was a high school in the former times that was closed due to a lack of high school age students. The low birth rate is hinted at as having been a partial cause for the revolution as well.

Social regulation of human sexuality

As the Commander explains it, the Gileadian elite has formulated an explanation for the failure of society in "the former times", viz. that women were too available to men. Men's ready sexual access to women led to violence, abuse, and a decrease of authentic feeling for them. The solution was to limit men's access to women until they have proved themselves in socio-ideological terms. Commander Fred sees no problem in the fact that women are treated as the property of men in both societies, in the former as individual property and in the latter as societal property. Fred also makes it clear that women are considered to be intellectually and emotionally inferior. They are not permitted to read and female children are not educated, in the belief that allowing women to become literate was a great mistake of the past.

Sumptuary laws

See also: Sumptuary law

The sumptuary laws of Gilead are complex. All lower status individuals are regulated by dress laws. Women, in particular, are divided into castes by their dress. Men too are regulated but equipped with military or paramilitary uniforms: constrained but also empowered. Only rare civilians (increasingly persecuted) and Commanders seem to be free of sumptuary restrictions.

Those punished with death are dressed for the occasion: priests in long, forbidding robes and doctors in consulting gowns.

Biblical references

See also: Bible

The primary biblical reference in The Handmaid's Tale is to the story of Rachel and Leah (Genesis 29:31–35; 30:1–24). While Leah was fertile and was blessed by God, Rachel was barren, meaning she could not have children. Rachel proceeds to compete in producing sons for her husband, by using her handmaids as property. Rachel takes immediate possession of the children produced by her handmaids. In the context of Atwood's book, the story is one of female competition, jealousy, and reproductive cruelty.

A similar story also exists in Genesis, where Sarah is infertile, and Hagar conceives on Sarah's behalf. The Sarah and Hagar story is different from the Rachel and Leah story, mainly because of the active role played by Hagar, and Hagar's possession of her child. Sarah's fertility is restored by God at an advanced age. Atwood was aware of the similarity between these stories, and was using it to show the hypocrisy of Gileadean biblical interpretation: the biblical story showed a relationship between a wife and a handmaid which did not involve sexual and reproductive subjugation. Additionally, it was ultimately the choice of the wives in the Bible, whereas wives in Gilead (such as Serena Joy) are forced.

The Republic of Gilead, is from Genesis and means "hill of testimony" or "mount of witness," and thereby refers to the novel's function as an account and memory of the events it transcribes and records.

Key phrases

In The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood takes pains to emphasize the effect of changing context on behaviours and attitudes. A key phrase "context is all" (1996, pg.154, 202) is repeated throughout the novel. The Scrabble game, for example, illustrates her point, since Offred describes it as once "the game of old men and women" (1996, pg.149) but now forbidden and therefore "desirable" (1996, pg.149). Offred also perceives the world differently in a society that is morally rigid. Revealing clothes and make-up were part of her former life; yet, when she encounters some Japanese tourists wearing these, she is intrigued by her feeling that they are inappropriately dressed.

Social critique

Atwood's tale comprises a number of social critiques.

It presents a dystopian vision of society in the United States in the period 1970–1985, particularly in the period of backlash against feminism. This critique is most clearly seen in both Offred's remembrance of the slow social transformation towards theocratic fascism and in the ideology of the Aunts.

Immediately following the overthrow of the government, but before the new order had completely changed things, women begin to lose whatever freedoms they had previously had. Offred describes the loss of her own bank account (it is transferred to her husband's control) and then her job, before she, her husband and her daughter attempt to flee. An "Aunt" describes women's right prior to the overthrow as "freedom to" (i.e., women having the freedom to do as they pleased), while the time after is described as "freedom from" (i.e., women being given the freedom from choice).

Atwood is also mocking those who talk of 'traditional values', for example, such leaders as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who suggested that women should return to being housewives. Atwood was eager to demonstrate that extremist views might result in fundamentalist totalitarianism. Serena Joy, formerly a television gospel singer and preacher of traditional values, has been forced to give up her career and is clearly not content. Her preaching has destroyed her own life.

However, Atwood also offers a critique of contemporary feminism. By working against pornography, feminists in the early 1980s opened themselves up to criticism that they favoured censorship. Anti-pornography feminist activists made alliances with the religious right, despite the denials of some feminists. (See Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon). Atwood warns that the consequences of such an alliance may end up empowering feminists' worst enemies. Atwood also suggests, through descriptions of the narrator's feminist mother burning books, that contemporary feminism was becoming overly rigid and adopting the same tactics as the religious right.

Most notably, Atwood critiques modern, fundamentalist, religious movements, specifically fundamentalist Christianity in the United States, though there is a brief suggestion that she was also considering Iranian fundamentalist Islam. In the case of the United States, a religious revival in the mid-1970s seemed to remain influential in the early 1980s. Jimmy Carter, U.S. president during the period, had avowed his renewed and reaffirmed Christianity. Additionally, the religious right was growing through televangelism.

In the book, Atwood pictures revivalism as a counter-revolutionary doctrine, opposed to the revolutionary doctrine espoused by Offred's mother and Moira, which sought to break down gender categories. A common Marxist historical reading of fascism states that fascism is the backlash of the right after a revolution has failed. Atwood explores this Marxist reading and translates its analysis into the structure of a religious and gender revolution. This is demonstrated in the quotation, "From each according to her ability… to each according to his needs" (1996, pg.127), a deliberate distortion of Marx's own phrase, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" — the latter (whilst using the pronoun 'him') represents an ideological statement on class and society; the former, a stance taken by Gileadian society towards gender roles.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Main article: The Handmaid's Tale (film)

A 1990 film adaptation of the novel was directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It starred Natasha Richardson (Offred), Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy), Robert Duvall (The Commander, Fred), Aidan Quinn (Nick), and Elizabeth McGovern (Moira). MGM released the film on DVD in 2001.

A straight stage adaptation by Brendon Burns was toured by the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke, UK in 2002.

There is also an opera, written by Poul Ruders, which premièred in Copenhagen on March 6, 2000.

There is a full-cast dramatization, produced for BBC Radio 4 by the award-winning John Dryden in 2000.

See also

• If This Goes On— by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Children of Men by P. D. James
• Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham
• Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
• Pregnancy in science fiction

External links

• Analysis, background, themes and quizzes on The Handmaid's Tale.
• The most honored novels: The Handmaid's Tale has received numerous honours and is near the top of the list.
• An independent Wiki dealing with the analysis of the book only.
• New York Times review. Mary McCarthy, 1986.