The Handmaid’s Tale (Identities and Issues in Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Atwood
- First Published: 1985
- Genres: Long fiction, Dystopian fiction, Near future and distant future fiction
- Subjects: Dictators, Freedom, United States or Americans, Power, personal or social, Sexism, Sex or sexuality, Gender roles, Self, Slavery or slaves, Revolutions, Future, Twenty-first century, Prostitution or prostitutes, Religion, Feminism, Oppression, Women, Conservatism, Infertility, Childbirth, Totalitarianism, Women’s rights
- Locales: Gilead
The Work
Dire explorations of future societies, dystopias, have usually been written by and about men. What future hell awaits women? Margaret Atwood asked, after surveying major news stories of the early 1980’s: industrial pollution, surrogate parenthood, AIDS, conservative backlash, televangelism, and oppressive regimes in Argentina and Iran. The Handmaid’s Tale is her imaginative answer. In this bleak narrative, the government of the United States has been overthrown by the Republic of Gilead, a theocracy based on total conformity and reactionary Christianity....
[The entire page is 894 words long]
