Sources

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

Barbara Ehrenreich, "Feminism's Phantoms," in The New Republic, Vol. 194, No. 11, March 17, 1986, pp. 33-35.

Joyce Johnson, "Margaret Atwood's Brave New World," in Book World.

Robert Linkous, "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale," in San Francisco Review of Books, Fall, 1986, p. 6.

Amin Malak, "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and the Dystopian Tradition," in Canadian Literature, Vol. 112, Spring, 1987, pp. 9-16.

Joyce Maynard, "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell," in Mademoiselle, March, 1986, p. 114.

Mary McCarthy, "Breeders, Wives and Unwomen," in The New York Times Book Review, February 9, 1986, p. 1.

Peter Prescott, "No Balm in Gilead," in Newsweek, Vol. CVII, No. 7, February 17, 1986, p. 70.

For Further Study

Arnold E. Davidson, "Future Tense: Making History in The Handmaid's Tale," in Margaret Atwood: Visions and Forms, edited by Kathryn van Spanckeren and Jan Garden Castro, Southern Illinois University Press, 1988, pp. 113-121.

Discusses how the fictional land of Gilead mirrors a mental state rather than a political reality. The book also includes an autobiographical preface by Margaret Atwood.

Barbara Ehrenreich, "Feminism's Phantoms," in The New Republic, Vol. 194, No. 11, March 17, 1986, pp. 33-35.

Analyzes the novel as a critique of feminism's potential for repression.

Mark Evans, "Versions of History: The Handmaid's Tale and Its Dedicatees," in Margaret Atwood. Writing and Subjectivity, edited by Colin Nicholson, St. Martin's, 1994, pp. 177-188.

Gayle Greene, "Choice of Evils," in The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 3, No. 10, July, 1986, p. 14.

Compares Atwood's work with other feminist writers like Marge Piercy and Doris Lessing, concluding that the novel critiques radical feminism.

Amin Malak, "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and the Dystopian Tradition," in Canadian Literature, Vol. 112, Spring, 1987, pp. 9-16.

Explores how Atwood's feminist perspective sets her novel apart from dystopian classics such as Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.

Margaret Atwood: Language, Text and System, edited by Sherrill E. Grace and Lorraine Weir, The University of British Columbia Press, 1983.

Published prior to The Handmaid's Tale, this book examines Atwood's linguistic techniques. While some essays are geared toward professionals, most are highly informative and detailed.

Madonne Miner, '"Trust Me': Reading the Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 37, No. 2, Summer 1991, pp. 148-168.

Investigates the theme of love in the novel and its connection to survival.

Barbara Hill Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978.

Explores how four feminist authors—Bronte, Woolf, Lessing, and Atwood—address madness in their works.

Jerome H. Rosenberg, Margaret Atwood, Twayne Publishers, 1984.

Chronicles Atwood's career up to the publication of The Handmaid's Tale.

Roberta Rubenstein, "Nature and Nurture in Dystopia: The Handmaid's Tale," in Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms, edited by Kathryn Van Spanckeren, Jan Garden Castro, and Sandra M. Gilbert, Southern Illinois University Press, 1988, pp. 101-112.

Explores the themes of nature and nurture within the novel.

Hilde Staels, "Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: Resistance through Narrating," in English Studies, Vol. 78, No. 5, September, 1995, pp. 455-467.

Explores the novel's narrative structure and illustrates how the act of storytelling becomes essential to the protagonist's fight against oppression.

Charlotte Templin, in a review published in The Explicator, Vol. 49, No. 4, Summer 1991, pp. 255-56.

Analyzes the connection between the novel's setting and its themes.

In the early 1980s, before the release of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood published Bodily Harm (1981). The protagonist of this novel is Rennie Wilford, a journalist from Toronto who decides to escape the aftermath of her recent mastectomy and the resulting feelings of disfigurement. She heads to the Caribbean, intending to write a light-hearted travel piece. However, instead of a carefree experience, she encounters harsh political oppression and becomes unintentionally entangled in an international thriller. Despite her marginal and uninformed perspective on the events, she is thrust into the heart of the action.

Bodily Harm serves as a political primer, examining the intersection of gender and nationalism within patriarchal structures—themes that Atwood explores more extensively in The Handmaid's Tale. Rennie, much like Offred, initially believes her relative privilege protects her from the suffering inflicted on the powerless. She eventually realizes, "She is not exempt. Nobody is exempt from anything." Rennie also faces imprisonment and must transcend her conditioned feminine acceptance of victimhood to find paths of active resistance and moral empowerment.

As a writer, Rennie understands that her most subversive power lies in truthfully recounting her experiences. Whether she ultimately escapes and achieves her goal remains as ambiguous as Offred's final fate.

The widespread acclaim of The Handmaid's Tale and its thought-provoking themes led to its adaptation into a film in 1990. A diverse array of international talent contributed to the project's completion: German director Volker Schlöndorff, known in the U.S. for The Tin Drum (1980) and the 1985 TV adaptation of Death of a Salesman, helmed the film. Playwright Harold Pinter penned the screenplay, and the cast included prominent Hollywood actors such as Robert Duvall (the Commander) and Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy) alongside Victoria Tennant (Aunt Lydia), Aidan Quinn (Nick), Elizabeth McGovern (Moira), and Natasha Richardson (Kate/Offred). Daniel Wilson produced the $13 million project for Cinecom. The film, which was heavily marketed and reviewed, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the very city where Atwood began writing the novel in 1984. Despite this, it received mixed reviews. The novel's intricate structure was simplified into a chronological sequence of events, resulting in a more traditionally heroic and less ambiguous ending. Offred was given the pre-Gilead name Kate and portrayed as more proactive. The love story was emphasized at the expense of the novel's ideological critique, likely because of the challenges Wilson faced in securing funding due to the themes, especially its feminist elements. The screenplay, although satisfactory to Atwood, had to forgo the novel’s interior monologue, opting instead to visually depict the peculiar customs of Gilead's daily life. Initially hesitant, Schlöndorff accepted the project when he envisioned it "from a Kafka angle rather than as a political prophecy."

The acting is strong, and the cold, precise beauty of the visuals effectively conveys the familiar yet strange world that evokes terror. Although Richardson is perhaps too young and attractive to fully embody Offred's precarious status as a handmaid nearing the end of her fertility, she does capture Offred's tentativeness. Duvall masterfully blends the mundane and the menacing in his portrayal of the Commander, while Dunaway accurately portrays the brittle exterior and suppressed rage of Serena Joy. Despite being unsettling, the film lacks the emotional and intellectual depth of the novel.

The Handmaid's Tale was turned into a film by Volker Schlondorff, featuring Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway, Aidan Quinn, and Robert Duvall. The screenplay was written by Harold Pinter, and it was released by Cinecom Entertainment Group in 1990.

The author is interviewed in "Margaret Atwood," a videotape from the Roland Collection of Films on Art/ICA Video based in Northbrook, Illinois, from 1989.

Another video about the author is titled "Margaret Atwood Once In August," which was distributed by Brighton Video in New York, NY, in 1989.

"Margaret Atwood" is also the title of a short video recording from 1978, available from the Poetry Archive of San Francisco State University.

Atwood is featured in the educational film "Poem as Image: Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer," part of the "A Sense of Poetry" series, produced by Cinematics Canada and Learning Corporation of America.

This book is also available on audio cassette as "Margaret Atwood Reads from The Handmaid's Tale," produced by American Audio Prose Library of Columbia, Missouri, in 1988. It is #17 in the "A Moveable Feast" series.

Actress Julie Christie narrates The Handmaid's Tale on a two-cassette audio tape, available from Durkin Hayes Publishers in 1987. The order number is #DHP7214.

Another audio tape recording of The Handmaid's Tale is an eight-cassette collection produced by Recorded Books in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, in 1988. The order number is #88060.

"Margaret Atwood: An Interview with Jean Castro" is an audio cassette produced by American Audio Prose Library of Columbia, Missouri, in 1983. The order number is #3012.