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Interspersed with her narratives of her present-day experiences are flashbacks of her life before and during the beginning of the revolution, including her failed attempt to escape to Canada with her husband and child, her indoctrination into life as a Handmaid by the Aunts, and the escape of her friend Moira from the indoctrination facility. Offred details her life starting with her third assignment as a Handmaid to a Commander. She undergoes training to become a handmaid along with other women of her standing at the Rachel and Leah Centre.Īpart from Handmaids, women are classed socially and follow a strict dress code, ranked highest to lowest: the Commanders' Wives in sky blue, the Handmaids in red with large white bonnets to be easily seen, the Aunts (who train and indoctrinate the Handmaids) in brown, the Marthas (cooks and maids, possibly sterile women past child-bearing years) in green, Econowives (the wives of lower-ranking men who handle everything in the domestic sphere) in blue, red and green stripes, and widows in black. Therefore, she is forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", the ruling class of men, and is known as a "Handmaid" based on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah. In this era of environmental pollution and radiation, she is one of the few remaining fertile women. The story is told in first-person narration by a woman named Offred. Most significantly, women are deprived of control over their own reproductive functions. Women become the lowest-ranking class and are not allowed to own money or property, or to read and write. One of the most significant changes is the limitation of women's rights. The regime reorganizes society using a peculiar interpretation of some Old Testament ideas, and a new militarized, hierarchical model of social and religious fanaticism among its newly created social classes. The new regime moves quickly to consolidate its power, overtaking all other religious groups, including Christian denominations. The United States Constitution is suspended, newspapers are censored, and what was formerly the United States of America is changed into a military dictatorship known as the Republic of Gilead. A sequel novel, The Testaments, was published in 2019.Īfter a staged attack that killed the President of the United States and most of Congress, a radical political group called the "Sons of Jacob" uses theonomic ideology to launch a revolution. An ebook version was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 1986. The book has been adapted into a 1990 film, a 2000 opera, a 2017 television series, and other media. In 2022, The Handmaid's Tale was included on the " Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. Clarke Award in 1987 it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. It also alludes to the tradition of fairy tales where the central character tells her story. The title echoes the component parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories (such as "The Merchant's Tale" and "The Parson's Tale"). The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of women's reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the "Handmaids", women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, white supremacist, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985.
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