context

• The American New Right was a 1980s movement with conservative ideas about moral behaviour and the role of women in society, which are mirrored in Gilead.
• Gilead’s ideas on religion are reminders of the fundamentalist views of the American New Right movement.
• Some critics say that Serena Joy may be modelled on Phyllis Schlafly, an extreme right activist who travelled America urging support for her conservative views on women.
• Atwood uses the dystopian genre to satirise the extreme views of American 1980s conservatism.
• Atwood’s own ancestry lies in Puritanism: her relative, Mary Webster, was hanged as a witch in 1683.
• Puritanism’s ideal is a Utopian society, with traditional values.
• In practice, Puritanism means oppression, theocracy and patriarchy, features of dystopian Gilead.
• The strict rules of dress and behaviour forced upon Offred are symbolic of the Puritan view of women as inferior.
• In Puritan New England, the first buildings were a prison and gallows, symbols of oppression like the Wall, and the University where Salvagings take place.