hmt context

• Mead: '"Her fiction has imagined societies riddled with misogyny, oppression, and environmental havoc. These visions now feel all too real"'
• Potts: '"Felt threatened by the implicit feminism of the early books, and some jealousy of the prominence she had achieved in Canadian literature has been evident"'
• Feminism in Atwood's novels

  • Portrays female characters dominated by patriarchy
  • Sheds light on women's social oppression as results from patriarchal ideology
• Atwood denies that The Edible Woman, published in 1969 and coinciding with the early second wave of the feminist movement, is feminist and claims that she wrote it four years before the movement</b>
• Atwood believes that the feminist label can only be applied to writers who consciously work within the framework of the feminist movement
• Gilead


  A Puritan theocracy with religious trappings and rigid class, gender, and racial castes, built around the singular desire to control reproduction
• Gilead is similar to Puritanical New England, but reinforced with the modern-day fervor of the Christian right
• People who deviate from fundamentally Christian lifestyles are hung in public ceremonies, and televangelists encourage women to be docile and domestic
• Many of the government-sanctioned traditions in Gilead are exaggerations, parodies or literal interpretations of Old Testament stories and prayers
• The modest costumes worn by the women of Gilead are based on Western religious iconography
• The Wives wear blue, which is associated with purity, and the Virgin Mary; the Handmaids wear the red color, which is associated with parturition, and Mary Magdalene
• Econowives are the wives of lower-status men who wear striped clothing
• Face-hiding bonnets were inspired by mid-Victorian dresses and nuns
• The Handmaid's Tale portrays the conservative Christian right in America during Ronald Reagan's presidency, contrasting it with the Puritannical ethos of Gilead
• Atwood exaggerates conservative values and combines them with the Puritannical ethos to create a believable society, with actions inspired by Puritannical colonies and crimes like homosexuality and abortions
• The regime uses biblical symbols as any authoritarian regime taking over America doubtless would- Atwood, not anti religion "it simply opposes the use of religion as a foundation for dictatorship"
• The Birth Dearth, abortion, divorce and the growth of the Gay Rights movement were concerns during the Reagan presidency
• The Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979 resulted in high infertility
• Science fiction


  Has monsters and spaceships
• Speculative fiction


  Could really happen
• Phyllis Schaely was an outspoken right wing conservative activist who advocated for Reagan's ideologies and reflects the character of Serena Joy, who wanted to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
• Decree 770 was a law in Romania passed in 1967 which made abortions and all forms of contraception illegal, as the Government was worried about the decreasing birth rate and wanted to make their country larger and stronger
• Mandatory gynochologist check ups for over 25s were depicted in the speculative fiction
• Second wave feminism, which The Handmaid's Tale was written during in the 1980s, focused on equality and discrimination
• The Cultural Revolution was a mass purge of high level government officials in Mao's China between 1966 and 1976, echoing what is presumed to be the fate of the Commander, highlighting that no-one is safe in a totalitarian regime, regardless of their social status