The Handsmaid Tale

• • Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Canada.
  • She spent much of her childhood in rural Canada.
  • Atwood's work often focuses on the dynamics of power.
  • Her work is frequently dystopian and surreal.
• • The Handmaids Tale was written in 1984.
• • The Handmaids Tale was written in 1984.
  • Atwood wrote The Handmaids Tale as a piece of speculative fiction that examined that "change could be as fast as lightning".
  • Atwood's work is also heavily influenced by second wave feminism, it was reaching momentum in early 1980s with increased growth of feminist literature.
• Definition of feminism

  A group of movements and ideologies concerning the rights of women and advocating for sexual equality.
• • Atwood was influenced by feminisms second wave.
  • Offred refers to her mother as a feminist activist.
• • Offred is the first person narrator and protagonist. She is a Handmaid, a fertile woman forced to bear children for infertile upper class couples.
  • Serena Joy is a former gospel singer and the Commanders Wife.
  • The Commander is the patriarchal head of the household that Offred is assigned to at the beginning of the novel.