The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. 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.

The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence. 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"). It also alludes to the tradition of fairy tales where the central character tells her story.

The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. 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. The book has been adapted into a 1990 film, a 2000 opera, a 2017 television series, and other media. A sequel novel, The Testaments, was published in 2019.

Plot summary

After staging an attack killing the President of the United States and most of United States Congress, a radical political group called the "Sons of Jacob" uses theonomic ideology to launch a revolution. The Constitution of the United States is suspended, newspapers are censored, and the United States is reformed into a military dictatorship known as the Republic of Gilead. The new regime quickly consolidates its power, overtaking all other religious groups, including Christian denominations.

The regime reorganizes society using a peculiar interpretation of some Old Testament ideas, and a new militarized, hierarchical model of social and religious theonomy is established among its new social classes. One of the most significant changes is the limitation of women's rights. Women are relegated to the lowest-ranking class and are denied the right to own property, read, and write. Women are deprived of control over their reproductive functions. Although the regime controls most of the country, various rebel groups continue to operate.

The story is told in the first person by a woman named Offred, considered a criminal for trying to escape to Canada with a forged passport with her husband and five-year-old daughter; she is also considered an adulterer for being married to a divorced man. Her marriage was forcibly dissolved, and her daughter was taken from her. Instead of being sentenced under the Republic of Gilead's draconian criminal justice system, Offred accepted training to become a "Handmaid" at the Rachel and Leah Centre, an alternative only available to fertile women: environmental pollution and radiation have drastically affected fertility, and she is one of the few remaining women who can conceive. She has been assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", the ruling class of men, and is made a Handmaid, a role based on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah. Handmaids are called by a patronymic constructed “of” + the first name of the head of their households; their names change as they change households.

Women are classed socially their rank is indicated by the color and design of their clothing; from highest to lowest, the Commanders' Wives in sky blue, their unmarried daughters in white, the Handmaids in red with obvious large white bonnets, the Aunts (who train and indoctrinate the Handmaids) in brown, the Marthas (cooks and maids, possibly unmarried 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.

Offred details her life, starting with her third assignment as a Handmaid to a Commander. Interspersed between the narrative of her present-day experiences are flashbacks of her life before and during the beginning of the revolution, including her failed escape, indoctrination by the Aunts, and her friend Moira's escape from the indoctrination facility. At her new home, she is treated poorly by the Commander's wife, Serena Joy, a former Christian media personality who supported women's domesticity and subordinate role well before Gilead was established.

To Offred's surprise, the Commander asks to see her outside of the "Ceremony", ritualized rape conducted during the Handmaids' likely fertile period each month, with the wives present, intended to result in conception. His request to see her in the library is illegal in Gilead, but they meet nevertheless. They primarily play Scrabble and Offred is allowed to ask favors of him, such as information or material items. He asks Offred to kiss him "as if she meant it" and tells her about his strained relationship with his wife. Finally, he gives her lingerie and takes her to a covert, government-run brothel using Jezebels, women forced into state-sanctioned sex slavery. Offred unexpectedly encounters an emotionally broken Moira there, who tells her that those found breaking the law are sent to the "Colonies" to clean up toxic waste or are allowed to work as Jezebels as punishment.

In the days between her visits to the Commander, Offred also learns her shopping partner, a woman called Ofglen, is with the resistance, an underground network called Mayday working to overthrow Gilead's government. Serena begins to suspect that her husband is infertile, so she arranges for Offred to have sex with Nick, the Commander's personal driver, who had attempted to talk to her before and shown interest. Serena offers Offred information about her daughter in exchange, and brings her a photograph, which leaves Offred feeling dejected, as she believes she has been erased from her daughter's life.

After their initial sexual encounter, Offred and Nick begin to meet on their own initiative as well; she discovers that she enjoys these intimate moments despite memories of her husband, and shares potentially dangerous information about her past with him. Eventually, Offred tells Nick that she thinks she is pregnant.

Offred hears from a new walking partner that Ofglen has disappeared (reported as a suicide). She contemplates suicide when Serena finds evidence of her illegal relationship with the Commander. Shortly afterward, men arrive at the house wearing uniforms of the secret police, known as the Eyes of God or simply "Eyes", to take her away. As she is led to a waiting van, Nick tells her to trust him and go with the men. Offred is unsure if Nick or the men are Eyes or secretly members of Mayday, or if they are here to capture her or aid in her escape; she ultimately enters the van. Her future remains uncertain, while Serena and the Commander are left bereft in their house, each contemplating the repercussions of Offred's capture on their lives.

The novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue, described as a partial transcript of an international historical association conference taking place in the year 2195. The male keynote speaker explains that Offred's narrative was initially recorded on a set of audio cassettes, a technology roughly 200 years outdated at that time, and later transcribed by historians. The speaker appears to be very dismissive of the misogyny of Gilead and interprets the story's title as a sexist joke. He also comments on the difficulty of authenticating the account, due to how few records have survived from the early years of Gilead's existence, and speculates on the eventual fates of Offred and her acquaintances.

Composition background

Fitting with her statements that The Handmaid's Tale is a work of speculative fiction, not science fiction, Atwood's novel offers a satirical view of various social, political, and religious trends of early Puritanism in the United States. Atwood notes that "[n]ations never build apparently radical forms of government on foundations that aren’t there already," and further describes the novel's setting as a potential cover story for how someone might seize power in the United States. Such a situation, argues Atwood, would "need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself."

Atwood argues that all of the scenarios offered in The Handmaid's Tale have actually occurred in real life—in an interview she gave regarding her later novel Oryx and Crake, Atwood maintains that "As with The Handmaid's Tale, I didn't put in anything that we haven't already done, we're not already doing, we're seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress... So all of those things are real, and therefore the amount of pure invention is close to nil." Atwood was known to carry around newspaper clippings to her various interviews to support her fiction's basis in reality. Atwood has explained that The Handmaid's Tale is a response to those who say the oppressive, totalitarian, and religious governments that have taken hold in other countries throughout the years "can't happen here".