The Handmaid's Tale: Difference between revisions

| caption =

| author = Margaret Atwood

| elevator pitch = In a World where women have no rights, one woman tries to gain individuality and independence.

| genre = Dystopia

| publication date = 1985

| wiki URL =

| wiki name =

}}

 

The setting is the new [[People's Republic of Tyranny|Republic of Gilead]], a country which is at war, where the roles of society are firmly defined, and women have no rights -- especially not handmaids. Our protagonist is a woman who has been trained to be a handmaid, one who conceives and gives birth on behalf of those who are officially wives. A sharp-eyed reader might catch her name in the first chapter; the rest of us just know her as Offred, the name she uses as long as she's with Fred and his wife. Handmaids don't get permanent names.

Made into [[The Handmaid's Tale (film)|a film]] in 1990 starring the late Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway; and a [[The Handmaid's Tale (TV series)|web TV series]] in 2017 available on [[Hulu]]. It also has an opera adaptation.

 

 

{{tropelist}}

** There's mention in the book of a school named "after the President they shot" still standing.

* [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]]: Women in Gilead are divided into castes, reflected by the color of robes they wear. [[Grande Dame|Wives]] wear blue, [[Nature Adores a Virgin|Daughters]] wear white, [[Drill Sergeant Nasty|Aunts]] wear brown, [[Feminine Women Can Cook|Marthas]] wear green, and Handmaids wear red. Econowives wear garish multi-color robes to show that they play multiple roles.

* [[Crapsack World]]: Pretty much so.

* [[Distant Finale]]: {{spoiler|After (quite a bit less than) 100 years Gilead collapses but the Gileadean civil war with dissident groups has exhausted the Western powers and formerly "3rd World" nations are now dominant (e.g. somehow ''Nunavut'' is now the academic centre of the world).}}

* [[Unfortunate Implications]]: For a society to be as it is in the book everyone who didn't belong to a particular sect of Christianity would have to be killed/deported/enslaved, it would also require everyone of that sect of Christianity to be fine with the killing/deporting/enslavement it would also require a lot of corpses because there would be no way in hell for this to go easily, scare or not.

 

{{Arthur C. Clarke Award}}

{{The Big Read}}

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[[Category:Lit Fic]]

[[Category:School Study Media]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]

[[Category:The Great American Read]]

[[Category:Literature of the 1980s]]

[[Category:English Literature]]

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