Essays on The Handmaid's Tale

1985, Margaret Atwood

Novel; Dystopia, speculative fiction, tragedy

Offred, The Commander, Serena Joy, Ofglen, Nick, Moira, Luke, Professor Pieixoto, Aunt Lydia, Cora

Rape and sexual violence, religious terms used for political purposes, similarities between reactionary and feminist ideologies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, the Handmaids’ red habits, a palimpsest, the Eyes

Women’s bodies as political instruments, language as a tool of power, the causes of complacency

"The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil."
"We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it."
"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself."
"We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?"
"You can't help what you feel, but you can help how you behave."

In November 2018, Atwood announced a sequel titled The Testaments, which was published in September 2019.
The American Library Association ranked The Handmaid's Tale 37th in their "100 Most Disputed Books of 1990-2000".
In 2019, The Handmaid's Tale still ranks as the seventh most problematic book due to profanity, vulgarity, and sexual innuendo.
In writing the novel, Atwood was also inspired by the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1978-79, when a theocracy was established that drastically curtailed women's rights and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, much like that of Gilead.

1. Bacci, F. (2017). The Originality of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Children of Men: Religion, Justice, and Feminism in Dystopian Fiction. Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, 3(2), 154-172. (https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=594496)
2. Atwood, M. (2017). Margaret Atwood on what ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’means in the age of Trump https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/books/review/margaret-atwood-handmaids-tale-age-of-trump.html. The New York Times, 10.
3. Marghitu, S., & Moore Johnson, K. (2018). Feminist online responses against the US Alt-right: Using The Handmaid’s Tale as a symbol and catalyst of resistance. Communication Culture & Critique, 11(1), 183-185. (https://academic.oup.com/ccc/article-abstract/11/1/183/4953978)
4. DeKeseredy, W., DeKeseredy, A. & DeKeseredy, P. (2021). 6. Understanding The Handmaid’s Tale: The Contribution of Radical Feminism. In J. Grubb & C. Posick (Ed.), Crime TV: Streaming Criminology in Popular Culture (pp. 82-95). New York, USA: New York University Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/nyu/9781479804368.003.0007/pdf#APA)
5. Bazin, N. T. (1991). Women and revolution in dystopian fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In J. M. Crafton (Ed.), Selected essays: International conference on representing revolution 1989 (pp. 115-127). West Georgia College. (https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs/141/)
6. Lois Feuer (1997) The Calculus of Love and Nightmare: The Handmaid's Tale and the Dystopian Tradition, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 38:2, 83-95. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.1997.10543167?journalCode=vcrt20)
7. Neuman, S. (2006). ‘Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid's Tale. University of Toronto Quarterly, 75(3), 857-868. (https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/utq.75.3.857?journalCode=utq)
8. Xie, J. (2021). Symbolism of Flowers in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Open Access Library Journal, 8(7), 1-8. (https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=110737)
9. Staels, H. (1995). Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: resistance through narrating. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00138389508598988?journalCode=nest20)
10. Miner, M. (1991). " Trust Me": Reading the Romance Plot in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Twentieth Century Literature, 37(2), 148-168. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/441844)