THE HANDMAIDS TALE

The Handmaids Tale

The Handmaids Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian innovative, a work of research fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian scribe Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. Set in the beside future, in a totalitarian theocracy which has overthrown the joined States government, The Handmaid's Tale explores topics of women in subjugation and the various means by which they gain agency.

The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 administrator General's accolade and the first ArthurC. Clarke accolade in 1987, and it was nominated for the 1986 Nebula accolade, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It has been adapted for the movies, wireless, opera, and stage.

Gender and occupation

The sexes are firmly divided. Gilead's humanity standards reproduction by white women more than reproduction by other women: women are categorised "hierarchically according to class rank and reproductive capability" as well as "metonymically colour-coded according to their function and their work" (Kauffman 232). The Commander makes it clear that women are advised intellectually and strongly felt inferior. Women are not allowed to read and young women are not educated.

Women are as visually segregated as men are. The men are equipped with military or paramilitary uniforms, constraining but, perhaps, empowering them as well. All categories of men and women are defined by the hues they wear (as in Aldous Huxley's dystopia audacious New World), drawing on hue symbolism and psychology. All smaller status persons are regulated by this dress code. All non-persons are banished to the Colonies (forced-labor bivouacs in which they clean up the radioactive waste in California, becoming exposed and dying sore killings as a result). Sterile, unmarried women are advised to be non-persons. Both men and women sent there wear grey clothing. Only rare citizens (who are progressively persecuted) and Commanders seem to ...