The Handmaid's Tale
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Handmaid's Tale (1985) is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.
It is the tale of a woman caught up in a fundamentalist Christian dictatorship where women are forced into a system of sexual slavery for the ruling patriarchy.
The novel explores themes of women in subjugation, and the various means by which they gain agency, against a backdrop of the establishment of a totalitarian theocratic state. Sumptuary laws (dress codes) play a key role in imposing social control within the new society.
The novel is often studied by high school and college students. The American Library Association lists it in "10 Most Challenged Books of 1999" and as number 37 on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000" due to many complaints from parents of pupils regarding the novel's anti-religious content and sexual references.
A 1990 film adaptation was directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It starred Natasha Richardson (Offred), Faye Dunaway (Serena Joy), Robert Duvall (Fred), Aidan Quinn (Nick), and Elizabeth McGovern (Moira).
The book coined the term "unwoman" to refer to the label given to sterile, feminist, or politically deviant women.
See also
- See handmaid
- If This Goes On— by Robert A. Heinlein
- The Children of Men by P. D. James
- Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham
- Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
- Pregnancy in science fiction
- Feminist science fiction