A Handmaid’s Tale Context Bank
● Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones warning society that if
things continue there will be consequences in the future
● Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems,
a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant
states of warfare or violence.
● Dystopias often explore the concept of technology going "too far" and how
humans individually and en masse use technology.
● She wrote it shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States
and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival
in the West
● Gilead is a society founded on a “return to traditional values” and gender
roles, and on the subjugation of women by men.
● At the time of Atwood writing THMT there was an increase in religious groups
opposing the new law of abortion and had strong views on the role of women
in society.
● The independence of modern day women was seen as contradictory to
Biblical roles by right wing religious groups in America these groups joined to
form the Moral Majority in the 80’s
● Near future dystopia
● Handmaid is a biblical term for a female servant
● An epigraph is used at the beginning of a novel. It is an introductory phrase,
quote or poem. Quotes from Genesis, Sufi proverb and quote from Jonathan
Swift is part of the epigraph.
, ● Perry Miller taught Atwood at Harvard and he taught her about the
seventeenth century Puritan America was a theocratic, oppressive regime.”
● Puritans defined by Hawthorn as “a people amongst whom religion and law
were almost identical.”
● Gilead is a place referred to in the Bible “the balm of Gilead” is seen as a
universal cure this could be showing the intentions of Gilead society.
● Cotton Mather was a puritan minister declaring puritan women should be
“Handmaid’s of the Lord” with their upbringing rejecting mirrors, vanities,
reading and writing.
● Mary Webster was Atwood’s ancestor who was persecuted by her community
for the sin of being an independent woman refusing to accept the traditional
expectations of a woman in the 17th century. She survived causing Atwood to
see women as survivors as shown in Offred.
● The New Right was a political movement in the 1980’s that encouraged “a
return to traditional values” which was a reaction to second wave feminism
● George Orwell’s 1984 was a dystopia centred around surveillance and control
of thought and speech
● In the early 1980s, the AIDs pandemic was beginning to take hold of the
public imagination, and this may have had an impact on Atwood’s imagining
of Gilead as a society struggling against disease.
● Voyeurism as power: totalitarian observation in THMT; the voyeurism and
observation of sexual interactions vs. the watching of the creature over
Frankenstein eg. the ceremony vs the way Frankenstein ‘observes’ the naked
forms of his creations with repressed sexual curiosity
● Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones warning society that if
things continue there will be consequences in the future
● Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems,
a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant
states of warfare or violence.
● Dystopias often explore the concept of technology going "too far" and how
humans individually and en masse use technology.
● She wrote it shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States
and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, during a period of conservative revival
in the West
● Gilead is a society founded on a “return to traditional values” and gender
roles, and on the subjugation of women by men.
● At the time of Atwood writing THMT there was an increase in religious groups
opposing the new law of abortion and had strong views on the role of women
in society.
● The independence of modern day women was seen as contradictory to
Biblical roles by right wing religious groups in America these groups joined to
form the Moral Majority in the 80’s
● Near future dystopia
● Handmaid is a biblical term for a female servant
● An epigraph is used at the beginning of a novel. It is an introductory phrase,
quote or poem. Quotes from Genesis, Sufi proverb and quote from Jonathan
Swift is part of the epigraph.
, ● Perry Miller taught Atwood at Harvard and he taught her about the
seventeenth century Puritan America was a theocratic, oppressive regime.”
● Puritans defined by Hawthorn as “a people amongst whom religion and law
were almost identical.”
● Gilead is a place referred to in the Bible “the balm of Gilead” is seen as a
universal cure this could be showing the intentions of Gilead society.
● Cotton Mather was a puritan minister declaring puritan women should be
“Handmaid’s of the Lord” with their upbringing rejecting mirrors, vanities,
reading and writing.
● Mary Webster was Atwood’s ancestor who was persecuted by her community
for the sin of being an independent woman refusing to accept the traditional
expectations of a woman in the 17th century. She survived causing Atwood to
see women as survivors as shown in Offred.
● The New Right was a political movement in the 1980’s that encouraged “a
return to traditional values” which was a reaction to second wave feminism
● George Orwell’s 1984 was a dystopia centred around surveillance and control
of thought and speech
● In the early 1980s, the AIDs pandemic was beginning to take hold of the
public imagination, and this may have had an impact on Atwood’s imagining
of Gilead as a society struggling against disease.
● Voyeurism as power: totalitarian observation in THMT; the voyeurism and
observation of sexual interactions vs. the watching of the creature over
Frankenstein eg. the ceremony vs the way Frankenstein ‘observes’ the naked
forms of his creations with repressed sexual curiosity
