The Handmaid’s Tale is narrated by Offred, whose descriptions of her life as a Handmaid in Gilead are interspersed with memories of her previous life with her husband and daughter. Wives, who are usually sterile, enjoy a higher social status than both the Handmaids and the Marthas, but their lives are still subject to extreme restrictions including the ban on female literacy. Marthas, named after a Biblical character, serve as housemaids and cooks. Men who progress high enough in the hierarchy of Gilead are also assigned Wives (who wear blue) and Marthas (who wear green). Denying the possibility that it is the men who are infertile, Handmaids who fail to conceive are shipped to the Colonies with other “Unwomen” to clean up toxic waste until they sicken and die. The Handmaids’ survival depends on conceiving a child. The narrator, Offred, is literally the property “of Fred.” Each is the property of a male Commander, emphasised by their names. Reduced to their biological function, symbolised by the red habits they are forced to wear, Handmaids exist purely as breeding vessels. Many have already proven their worth as “breeders” by giving birth to a healthy child. The Handmaids are women whose ovaries are still viable. Denied paid employment and the right to own property, women’s destiny is now determined by their reproductive potential, and assigned to several categories. The theocratic military dictatorship uses the Old Testament and falling Caucasian birth rate to justify the extreme curtailment of women’s freedoms. The radicals establish a Republic of Gilead in what was formerly Cambridge, Massachusetts. The new season ventures beyond Atwood’s original story.Elisabeth Moss as Offred in the upcoming television series of The Handmaid’s Tale. The first season tracked closely with Atwood’s novel, adapting it to the screen. The show, now in its second season, stars Elisabeth Moss as the handmaid Offred, aka June Osborne.

And it’s not the foundation of Canada,” she said That has been an underlying foundation stone all the way along. “Because the foundations of America are a 17th century Puritan theocracy. It was that for escaping slaves before the American Civil War, it was certainly that during the Vietnam War and it has been that at various other times.”Ītwood, Canada’s most celebrated living author, insists the two countries are very different. It’s where you try to get to so you won’t be you know killed, locked up, those things,” Atwood said. In Atwood’s world, Canada becomes an escape valve, a society with markedly different values than its neighbor to the South. “People woke up on the 9th of November, people in the show, and they said we’re in a different show.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood