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PUBLISHING DATE: 1985

GENRES:

futuristic dystopian novel

speculative fiction

feminist political novel

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The book is set in a very near future of our own world. More precisely, the story takes place in Massachusetts, Cambridge.

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The United States has fallen, overthrown by a theocratic regime, which has installed a new nation called Gilead in its place.

The Republic of Gilead has subjugated and disempowered women, reducing Handmaids like Offred to sexual slavery. Offred desires happiness and freedom, and finds herself struggling against the totalitarian restrictions of her society.

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Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel. She is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She has her faults as well, but not so many to become an unsympathetic figure.

Offred is not a hero. In fact, after her failed attempt to escape, she submits to her role in the regime. Offred's surrender shows how an oppressive regime can destroy most people's ability to resist it.

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He is Offred’s Commander and the agent of her oppression. He is far more sympathetic and friendly toward Offred than most other people. However he remains a selfish character with no regard towards Offred's image.

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She is the Commander's wife. She is confined to her home and forced to take in a Handmaid to try to conceive a child. Serena is unhappy and she takes out her anger on Offred, showing no compassion at all.

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She is Offred's only true friend.

She embodies female resistance to Gilead: she is a lesbian and she stands up to authority directly. However she eventually resignes to her fate. Again exemplifying the way a totalitarian state can crush even the most independent spirit.

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Although he does not appear in the present-action story, Offred’s former husband, Luke, is a major presence in the novel. Offred remembers him lovingly.

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The Handmaid’s Tale is told by a first-person narrator, Offred. The details of her current life are told in the present tense, while flashbacks to her earlier life are told in the past tense. Both the first-person narrator and the use of the present tense help to create a sense of confinement. We can only see what Offred chooses to show us and our vision is limited by her unwillingness to speak.

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"There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law."

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"There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law."

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"There’s hardly any point in my thinking, is there? I say. What I think doesn’t matter. Which is the only reason he can tell me things."

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"There’s hardly any point in my thinking, is there? I say. What I think doesn’t matter. Which is the only reason he can tell me things."