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Like every popular novel, much fanfiction has been written on The Handmaid's Tale, however there was a clear increase of it after the popularity of the TV show. These stories, which range in quality of writing and content, are posted on websites such as Wattpad and fanfiction.net. They include stories of scenes from the novel but from other characters' perspectives, takes on what happened after the book ended, as well as some bizarre crossovers with universes such as Star Wars and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

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It is ironic that certain translations of a book which describes how powerful language can be, change aspects of the story to fit the country's specific views. For example, in the Persian translation, the book is only about totalitarianism and themes of feminism and the patriarchy are muffled.

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The book has also been banned by many schools for reasons such as "vulgarity and sexual overtones", "detrimental to Christian values" and being apparently "morally corrupt".

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2022

During hearings for Georgia's SB 226 which would remove school librarians from the reviewing book challenges and let school principals and school boards be the only decision makers, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was one of the books singled out by parents as objectionable. Noelle Kahaian informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that Atwood's award-winning dystopian novel was "garbage" and expressed dismay that the graphic novel adaptation makes it even more accessible to juvenile audiences. Another parent testified that her request to ban The Handmaid's Tale was rejected by a panel of staff and parents that met in the school library. "Every school district is exhibiting obscene materials to minors," she said. Julia Bernath, president of the Fulton County School Board, provided details about the book challenge process for her district and stated that the parent who objected to The Handmaid's Tale did not follow the process through to the end. SB 226 was withdrawn from consideration by the House on March 31, 2021.

2020

Banned and challenged for profanity and for "vulgarity and sexual overtones."

This classic novel was included on a reading list before the beginning of a twelfth-grade advanced placement literature and composition class at a north Atlanta suburb's high school in Georgia. A student's mother forbade him from choosing the book. Alleging "porn and gore and cursing," the mother wanted the book removed from the high school and held prayer circles outside the library while a committee of more than a dozen staff, administrators, and parents discussed the item. Retained.

This dystopian novel was offered as a curriculum choice to students in an elective high school English class in Marietta (OH). Two complaints were filed alleging vulgarity and sexual overtones, although school officials believed the cited passages did not reflect the context of the novel. The school board voted to retain the book in the curriculum.

2018

Retained on Wyomissing (PA) High School's summer reading list of books recommended for juniors and seniors, after a group of parents attempted to get the novel removed because of vulgar language and graphic depictions of sex. At a curriculum and technology committee meeting with the acting superintendent, administrators decided to retain the book and develop additional options for families who choose not to read it.

2014

Challenged, but retained as required reading for a Page High School International Baccalaureate class and as optional reading for Advanced Placement reading courses at Grimsley High School in Guilford County (NC) because the book is "sexually explicit, violently graphic and morally corrupt." Some parents thought the book is "detrimental to Christian values."

2013

Challenged as required reading for a Page High School International Baccalaureate class and as optional reading for Advanced Placement reading courses at Grimsley High School in Guilford County (NC) because the book is "sexually explicit, violently graphic and morally corrupt."

2007

The Judson (TX) school board overturned the superintendent's ban of the novel from an advanced placement English curriculum. The review committee of students, teachers and parents had appealed the ban to the school board.

2006

The Judson (TX) school board overturned the superintendent's ban of the novel from an advanced placement English curriculum.

2002

Challenged in Texas due to description's of sexual encounters.

2001

Downgraded from "required" to "optional" for the 11th grade summer reading list in Upper Moreland (PA) school district for age inappropriate subject matter.

On These Pages

A Banned book has been removed from a library, classroom, etc.
A Challenged book has been requested to be removed from a library, classroom, etc.

For additional information contact

Ron Titus, titus@marshall.edu
304-696-6575

Last updated

August 24, 2022

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Banned Books 2022 -Marshall University Libraries - Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Page on books banned/challenged around the United States for various reasons over the past year Ron Titus

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The title of the novel itself echoes the different names of Geoffrey Cahucer's The Cantebury Tales, an anthology of connected stories written in the late 1300s. The stories have names such as "The Merchant's Tale" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale".

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Atwood took inspiration from many real life events, claiming that there was nothing in the book which had not happened in the world. These include the banning of all abortions and forms of contraception, and the "Indian Adoption Project" in 1958 where native Americans were essentially kidnapped from their homes so they could be brought up in 'American standard" homes. When reading the novel, it is clear to see that Atwood wears her influences on her sleeve, with books such as 1984, Brave New World and Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We".

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A sequel novel - "The Testaments" - was published in 2019, perhaps as a reaction to the inauguration of Donald Trump. It was written in coordination with the Hulu TV show, and takes place 15 years after the previous book. The novel alternates between the perspectives of three women; a woman living in Gilead, a woman living in Canada, and Aunt Lydia, who is a secondary character in the original novel. It received mainly positive reviews and was shortlisted for the 2020 Fiction Book of the Year in the British Book Awards.

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In 2012, audible released a special edition audiobook of The Handmaid's tale which was performed Claire Danes and went on consequently to win the 2013 Audio award for fiction.

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This version of the Handmaid's tale is adapted by playwright Joseph Stollenwerk and directed by Brian Isaac Phillips and performed all by one woman much. The performance below is at the Know Theatre in Binghamton, New York. The one-woman aspect of the show seems to compel perhaps because in the novel while Offred is surrounded by people, she still feels alone.

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The idea is ambitious. Adapting Margaret Atwood's classic novel "The Handmaid's Tale" for the stage is its own endeavor, but making it a solo performance, like the Know Theatre has done, brings its own array of theatrical hurtles and narration complications.

That being said, Corinne Mohlenhoff, who plays protagonist Offred, and director Brian Isaac Phillips pull it off.

For those who know nothing about Atwood's speculative fiction opus, here goes. Set in a theocratical dystopia, selected women are used for breeding purposes in order to sustain humanity in a world doomed by the problems pollution and STDs have rendered.

There are feminist conflicts, vengeful rebels, traumatic memories, overthrown governments and kinky Scrabble games. Atwood's novel was published in 1985, but its relevance hasn't waned at all; sometimes the mistrustful atmosphere can seem eerily similar to the direction our own world is heading.

Offred is given the task of enumerating her account of the horrors she's experienced in this society through what she calls her "reconstruction." Mohlenhoff not only creates a fully realized character full of grief and vulnerability, but frequently and skillfully quotes dialogue from other characters, making it feel like there's an entire cast with her in the play.

Cincinnati playwright Joe Stollenwerk's script stays close to its source text, in this case a positive thing (if certain plot points were left out from Atwood's novel, the audience would doubtlessly feel their phantom limbs).

What makes the concept of a solo performance so compelling is, of course, its biggest risk: one person alone on the stage for the entire duration. And with an adapted novel, acting out what are exciting scenes in the book can easily drift into boring exposition onstage. But Mohlenhoff is a perceptive actress, attuned to the tensions and nuances of emotional range necessary to carry the weight of Atwood's story right through to its vertiginous crescendo.

Andrew Hungerford's set is a modestly furnished cell - there's a bed, a lamp, and a chair, and that's about it. It's economical, but captures the hopeless mood of captivity effectively.

Hungerford's artful use of lighting, which dramatically shifts between a subterranean florescence and something akin to sunlight, creates a tonal dissonance vital to understanding the complex psyche of Mohlenhoff's role. The lighting also creates spatial textures that make sure we never tire of the set, which doesn't change during the performance.

Offred's crimson dress, designed by Noelle Wedig, is a visual marvel, encapsulating the appropriate shades of paranoia and violence.

At almost three hours including the intermission, you definitely get everything the story has to offer, and there are plenty of new experiences even for those who have read the book.

The play unravels with suspense, even though at rare times one could feel the need for Mohlenhoff to take her emotions to the next level and evacuate her comfort zone.

"The Handmaid's Tale" meditates on a large quantity of things, perhaps most importantly the need to tell your own story and who needs to hear it.

As Offred says in the play with a semblance of doubt that makes us unsure whether to believe her or not, "There's always someone else. Even when there is no one."
"The Handmaid's Tale" plays through February 21 at the Know Theatre in Over-the-Rhine.

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The idea is ambitious. Adapting Margaret Atwood's classic novel "The Handmaid's Tale" for the stage is its own endeavor, but making it a solo performance, like the Know Theatre has done, brings its own array of theatrical hurtles and narration complications. That being said, Corinne Mohlenhoff, who plays protagonist Offred, and director Brian Isaac Phillips pull it off.

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'Transgressions' is a 2015 album by Lakes of Canada based on The Handmaid's tale. The rock album comprises of twelve songs that all have titles related to Atwood's text including 'Sons of Gilead', 'The Handmaid's Tale', and so on. The music video for the title song 'Transgressions' poignant as it displays raw footage of lifestyle in what would have been the 'before' within the context of the novel. This is in strong juxtaposition of 'Eden' another track in the album, whose music video plays with the colour red in using fire and quick shots taken of the band. Lakes of Canada not only utilise the rock genre but also the screen to create the sense of Dystopia that Atwood's text emanates.

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'Transgressions' is a 2015 album by Lakes of Canada based on The Handmaid's tale. The rock album comprises of twelve songs that all have titles related to Atwood's text including 'Sons of Gilead', 'The Handmaid's Tale', and so on. The music video for the title song 'Transgressions' poignant as it displays raw footage of lifestyle in what would have been the 'before' within the context of the novel. This is in strong juxtaposition of 'Eden' another track in the album, whose music video plays with the colour red in using fire and quick shots taken of the band. Lakes of Canada not only utilise the rock genre but also the screen to create the sense of Dystopia that Atwood's text emanates.

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The Hulu adaptation of the Handmaid’s tale has been a critical success, with Moss’s performance especially praised. One thing the TV focused on was the brutalities of Gilead, where they used the visual medium to show the audience the horror and monstrosities that were only described in the book. For example, the rape of the “ceremony”, dead bodies hanging everywhere and seeing rebels shot. It makes the audience feel nervous and comfortable.In the book, Offred’s constant longing for her family is a clear theme throughout. However, in the TV show, her main source of emotion is anger. She’s not telling a tale beyond a guarded narrative, rather we can see everything play out on screen. The ending of season one and the novel are almost identical, the one big change is that Offred is confirmed to be pregnant with Nick’s child, and she also leads a betray against Lydia. She is the first to abstain from stoning Janine to death. Atwood was not only a consulting producer, which demonstrates the show’s commitment to fidelity, but she was also made a cameo in the show!

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The Hulu adaptation of the Handmaid’s tale has been a critical success, with Moss’s performance especially praised. One thing the TV focused on was the brutalities of Gilead, where they used the visual medium to show the audience the horror and monstrosities that were only described in the book. For example, the rape of the “ceremony”, dead bodies hanging everywhere and seeing rebels shot. It makes the audience feel nervous and comfortable.In the book, Offred’s constant longing for her family is a clear theme throughout. However, in the TV show, her main source of emotion is anger. She’s not telling a tale beyond a guarded narrative, rather we can see everything play out on screen. The ending of season one and the novel are almost identical, the one big change is that Offred is confirmed to be pregnant with Nick’s child, and she also leads a betray against Lydia. She is the first to abstain from stoning Janine to death. Atwood was not only a consulting producer, which demonstrates the show’s commitment to fidelity, but she was also made a cameo in the show!

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The film was directed by Volker Schlöndorff and the screenplay was written by the playwright Harold Pinter. The film was not a success and Rotten Tomatoes reports that the average rating was 4.79/10. Interestingly, Pinter reported abandoned writing the screenplay form exhaustion and tried to have his name removed from the credits because he was so displeased with the movie. There seemed to have been many disagreements during the pre-production stage of the film, with changing directors bringing different visions of the film. In a retrospective account by Richardson, she accounts that she recognised the difficulties of making a film that was “so much one-woman interior dialogue” and the challenges of playing a woman unable to convey her feelings to the world. She thought using voice overs could be the solution, but Pinter disliked voiceovers and ignored her suggestion. 

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The film was directed by Volker Schlöndorff and the screenplay was written by the playwright Harold Pinter. The film was not a success and Rotten Tomatoes reports that the average rating was 4.79/10. Interestingly, Pinter reported abandoned writing the screenplay form exhaustion and tried to have his name removed from the credits because he was so displeased with the movie. There seemed to have been many disagreements during the pre-production stage of the film, with changing directors bringing different visions of the film. In a retrospective account by Richardson, she accounts that she recognised the difficulties of making a film that was “so much one-woman interior dialogue” and the challenges of playing a woman unable to convey her feelings to the world. She thought using voice overs could be the solution, but Pinter disliked voiceovers and ignored her suggestion. 

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Lakes of Canada - "Transgressions" - OFFICIAL

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In the same way that Handmaid costumes have been used in protests, to represent key issues raised in the book, cartoonists have used the imagery to depict political concerns and news. The red gowns are a quick visual motif to capture meaning in the brief space provided by a cartoon, such as those in newspapers. (Kristen)

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The novel lends itself well to clothing / costume adaptations, with the dress codes being a key plot device, especially the symbolic red dress of the Handmaids. It is strikingly visual. One use of Handmaid costumes was in protests. People dressed in these costumes to indicate their fear that they were being treated in the same way as the Handmaids in Atwood's novel. The clothes have come to represent a number of feminist and political concerns. As such, there has also been controversy surrounding those who take the matter less seriously. Light-hearted use of the clothes have been criticised as making light of the concerns raised in the book. For example 'sexy' Handmaids tale costumes are considered inappropriate by many when the book deals with rape and oppression. In popular media, Kylie Jenner hosted a Handmaids-tale themed party which was criticised for its flippant use of the novel's imagery. (Kristen)

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Many parallels have been drawn between the current political climate and the events depicted in The Handmaid's Tale, such as recent threats during the Trump presidency which targeted abortion laws and climate change. These similarities have been attributed to the book's resurgence in popular media, as well as the successful timing of the Hulu series. This may also have influenced some of the decisions made when writing the Hulu script or even Atwood's sequel. The sequel itself, as Atwood put it, responds to questions raised by readers both old and new. (Kristen)

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Since its first release in 1985, there has been a series of different book jackets created for the novel. Each one draws on different key themes of the text, though the colour red is a recurring motif through them all. It can also be seen that the more recent jackets show photos from the Hulu TV series, or have stickers to advertise its connection to that, perhaps to entice readers who discovered the novel through the show. The sequel is predominantly dressed in green, a contrast to the red (perhaps reflecting the more positive ending) yet still shows cohesion through the paper cut-out style which was also used on the first book. The sequel's book jacket reflects its two protagonists with a reversible cover. (Kristen)

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In 2019 this visual remake of The Handmaid's Tale was released, adapted and illustrated by Renee Nault. The art brings out key themes in the text (such as the colour segregation between groups) and by trimming the text, Nault casts light on meanings and details that before may have been lost in the wider scope of the novel. She is also able to use artistic metaphor where Atwood would have been restricted by realism (eg. playing with scale and space to depict isolation). (Kristen)

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"Gorgeous."
―io9

"Arresting . . . Able to convey some things that text-and even a TV show-never could."
―The New York Post

"A rich, visceral approach to telling the story."

"Nault spectacularly transforms lines and color into fear, resignation, desperation, the tiniest glimmers of hope . . . most piercing throughout are her affecting use of color (red-'the colour of blood'-and its portentous hues of orange, crimson, rust) and scale (the indistinguishable handmaids trapped in plain sight). She adds softness when Offred recalls her past, with less-saturated colors for happier memories, thickened, darker lines for the repetitive nightmares."
―Booklist, starred review

"Nault spectacularly transforms lines and color into fear, resignation, desperation, and the tiniest glimmers of hope."
―Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[Y]ou owe it to yourself to check out Renée Nault's take on the classic dystopian story."
―Bustle

"There is magic in every detail of Ms. Nault's adaptation, thoughtfulness in each panel, an intentionality about every aspect of it, the costuming, the sets and her interpretation of Gileadean iconography is stark, sometimes shocking and beautifully rendered." "There's something about Renee Nault's art that makes the reader feel both closer to the action and completely, terrifyingly, alone . . . This is the power of graphic novels―the ability to add that extra emotional pull to an already strong story."
"This is great comics. If you agree that the most basic definition of comics is a fluid dance between words and pictures, you will very likely be struck by the beauty of this book . . . What Nault has done here is stunning."
―Seattle Review of Books

"Haunting . . . Impossible to look away from."

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The Handmaid's Tale (Graphic Novel) by Margaret Atwood: 9780385539241 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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"Gorgeous." ―io9 "Arresting . . . Able to convey some things that text-and even a TV show-never could." ―The New York Post "A rich, visceral approach to telling the story." "Nault spectacularly transforms lines and color into fear, resignation, desperation, the tiniest glimmers of hope . . .

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If you think it's tough for a writer in 2018, imagine how Margaret Atwood felt at the beginning of her career. "It was impossible," the celebrated author says. "I was starting out in Canada in the 1950s. There was no market. I thought I would have to have a day job."

Her back-up plan could have made her into the next Danielle Steel. "I thought I'd write true romances," Atwood says. "But I tried, and I basically couldn't do it. I was 18, what can I tell you? It bogged down in the middle. I could do the plots, but I couldn't do the prose. It was in the age of dots. Something happened on the sofa, and then they were ..." She pauses. "Dot, Dot, Dot! I couldn't do that."

Atwood is one of five honorees at this year's Variety Power of Women luncheon on April 13. As part of this week's cover story, Atwood spoke to Variety about the secrets of Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale," based on her 1985 dystopian classic, how it plays during the era of Donald Trump, and why there should be one definition of feminism.

What are your memories of writing the first draft of "The Handmaid's Tale?"
I started writing it in West Berlin in 1984. The wall was still in place. Because I was Canadian, we could go across to East Berlin, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, which we did. They were all Iron Curtain countries at the time. That definitely had an influence on the book, most particularly the feeling that people were very reluctant to talk to you until they absolutely trusted you and you were in a place that wasn't bugged. I had been thinking about this book for a while. I had been collecting newspaper clippings, which one did in those days. There was no internet. So my rule for it was, nothing goes in that didn't have a precedent in real life - somewhere, sometime.

What was your original title for it?
I was thinking of the title of the central character [calling it "Offred"], but then I thought nobody was going to understand this. I got that name by writing out a bunch of men's names and putting "of" in front of them, to see which sounds better. And that was the one.

Was the title influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer?
Well, sure. I like Chaucer.

Did you always see "The Handmaid's Tale" as a feminist story?
What does that mean? Look up types of feminism. You'll find 50 of them. Did I always see it as a story with women at the center of it? Yes. Does that make it feminist? Yes. But does that make it a particular kind of feminist? There's no one definition of feminist. That's why I always ask people which kind do you mean. I don't sign blank checks, and I'd like to know what I'm signing up for.

Do you think that's a problem?
It's a problem because if you say feminist, you'll find there are a lot of positions that also call themselves feminist that you don't agree with. It's like "Christian." Does that mean the Pope? Does it mean evangelicals? Does it mean Thomas Becket? What are we talking about?

What does feminism mean to you?
It's not up for me to decide. For me, it means something that is working for women's equality, and we are a long way from that. And by equality, I mean legal equality, political equality, and social equality.

Why did the movie adaptation of "The Handmaid's Tale" not work?
The 1990 movie, the screenplay was by Harold Pinter, and it included voiceover by the central character. And then the director, being in a minimalist phase, took it out. I think it would have been better with it in. Natasha [Richardson], who I knew, she expressed to me in rather pissed off terms, she had recorded all the voiceover and tailored her performance against it. It was a lot more like we have now, in which you heard Offred thinking from time to time.

Were you optimistic when they said they were doing a TV show?
I have no control over whether they do a TV show or not. MGM and Danny Wilson went with the original movie contract. When we wrote it back in 1989, the only kind of TV series that was on was basically like "Dallas." They were soap operas. "Dallas" is a pretty good one. Then web streaming appeared and it created a whole new platform. There was too much story for 90 minutes. That's another answer to why the movie didn't work.

Showrunner Bruce Miller has said there could be 10 seasons of "The Handmaid's Tale."
Ten sounds like an awful lot to me. But he's thoroughly invested in it. We need to sit down and talk about how it can be 10.

Has he told you his plan yet?
No, because I don't think he knows yet. But maybe he does!

How involved are you in the show?
I read all the scripts and I talk to Bruce. They even let me in the writing room, but it was before they had written anything on their big white boards for Season 2.

How is Season 2 different?
I'm not allowed to talk about it.

Have you seen it?
I've read all the scripts. I've seen episode one. They haven't finished them.

Did you spend a lot of time with Elisabeth Moss before they started filming?
Not really a lot. It was mostly Bruce. They were in the middle of shooting the first season when the election happened. They woke up the next morning and said, "We're a different show." Nothing about the show changed, but the frame changed.

Netflix had originally turned it down.
I guess they didn't think it was time yet. If, for instance, Hillary had won, people would have said, "Dodged a bullet! This isn't going to happen."

If Hillary was president, would the show not have worked?
It would have worked as a show, but it wouldn't have worked the same way. Of course not. You always view these things through the lens of events that have taken place. Charles Lindbergh seemed like a possibility for president of the United States in the 1930s. But in 1942, he wasn't anymore. Why? Because the United States was in World War II and he was a fascist.

Were you surprised that Trump was elected?
I'm too old to really be surprised. Think of how long I've been on the planet. I've seen a lot of regime changes in different countries. The people who were devastated were young people who had never experienced anything of the kind. And some of them were quite upset. But it's not the end of the world, although it's pretty bad for the environment.

You attended one of the women's marches last year. What do you make of this latest wave of activism?
Typically, waves are waves. They hit the shore and then they recede and then they hit the shore again. How many backlashes have we been through? We used to have a race going on, to see which would win, between "1984" and "Brave New World." It looked as if "Brave New World" had won. That turned out not to be true. Just to give you a very creepy feeling, there was an opera of "The Handmaid's Tale" that premiered in Denmark in 2000. It started with a film reel going across the top of the stage and showing various things blowing up. And one of the things that blew up was the Twin Towers. But it hadn't blown up yet. They did the opera again, and they had to take it out, because it was no longer in the future. Does that give you a creepy feeling?

Yes, it does.
They didn't get that idea from my opera, don't worry. They got the idea from "Star Wars."

Do you really believe that?
Remember the first one? Two guys fly a plane in the middle of something and blow that up? The only difference is, in "Star Wars," they get away. Right after 9/11, they hired a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters to tell them how the story might go next. Sci-fi writers are very good at this stuff, anticipating future events. They don't all come true, but there are interesting "what if" scenarios.

Do you ever get writer's block?
No, I never feel I can't write. I sometimes feel I can't write the thing I'm writing. If it's bad, I have to stop and write something else.

Do you have many abandoned novels?
Two major long ones that I did. They were structurally impossible. It was stupid of me to have attempted to do that thing I was attempting to do. For one, I was 200 pages in. I was interested in the people. But I had 200 pages and nothing had happened.

Do you write longhand or on a computer?
A combination. But I always edit on paper in the final phase. I wouldn't say I've ever written anything entirely on a computer. And since computers have been invented, I never wrote anything entirely in handwriting and I never wrote anything entirely on a typewriter. I was happy when they invented spellcheck.

Are you not a good speller?
I'm a terrible speller. A lot of writers spell by ear, but that isn't how the English language works.

Were you always bad?
I could spell fairly complicated words. I would screw up on words like "weird." I still have to think about that. It's "e" before "i" because otherwise it would be "wired."

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Margaret Atwood on How Donald Trump Helped 'The Handmaid's Tale'

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If you think it's tough for a writer in 2018, imagine how Margaret Atwood felt at the beginning of her career. "It was impossible," the celebrated author says. "I was starting out in Canada in the 1950s. There was no market. I thought I would have to have a day job."

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In politics and culture, the year 2017 was the opposite of Where's Wally? The question, instead, was always Where Isn't Trump? All roads - public debate, private argument, artistic endeavour - seemed eventually to lead in his squalid direction; his gravitational pull irresistible, his fleshy presence horribly ubiquitous.

It wasn't just the explicit satire of, say, Saturday Night Live that kept the US president front and centre in cultural life. Lee Hall's triumphant reworking at the National Theatre of Network, Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 film about mass media and demagoguery, held a more subtle mirror up to the age of Trump.

Shakespeare's history plays acquired fresh and often unsettling relevance (watch out for the Bridge theatre's production of Julius Caesar, opening in London next month). Even War for the Planet of the Apes teemed with apparent parallels in its post-apocalyptic vision of walls, segregation and deportation.

Yet it was Hulu's television adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale that jangled the nerves most vividly and to such startling effect. Set in the near future, it imagined Gilead: an authoritarian mutation of the United States, in which the constitutional apparatus has been forcibly dismantled and replaced by the patriarchal rule of "Sons of Jacob", stripping women of all rights and enslaving those who remained fertile as handmaids, serially raped in a pseudo-biblical "ceremony" to provide the childless governing caste with progeny.

The Handmaid's Tale was ostensibly televisual fiction. Yet in its uncompromising exploration of fear and power and its abuse, it also captured the lightning of the moment in a bottle of dystopian genius. It was nothing short of mesmeric, all the more so on repeated viewings.

When the series was ordered in April 2016, Trump was the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination but not quite the presumptive candidate. It was still orthodox to assert that Hillary Clinton would trounce him in the election itself. His unapologetic misogyny had been perfectly clear at the first Republican contenders' debate in August 2015, in which he sparred with the moderator, Megyn Kelly, and insulted Rosie O'Donnell. But the notorious Access Hollywood tape - "grab them by the pussy" - did not become public until October 2016, by which stage The Handmaid's Tale was already in production.

Yet, through luck, intuition or a combination of the two, the series became a disturbing text for our times. Produced by Atwood, author of the original novel, and Elisabeth Moss, who played the lead character, June/Offred, it did more than a thousand news bulletins to capture all that was most toxic about the new populist right and the shredding of constitutional norms.

When the book first appeared in 1985, it was hailed as an ingenious thought-experiment and, of course, a bleak warning. Atwood's point was that all the practices she described in fictional Gilead were actually taking place somewhere in the world. She was right, too, to draw attention to the strong strain of Puritanism embedded in American culture by the first settlers - at least as powerful as the Enlightenment values usually associated with the founding fathers.

But context is all. What seemed a cautionary tale then feels more like a deafening klaxon now. Why? Because the world of Offred, though still notionally a fiction, has migrated from creative construct to the realm of the thinkable. Gilead's use of technology to subordinate women overnight seemed all too close to the bone in the year in which the power of digital manipulation and cyberwarfare to distort the democratic process became chillingly apparent. If the roots of pluralism, minority rights and constitutionalism were as shallow as Trump clearly believed, then anything was possible.

And that is not all: just as the series acted as a mythic commentary upon the culture wars of the Trump era, it also prefigured the fightback of the #MeToo movement. Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the Harvey Weinstein story in the New York Times in October. But the global phenomenon spawned by their initial investigations was luminously foreshadowed in The Handmaid's Tale - and in one particular scene.

In the final episode, Offred and her fellow handmaids are assembled to stone one of their number to death. In a moment of beautifully captured solidarity, they refuse to comply, each dropping her stone as the scandalised guards and the supervising "Aunts" look on. The shot of their rebellious march away from the execution site to the strains of Nina Simone might be the backdrop to all that followed in the real world.

There are T-shirts for sale online that bear Gilead's theocratic greeting: 'Under his eye'

Not that the story ends there. "There will be consequences," says Ann Dowd's Aunt Lydia. "Believe me." As in art, so in life. If you doubt that the #MeToo movement has sown male resentment, look at some of the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) sites and Reddit threads, and think again. There are T-shirts for sale online that bear Gilead's theocratic greeting, "Under his eye". Do you think it is women who are buying them?

Twenty-six years ago, Susan Faludi warned in Backlash that the struggle for gender equality was only just beginning. Just as many on the alt-right envy Islam's segregation of women, so there are men, seething as never before, who privately regard Atwood's Gilead not as a dystopia but an inspiration. As I overheard one say after watching the first few episodes: "When does it start getting bad?"

Atwood's novel is opaque about Offred's fate but ends with an arch postscript - the minutes of an academic conference in 2195 - implying that Gilead eventually collapses. In contrast, the television series returns in the spring to resume the story of the characters she created more than 30 years ago.

The spark of hope at its heart is the notion that history is not preordained, that its unfolding depends upon human agency and courage: nolite te bastardes carborundorum ("don't let the bastards grind you down") is the scratched graffito written by one of Offred's predecessors. The secret package given to her by the resistance contains not a bomb but something much more potent: the letters of scores of handmaids, breaking their silence.

Small wonder that this extraordinary series gripped our imagination this year and, I expect, will do so again in 2018. As Atwood has remarked of her novel: "You don't write these things hoping they become more relevant." Alas, that choice is not in the writer's hands.

* Matthew d'Ancona is a Guardian columnist
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The Handmaid's Tale held a mirror up to a year of Trump | Matthew d'Ancona

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In politics and culture, the year 2017 was the opposite of Where's Wally? The question, instead, was always Where Isn't Trump? All roads - public debate, private argument, artistic endeavour - seemed eventually to lead in his squalid direction; his gravitational pull irresistible, his fleshy presence horribly ubiquitous.

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Alabama abortion bill: Protests as new law part of 'US-wide strategy to push abortion out of reach for all women'

Many feel that the dystopian novel isn't strictly fiction anymore

As it passed in Alabama's Senate 25-6 on Tuesday night, Google Trends shows a 75 per cent increase in searches for The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel that portrays a world in which women are raped by powerful husbands whose wives are unable to conceive and forced to bear their children.

As Republican lawmakers attempt, and succeed, to pass more and more abortion restrictions, dressing in the distinctive red cloak and white hat worn by the handmaids in the novel and its TV show has become a common tactic among pro-choice protesters.

Many on Twitter specifically pointed out that the 22 senators who voted against an amendment to the bill which would have allowed for abortion in cases of rape and incest were white men.

Senator Kamala Harris also noted the Atwood connection, specifically calling upon the comparisons in an email from her presidential campaign.

"This isn't a scene from The Handmaid's Tale," she wrote in a fundraising email. "This is happening in Alabama - in our country - in the year 2019."

Although many of the restrictions in The Handmaid's Tale feel like they're within grasp, many online pointed out that the differences between the book and reality are still wide. In Ms Atwood's novel, the fictional society of Gilead - formerly known as America - pass their restrictive laws after a violent overthrow of the government.

In Alabama, the law passed only after an uproar following a Republican attempt ignore legislative rules. The blatant run for the law's passage was taken in stride by the few senators voting against it.

As Democratic state senator Vivian Figures told her 25 Republican colleagues who ultimately voted in the law, "You all are going to get your way, but at least treat us fairly and do it the right way."

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Alabama abortion law vote compared to scenes in The Handmaid's Tale

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Alabama abortion bill: Protests as new law part of 'US-wide strategy to push abortion out of reach for all women' Many feel that the dystopian novel isn't strictly fiction anymore As it passed in Alabama's Senate 25-6 on Tuesday night, Google Trends shows a 75 per cent increase in searches for The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel that portrays a world in which women are raped by powerful husbands whose wives are unable to conceive and forced to bear their children.

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"If you return to your country of origin, would you be persecuted on the basis of you being a woman?"

On the bank of a dark river, a Canadian customs official speaks these words to a woman who is lying on the ground, drenched in freezing river water, clutching a baby. She has just completed a harrowing near-death journey across the border, and this is part of the script that the officer must recite in order for her to seek refuge in Canada. The woman nods, shivering and frantic. "Do you wish to claim asylum?" the guard asks.

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The Handmaid's Tale: the real life events that inspired Margaret Atwood's dystopian drama

This is fiction, by the way. The scene I'm describing features in the opening episode of the third series of The Handmaid's Tale. It's based on a novel, written by Margaret Atwood in 1985, not real-life events. And yet persecution on the basis of sex is already the reality for millions of American women, who are denied access to basic healthcare. I'm talking, of course, about abortion.

According to federal law, it's legal. But numerous officials in conservative parts of the country are fighting hard not just to take away women's agency over their own bodies, but to make it criminal.

Atwood wrote a piece for The Guardian in 2012 stating that she didn't envision her novel as a fantasy. She was not writing of anything that had not already happened in some place or time, nor technology that had yet to be invented. Atwood was not surprised that the novel had sold millions of copies since its release. In the UK, she wrote, "the reaction [to the book] was along the lines of, 'Jolly good yarn'. In the US, however - and despite a dismissive review in the New York Times by Mary McCarthy - it was more likely to be: 'How long have we got?'" In 2019, as the third series of the novel's adaptation arrives on our screens, women in America are watching the show and thinking, 'Well, here we are'.

Abortion was legalised in the US in 1973, as a result of the supreme court case Roe vs Wade - or at least it was in principle. The American anti-abortion movement was not a new phenomenon, but neither did it have a deep historic precedent. Dr Fran Bigman, who studies the history of abortion in literature and film, explains: "Abortion was not considered criminal in the US up until the 19th century. In 1920, states started passing bans for many reasons, including fear about the declining birth rate among whites, male doctors ambitious to be in charge of pregnancy, and a belief that women were made to be mothers.

"Women used to take pills not for 'abortion', but to cure 'menstrual blockage', and they often called this 'putting me right' or 'bringing me round'. Their own words make it clear that they thought of their actions not necessarily - or not just - as the end of a pregnancy, but as a return to their healthy selves: a cure, not a crime."

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Margaret Atwood describes Argentina's abortion laws as "slavery"

Roe vs Wade was brought by activist lawyers on behalf of a young woman in Texas, known as Jane Roe, who wanted who wanted a legal abortion.

The supreme court found that the 14th amendment to the constitution - the document that is meant to be at the core of US democracy - guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion on the grounds of it being a private decision. Even then, there were caveats: first trimester abortions could be freely pursued; second trimester ones were harder to get; third trimester only in the case of a threat to the mother's life. But while the case was a watershed in terms of American abortion rights, it far from guaranteed women equal access to abortion. In the intervening 46 years, countless attempts have been made through courts and through state legislation to limit American women's right to decide whether or not they want to give birth.

Abortion provision is managed on a state-by-state basis, and varies widely, depending on who you are, how much money you have, and where you live. In New York State, where I am, recent legislation means you can now get an abortion at any point during pregnancy. There are no time limits and there are few rules requiring a woman to justify her choice. The law here is designed for women to be trusted.

But this is the exception, not the rule: in many parts of America, abortion is de facto banned through draconian limitations placed on clinics that make it impossible to provide these essential healthcare services. And these bans disproportionately affect people who are already oppressed in America, in particular women of colour. Abortion activist Renee Bracey Sherman wrote in 2016 that "[Abortion clinic] closures are particularly concentrated in the South where more than half of black Americans reside.

Despite anti-choice activists repeating the myth that most abortion clinics are set up in predominantly black communities, fewer than one in 10 are actually in communities with a majority of people of color."

"At the heart of the anti-abortion movement is the desire to control women's bodies - just like Gilead, where fertile women are reduced to baby factories."

Anti-abortion activists call themselves the 'pro-life' movement, but I think that's just one of their lies, which is why I have started calling them what they are: supporters of forced birth.

In The Handmaid's Tale Atwood's theocracy speaks of their devotion to "traditional values"; real-life American theocrats, who believe that God has blessed the election of Donald Trump, tend to use the phrase "family values". The forced-birth movement is deeply grounded in American churches: dominated by evangelical Christians, as well as the American Catholic Church, who strive to enshrine their religious values in the US government despite the fact that the constitution also dictates the importance of the separation of church and state.

At the heart of the movement is the belief that life begins at conception, rendering the body of a pregnant woman a vessel - or, as one Virginia Republican wrote in 2014, a "host". At the heart of the movement is also their desire to control women, our sexuality, and our bodies.

Yes, that does sound like the Republic of Gilead, Atwood's fictional (well, fictional-ish) society in which fertile women are reduced from full humans to baby factories. It didn't take a lot of imagination to design this wretched place: Canadian Atwood simply looked south of the border.

It was bad in 1985, and it's bad today. With the election of Trump, the forced-birth movement has gained new traction, not least because of Trump's repeated false assertions that full-term babies are being aborted at nine months of pregnancy. I wonder if even in her wildest imaginings Atwood envisioned just how bad it would get: as of last month, Alabama's new law bans all abortions except in cases where there is a severe risk to a mother's life. Missouri's new legislation is a bit more roundabout, but the institution of new requirements mean the only remaining clinic in the state that performs abortions is likely to be forced to close.

Civil liberties lawyers are keen to challenge these laws and there is constant litigation, but that's kind of the point: forced-birth activists are keen to battle abortion through the court system all the way up to the supreme court. This has been the case since Roe vs Wade, but they're especially hopeful that the constitutional right to abortion will now be overturned thanks to Trump packing the court with conservative justices, notably Brett Kavanaugh, whose lack of respect for women was witnessed around the world during his confirmation hearing.

A dangerous precedent

Such is the influence of the people who wish to make abortion a moral issue rather than a medical procedure that they have come to control the narrative. This is extremely dangerous. When the Alabama law passed, for example, many pro-choice politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, cited the fact that the law did not even make exceptions for rape and incest. This was certainly inhumane. But the whole law is inhumane. Expressing the idea that even an extreme law should have exceptions for pregnancy caused by violence shows a tacit acceptance of the narrative that some abortions are more justified than others.

And I say this having realised that, until recently, I was among them. I too had been persuaded someone else's abortion might be my business. But then I was pregnant myself: a situation that I longed for and which was, until the birth of my baby, profoundly miserable.

As I spent months throwing up blood in the morning before work, I considered that this longed-for pregnancy which I found barely tolerable would be abject torture, and nothing less, if I did not want to be pregnant.

Taking these choices away from women is at the core of fascist male dominance in The Handmaid's Tale; it's also at the core of the vision of Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and their supporters. And it must be noted that many of those supporters are white women - like Aunt Lydia and Serena Joy, the American patriarchy cannot continue without the complicity of the 52% of white women who voted for Trump in the 2016 election.

I feel more frightened than ever to live in America. It is not extreme to say that limitations on abortion rights may be the first step on the slippery slope to a government that doesn't grant women bodily autonomy when it comes to the choice to have a baby, and doesn't care about women or their children.

"Abortion will be a key issue - perhaps the deciding one - in the next US election"

Already we see this in politicians' disregard for the children who are born from the pregnancies that they insist must continue, their insistence that there should be no federal mandates that they be given healthcare or access to childcare, not to mention homes or adequate education or even free lunches. We see it in their refusal to take action on gun control when dozens of schoolchildren die from gun violence. We particularly see it in their disregard for children who have been separated from their parents and die at the US-Mexico border. No longer foetuses, their lives no longer seem to matter - certainly to matter less, say, than the foetuses of teenage girls who cross the border illegally and are not allowed to seek abortions. In 2017, Brett Kavanaugh, then an appellate court judge, expressed the opinion that a 17-year-old illegal immigrant should be forced to bring her pregnancy to term rather than access the abortion she requested.

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Backlash as Elisabeth Moss says The Handmaid's Tale is "not a feminist story"

Can we follow the lead of The Handmaid's Tale and look to the north to save us? Not really.

As Sarah Sahagian wrote earlier this year in The Establishment, Canada is not set up to support a wave of 'abortion tourism' - it's not even set up to provide adequate access to abortion for Canadians. "On average, over 650,000 abortions occur in the United States each year," writes Sahagian. "It's unlikely Canada, with a total of 55 clinics, could make a significant dent in that number, but it would increase wait times for people living in Canada."

Though the legality of abortion in Canada feels more secure - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requires everyone in his party to run on a pro-choice platform - many Canadian women, especially those living in rural areas, struggle to access abortion through the public healthcare system, and many can't afford the cost to get them privately. Canada is better than Gilead, sure, but according to Sahagian, "the idea of Canada as a feminist utopia where getting an abortion is as easy as buying milk is a misconception".

What is the way forward for America, then, for those of us who care about the human rights of women? Abortion will be a key issue in the next election - perhaps the deciding one - and the varying approaches of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination further exemplifies how those on the left struggle to agree on what legal abortion means. Frontrunner Bernie Sanders states that he is unequivocally pro-choice but in the past endorsed a Democratic candidate who was anti-abortion. And former vice president Joe Biden walked back his support for the Hyde amendment - which limits federal funding for abortions to cases of rape, incest or in threat to the life of a woman - only after he came under harsh criticism from fellow presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.

There's a temptation for residents of states with more liberal abortion policies to throw up our hands at the backwardness of states like Alabama and Missouri. But we cannot afford to be complacent. Yamani Hernandez, executive director of National Network of Abortion Funds, sees reason to be optimistic. "Abortion advocates are educating their communities about the effects of each restriction passed, and that each and every one is an unnecessary burden to someone who needs an abortion. There's been a swell of support for abortion access, and we're ready to organise people into action."

We must be wholehearted in our engagement in the fight to preserve reproductive rights for all women. Whether or not we personally need to take advantage of the options, we must fight the tide that is pushing us towards Gilead. If they take away our rights to decide what happens in the most private realms of our bodies, it will just be the beginning.

Images: Getty Images, Rex Features, Courtesy of Hulu

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Abortion bans: how Margaret Atwood predicted America's future in The Handmaid's Tale

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Life background Layer 1 Add this article to your list of favourites "If you return to your country of origin, would you be persecuted on the basis of you being a woman?" On the bank of a dark river, a Canadian customs official speaks these words to a woman who is lying on the ground, drenched in freezing river water, clutching a baby.

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The Handmaid's tale could be adapted using stage and sound as an important medium for a couple of reasons. The first being that Atwood creates a sinister dystopian mood in the text that can be translated into music. Additionally, while the narrative is quite unusual, this actually works to the advantage of a variety of different adaptations as people may perhaps want to see such a extraordinary in a number of different forms.

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The music from the original 2000 production

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Listen to Ruders: The Handmaid's Tale on Spotify. Poul Ruders · Album · 2001 · 43 songs.

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The Handmaid's Tale was made into an Opera by Danish Composer Poul Ruders in 2000 with Paul Bentley's liberetto and was performed during the early 2000s in a number of places including Copenhagen, London, Minnesota and Toronto, Atwood's hometown. The production was then revived in 2019 at the Boston Lyric Opera which the article below refers to. Paol Ruder's work is highly applauded for its symphony between barbarity and sound. The Opera is able to evoke a macabre atmosphere with the chorus and chants of the handmaids while retaining powerful narrative of Atwood's text.

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Review: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Is a Brutal Triumph as Opera (Published 2019)

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Poul Ruders’s brilliant score is being presented in the Boston basketball arena in which Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel is likely set.

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Brooklyn Nine-Nine - Handmaids Take over the Office (Episode Highlight)

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We're about 3 months from Halloween, and if you're a committed costumer, you might be considering what you'll be wearing.

Personally? I am not a Sexy [insert inane persona here] person. This is a photo of me, from last Halloween, with my friend Courtney, who made a great Sexy Mermaid:

She's a babe all around, and her costume was great! (I was Rick from Rick & Morty. It was a joint costume with my husband, who played Morty. Photo at end of piece.)

A part of me wishes I felt comfortable in an outfit like Courtney's. I never have. I don't like having that much of myself on display, and that's just my personal thing - I don't mind if anyone else does it. More power to them. I have only dressed up as sexy anything once, when I was part of a group costume with two other friends: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. I got stuck with Sex, and I wore the outfit, but I was generally miserable. My favorite part of the costume was the faaaaaaabulous floor-length velvet jacket I borrowed from a Hollywood Wardrobe Stylist. I am really sad I couldn't keep it. It was a goth dream.

I generally find sexy costumes to be mostly innocuous, occasionally really fun & cute (my friends dressed up as Sexy Minions last year, and it was adorable), with a few exceptions - notably, anything that falls under cultural appropriation pisses me off. Be a Sexy Banana, cool, but do you need to be a Poca-hottie? No. Full stop. That's someone's heritage. Not cool.

Why am I talking about this? Because I recently came across this travesty of an idea: Sexy Handmaid.

Now, that photo and the link above are from a satirical piece (thank god), BUT: the best satire is always rooted in reality, and I guarantee that we will see Sexy Handmaids this Halloween.

That's like dressing up as Sexy Sally Hemmings, or - as the satirical piece mentions - Sexy Anne Frank.

If you have not read or watched The Handmaid's Tale, let me enlighten you: the Handmaids are rape victims. They are sex slaves. They have no bodily autonomy. They don't even have their own, actual names - they are given the names of the men who own them, i.e. Offred = Of Fred.

To dress up as a sexualized version of these women - even though they are fictional characters - is a smack in the face to any person who has experienced sexual violence, rape, assault, etc.

I understand the concept of trying to reclaim ownership of something for feminist purposes, and I can see where someone might consider this costume an attempt at subverting a misogynist idea, but here's the thing: you're still sexualizing a victim of violence while pretending to be that victim. The story within The Handmaid's Tale is scary as hell - scarier to me than any horror movie - and by trying to transform those characters into something different - lighter, sexier - you contribute to it, rather than fight against it.

I'm a big proponent of women reclaiming their sexuality/sensuality, and I've spoken at length about how I believe pole can do that for women who are disenfranchised from their sexual power (and I doubt it's only women who can experience it). I also believe that this can be achieved by other means, not just through pole. I think women can dress up as Sexy Whatevers if it allows them to feel that they have agency and bodily autonomy and ownership of their sexuality. But with that, comes the responsibility of recognizing that some shit should be left alone. In the end, being clever at the expense of others isn't all that clever, and there are better ways to fight the patriarchy than dressing up as a "Sexy Indentured Manual Servant" (as the satirical article calls it).

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We're about 3 months from Halloween, and if you're a committed costumer, you might be considering what you'll be wearing. Personally? I am not a Sexy [insert inane persona here] person. This is a photo of me, from last Halloween, with my friend Courtney, who made a great Sexy Mermaid: She's a babe all around,...

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This is part of Brooklyn 99's annual Halloween special where a group of handmaids enter a room as a way of creating chaos during a detective/murder mystery game. One of the characters says "She won’t shut up about how relevant that show is in today’s political landscape!" This highlights the relevance of the show in today's pop culture.

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Tonight, we heist again! Brooklyn Nine-Nine presents its annual Halloween episode, and this year, the detectives are vying for a championship belt. To win said golden belt, all tricks will be on the table. And emerging from a smoky break room. Yes, the precinct is being invaded by a live recreation of The Handmaid's Tale.

Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz) thinks Amy (Melissa Fumero) is the culprit, saying, "She won't shut up about how relevant that show is in today's political landscape." But there are other suspects.

Who is responsible for this diversion? What does it all mean? You can find out by checking out this first-look clip and then watching "HalloVeen," which airs at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.

Episode Recaps

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'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' meets 'The Handmaid's Tale' in Halloween episode

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Tonight, we heist again! Brooklyn Nine-Nine presents its annual Halloween episode, and this year, the detectives are vying for a championship belt. To win said golden belt, all tricks will be on the table. And emerging from a smoky break room. Yes, the precinct is being invaded by a live recreation of The Handmaid's Tale.

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This sketch by Saturday Night Life is a comedic take on the serious issue of women being oppressed in a patriarchy. The men in this sketch doesn't understand nor care about these "handmaids". It shows what many women feel like having to explain sexual violence and domestic abuse to  men on a daily basis.

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Chris Gerrard's Opera from 2013 which is interesting as it removes the use of the white bonnets that they were in most other representations of the novel. The removal of the wings is significant as white marks purity and innocence, so therefore replacing them with red bonnets reflects the true nature of the happenings in Gilead. This is also interesting as the same is doen in the 1990 film with Natasha Richardson.

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The Handmaid's Tale - Highlights (Part 1)

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Kylie Jenner criticised for Handmaid's Tale-themed birthday

Reality star says The Handmaid's Tale is her 'favourite show ever'

Over the weekend, the beauty mogul celebrated her friend Anastasia "Stassie" Karanikolaou's 22nd birthday with a party inspired by the dystopian Margaret Atwood novel and the Hulu TV show of the same name.

Instagram videos and photos show Jenner and her guests embraced the theme by wearing handmaid's costumes of red capes and white bonnets and drinking cocktails with names such as "praise be vodka" and "under his eye tequila".

The 21-year-old also decorated her home to resemble Gilead, the fictional setting of the 1985 novel, in which women who are still able to reproduce are forced to give birth to repopulate the declining population.

" The Handmaid's Tale is my favourite show ever, so for Stas's birthday, welcome to Gilead! Get your outfit," Jenner can be heard saying in a video of the party.

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1/8 Northern Irish women protesting anti-abortion laws take illegal pills

In response to Jenner's theme, the reality star has faced backlash, with some people questioning whether she understands what The Handmaid's Tale is actually about, with others saying her choice was "disturbing".

"Kylie Jenner throwing her friend a Handmaid's Tale-themed birthday party complete with robes, Gilead flags, 'Praised be' vodka and 'Under his eye' tequila is so tone-deaf, at any time, but especially when women's rights and autonomy are particularly under attack," one person wrote. "Disheartening."

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Another said: "Kylie Jenner is having a party themed after the Handmaid's Tale ... so... who's gonna tell her that her party is literally celebrating female enslavement for their biological reproduction?? WHO IS GOING TO TELL HER."

Someone else said the reality star's decision to throw a Handmaid's Tale-themed party was "insulting" considering the handmaid's outfit has become a symbol of protest against laws controlling women's reproductive rights, with activists wearing the outfit at pro-choice rallies around the country.

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"This privilege and ignorance is gross," they added on Twitter.

As of now, Jenner has not addressed the backlash.

More about

1/1 Kylie Jenner faces backlash for Handmaid's Tale-themed party

Kylie Jenner faces backlash for Handmaid's Tale-themed party

Reality star says The Handmaid's Tale is her 'favourite show ever'

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Kylie Jenner faces backlash for Handmaid's Tale-themed party

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Kylie Jenner criticised for Handmaid's Tale-themed birthday Reality star says The Handmaid's Tale is her 'favourite show ever' Over the weekend, the beauty mogul celebrated her friend Anastasia "Stassie" Karanikolaou's 22nd birthday with a party inspired by the dystopian Margaret Atwood novel and the Hulu TV show of the same name.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/us/handmaids-protests-abortion.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/03/how-the-handmaids-tale-dressed-protests-across-the-world

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This was a recent Australian adaptation of the 2000 Opera 

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This was a recent Australian adaptation of the 2000 Opera 

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Gertrude Opera_THE HANDMAID'S TALE (Ruders) archive excerpt OCT_2018

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Gossip Girl episode - The Handmaiden's Tale

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Gossip Girl episode - The Handmaiden's Tale

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This episode is based around a masquerade ball which takes the idea of secrecy and hidden identity from the Handmaid's tale.

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In 2000, BBC radio 4 dramatized The Handmaid's Tale with Jane Quill as producer and John Dryden as director. This radio adaptation of the novel was released in 3 parts. Recently, the radio drama was made available in 2010 on Radio Drama Revival. (https://radiodramarevival.com/episode-190-bbc-radios-the-handmaids-tale/)

It starts with the sound of rain and proceeds to have Offred question what's happened to the world. There is less work for the listener with regards to the plot as there is much inference of the kind of world they are living in from the very start. There is a setting of strange dystopia from the beginning and a transition from the 'before' to the 'after'. This adaptation also uses sounds eg. the anguish of childbirth, cries of loss, shrouded whispers, and so on creating the effect of 'Under His eye', a statement of farewell when parting with anyone in Gilead. Nothing in this adaptation is seen and therefore the listener is privy to things otherwise unseen creating a sense of mystery.

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Starring Elizabeth Moss

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Starring Natasha Richardson

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was written by Margaret Atwood as a reaction to the religious right in the 1980s, discussing what they would do to/with women if they took power. The story follows a woman named Offred living in a near-futuristic Christian fundamentalist theocratic regime named "The Republic of Gilead" - in what was the United States, which came to power in the midst of a fertility crisis a few years before the novel is set. In the book, Atwood explores the brutal world where casual attitudes regarding women by portions of society were taken to their logical end. Offred lives as a Handmaid, a reproductive surrogate slave for a man called "the Commander" and his infertile wife. As Offred, the narrator, puts it, she is a "two legged womb". It is known for its compelling writing and ambiguous ending, as well as its ability to start conversations on feminism and women's larger roles in society. It won many awards such as the 1985 Governor General's Award, and is generally considered essential reading in dystopian and feminist fiction.

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Screen - Haowei Shi

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Screen - Haowei

brooklyn 99

film(s)

tv series

talk about changed endings

Gossip Girl episode - The Handmaiden's tale

documentary?

'the making of...'

Prose - mystery guy / group

the book itself

sequel

texts that inspired it eg 1984, canterbury tales

banned books lists

translations

fanfiction

Stage and Audio - Sarah

stage adaptations inc. the ballet adaptation, one-woman stage show, theatre, and opera

Transgressions by lakes of canada

Tv and film Soundtracks

Audiobook

Radio adaptations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale#In_other_media

Other - Kris

political cartoons

trump news current events, abortion

graphic novel

Costumes eg. Kylie Jenner, protests

book jackets and illustrations

Fan-art

(Kristen)

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MARGARET ATWOOD