The Handmaid's Tale Context

• 1979
• In 2 years, the progressive, westernized country got turned into a theocracy with an extremist muslim dictator.
• Women heavily opressed
• Sharia law
• Only 6 years before Handmaid's was written so very relevant at the time
• This idea that no matter how much progress is made, it could all so easily be erased... why couldn't it happen in the USA?

• 3 Mile Island
• 1979 so recent to writing
• a huge nuclear explosion in Pennsylvania that heavily affected the environment
  
• links in with the Colonies in the novel

For AO3:

• nowadays global warming is a massive issue, with leaders like Trump denying its existence
• could perhaps talk about Extinction Rebellion protests

• Puritans- Protestants against Catholicism, belliefs similar to Gileadean regime
• Ceremony- read bible
• Rachel and Leah Centre- link to biblical story of Rachel and Leah about surrogacy
• Links with Iranian Revolution
• Quakers - underground femaleroad
• Gilead kills all with differing beliefs

• Influenced by prevailent 2nd wave Feminism at the time
• Theme of men laughing and belittling womens troubles- Piexoto
• Atwood said she was simply writing exactly what she saw around her at the time, so it is social commentary on the way women were treated at the time
• she was looking from the outside of the US in Canada
• Rise of the Religious Right- Phyllis Schlaffley links to Serena Joy

• Biblical clothing
• red= promiscuity
• The bonets- treated like horses with the wings, shows how theyre treated like animals who are told what to do with their bodies
• Puritan imagery

• Vietnam war- agent orange causing deformities in babies for generations, still affecting generations to come nowadays, also causing infertility
• The cold war- influenced novel in atomic bombs- the colonies

• Thalidomides- Women used thalidomide pill for morning sickness, created babies with deformed limbs
• Agent orange- deformed babies for generations
• both reflect this idea of chemicals affecting fertility and development

• JFK assassinated, Gilead formed through assassinating entire government.