The Handmaid's Tale Book Review
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is set in the futuristic Republic of Gilead, which was formerly the United States. In the book, at some point in the future, conservative Christians take control of the United States and establish a dictatorship. Most women in Gilead are infertile after repeated exposure to nuclear waste, pesticides or leakages from chemical weapons. The novel takes the form of a memoir by one of the handmaids, the few fertile women who are taken to camps and trained to be these birth-mothers for the upper-class. Infertile lower-class women are sent either to clean up toxic waste or to become "Marthas," who are house servants. No women in the Republic are permitted to be openly sexual, because sex is strictly for reproduction only. The government declares this a feminist upgrading on the sexual politics of the present when women are seen as sex objects.
The novel focuses on one handmaid named Offred. She, along with all the other handmaids, is given the......
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Approximate Word Count: 675
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)
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