The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

Speculative narratives project current issues into disturbing settings to provoke fear of these potential horrifying futures to incite change against increasingly oppressive ideologies. Both Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale and Bruce Miller’s 2017 recontextualised adaptation of Atwood’s narrative reflect the similar misogynistic and theocratic ideologies present in their distinct contexts and the potential harm they could cause in the future. Both composers use speculative fiction as warnings against these growing oppressive regimes and instil fear to motivate proactive pushback against potential societal regression.

By presenting a dystopia in which women have had their autonomy taken away through dehumanisation, both Atwood

Atwood’s grand narrative of Gilead parallels the androcentric policies that President Reagan enforced in the 1980s and criticises how they speak over and oppress women. She explores the total control of women through Offred’s narrator voice, her thoughts expressed in powerful ways. When holding wool for Serena Joy, Offred states, “I am leashed, it looks like, manacled; cobwebbed, that's closer.” The animalistic imagery and asyndeton in her thoughts depicts the product of the regime’s sub-human views on women, reflective of President Reagan’s dehumanising policies and views such as his opposition to the abortion bill. Atwood reinforces the horror of the controlling nature of conservative political regimes, Offred stating, “We can go to the washroom if we put our hands up, though there’s a limit to how many times a day, they mark it down on a chart.” Her emotionless narration towards such a restrictive environment elicits intense discomfort about the potential normalisation of extremist values which Atwood uses to motivate change to prevent the return of fundamentalist ideologies. In his 2017 adaptation of the novel, Miller reframes the text’s values around the revitalisation of fundamentalism with Trump’s influence on the overturning of female rights such as

Gilead’s metanarrative is a reconstruction of Christian doctrine, mirroring the manipulation of current regimes and represents the return of destructive fundamentalism. Atwood often makes Biblical references, with statements such as "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." This intertextuality represents the role distorted Christian convictions play in justifying governmental oppression, which Atwood uses to warn us against blindly following these fanatic beliefs. She also parallels the slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again” stated by Reagan during his presidential candidacy with religious maxims in her text such as “GOD IS A NATIONAL RESOURCE” to criticise the religious undertones of Reagan’s political speeches. These maxims represent how Reagan’s timeless slogan acts as a catchy phrase as a form of coercion, evoking fear and vigilance to prevent us from falling for the religious manipulation of conservative regimes. Similarly, Miller also cautions us against falling prey to political manipulation, especially during Trump’s similar promises for oppressive policies such as defunding Planned Parenthood. In his TV adaptation, Miller depicts the Handmaids and the Aunts shaming