The Handmaid's Tale

Editorial review

Atwood famously insisted that nothing in 'The Handmaid's Tale' had not already happened somewhere in human history. The book's prose is restrained, almost flat — and yet it is one of the most viscerally remembered novels of the late 20th century.

AI-generated summary

In the near-future Republic of Gilead, a fundamentalist regime has overthrown the United States and reduced fertile women to state-controlled 'Handmaids' assigned to bear children for elite households. Offred, one of those women, narrates the gradual loss of her former life and the small acts of inner resistance still available to her.

Key takeaways

• 1

  Rights eroded gradually are easier to lose than rights overturned at once.

• 2

  Theocratic systems run on the complicity of women as well as men.

• 3

  Memory and naming are themselves forms of resistance.

• 4

  Distinct, restrained prose can be more disturbing than spectacle.