She explained that the Victorian period taught her that novels should not focus on one person but on society, something one could certainly say about The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood studied Victorian literature at Radcliffe College and has referenced that period in her life as an influence on how her novels are written. As any reader will notice, and Atwood has herself said, the novel is standing firmly in the present moment. But, the novel was not only based in the past. When asked to speak about the process of writing about Offred, Gilead, the Aunts, Marthas, and more, she cited her research on 17th-century Ameican Puritans who used to Bible to create a similar type of theocracy based around a selective reading of the Bible. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is set in the Republic of Gilead after a military coup has destroyed the United States government and put in its place a totalitarian theocracy. It is one of many that she has written, and far from the only dystopian novel, in her lifetime. The Handmaid’s Tale is undeniably Atwood’s most famous novel. Climax: The final scene of the novel when Offred is either taken to her death or rescued.

Setting: Massachusetts, the Republic of Gilead (in what used to be the United States).When/where written: Early 1980s in West Berlin, British Columbia, and Alabama.

Offred tells the story of her life in The Handmaid’s Tale, speaking brutally of what the world has become, her desire to find her daughter again, and somehow achieve freedom. Offred is a Handmaid whose only purpose in Gilead is to have children for a wealthy, elite couple. The protagonist, Offred, is one of many still-fertile women who have been captured by the military and forced into sexual slavery. The new season ventures beyond Atwood’s original story.The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is set in the Republic of Gilead after a military coup has destroyed the United States government and put in its place a totalitarian theocracy. The first season tracked closely with Atwood’s novel, adapting it to the screen. The show, now in its second season, stars Elisabeth Moss as the handmaid Offred, aka June Osborne. And it’s not the foundation of Canada,” she said That has been an underlying foundation stone all the way along. “Because the foundations of America are a 17th century Puritan theocracy. It was that for escaping slaves before the American Civil War, it was certainly that during the Vietnam War and it has been that at various other times.”Ītwood, Canada’s most celebrated living author, insists the two countries are very different. It’s where you try to get to so you won’t be you know killed, locked up, those things,” Atwood said. In Atwood’s world, Canada becomes an escape valve, a society with markedly different values than its neighbor to the South. “People woke up on the 9th of November, people in the show, and they said we’re in a different show.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood