The Handmaid's Tale is TV series based on the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood.
The story speculates on the future of the United States from the perspective of the protagonist Offred. Motivated by events such as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that transformed the Iranian monarch into Islamic theocracy and the conservative rule of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Margaret Atwood postulates the terrifying future of its embryos in the (actual) present.
The author starts with a few basic assumptions: terrorist attacks against the American nation threaten the outside, and the lower fertility of the American white population on the inside. They are guilty of ecological pollution, sex illness, the use of contraceptive pills, frequent abortions and promiscuous behavior. This causes the growth of an extreme Christian right, but the basic factor that makes it stronger is the inert and apathetic belief of the majority that radical changes are not actually possible and achievable.
Until they really are.
After the government under the guise of protection from terrorist attacks has changed marital law, it soon begins with rooted US changes that changes name to Gilead. The theocratic state rests on a stark interpretation of Old Testament texts which results in the abolition of all liberties, especially women. All other religions are abolished, reading and writing are banned, and the population is divided into baptisms that strictly control every aspect of life and do not forgive mistakes and rebellions. Moreover, they don't allow reflection and contemplation, any doubt.
Any move from a solid set of living standards is punished by death or a drive to the Colony - an area of inhumane living conditions where punishment dies while cleaning toxic waste.
The central figure of the Gilead society is a woman - reduced to a reproductive apparatus that allows the continuation of endangered white species. In the process of establishing Gilead, women have been deprived of all rights and freedoms, in several terrible simple moves. First they freeze their bank accounts and transferred the money to the name of the nearest male member of the family (resulting in total economic dependence) and then they were given collective redundancies with a law prohibiting their future employment. In order to prevent their departure from the state, travel permits have been abolished, and in the end they are left without their own names and identities, fitted into a new caste system that guarantees obedience and birth growth - the only purpose for which the woman remains.
Women are being divided into fertile and infertile, legal and illegal. The legal ones (most often infertile), are the wives of senior officials, and the marthas, that are concerned with their household. The rise of high-class births is in charge of maidens, fertile women who in some ways have in the past violated the laws of the new state (lesbians, women from extramarital communities, divorced or in another marriage ...).
According to Old Testament stories, Jacob and Abraham slept with their maids to make children when their wives could not. Similarly, Gilead's maids are assigned to high-ranking families where wives can't have children of their own. All the maidens wear red uniforms, and are indoctrinated in the Red Center to fuse their life to their existence to reproduce.
After they are being assigned to the family, the handmaiden performs Ritual.
This means having intercourse with the husband while his wife is holding their holding hands.
Ritual excludes every aspect of emotion and pleasure, and it is reduced to a mechanical act whose only purpose is procreation. Maids have three chances to get carried away, and to be assigned to three families, and if they fail they will be sent to the Colonies.
Our protagonist, June (played by Elisabeth Moss), now called Offred, we meet while she is trying to escape across the northern border with her husband and child. Her husband is shot. The child is taken away. They give her a ''noble purpose''.
We follow her while she carries out duties accurately and intimately, in fear of not making a mistake that will result in death or expulsion. Consequently, the whole society, including other maids, is alert to other members and their moves, which excludes the possibility of entrusting. In Gilead everybody is all alone.
It is especially interesting to follow the development of the Commander and Offred's relationship as well as the story of Serene Joy, the Commander's wife who is one of those women who, with their own will and convictions, helped construct a state in which she has no rights without receiving any credit.It is good that there is hope, in that humid social sense, of Mayday's resistance movement, for which Offred hears after having gained enough confidence in her partner Ofglen after some time.
Hope also exists in the Offred itself, which initially states how she intends to survive.Otherwise, without hope for salvation, escape, planning how to find and save her little girl, The Handmaid's tale would simply be too brutal and hard to watch. Beginning with the scenes of the maidens scramble in the re-education center, brainwashing and manipulation, control and punishment with a cattle rod, to Offred's dead face expression during rape, that is, the ceremony ritual.
It is good that there is hope, in that humid social sense, of Mayday's resistance movement, for which Offred hears after having gained enough confidence in her partner Ofglen after some time. Hope also exists in the Offred itself, which initially states how she intends to survive.
Otherwise, without hope for salvation, escape, planning how to find and save her little girl, The Handmaid's tale would simply be too brutal and hard to watch. Beginning with the scenes of the maidens scramble in the re-education center, brainwashing and manipulation, control and punishment with a cattle rod, to Offred's dead face expression during rape, that is, the ceremony ritual.
The Republic of Gilead is a city that formally resembles Sharia societies, but is governed by people who believe that through a new religious concept, they actually save human kind, civilization, and return things to their place after the destruction of a liberal society.
One of the most important themes of The Handmaid's Tale is the presence and manipulation of power. On the one hand, Gilead is a theocratic dictatorship, so power is imposed entirely from the top. There is no possibility of appeal, no method of legally protecting oneself from the government, and no hope that an outside power will intervene. One of the characteristics of this kind of power is that it is extremely visible. Power imposed from one direction must always be displayed. Unlike a democratic society, where the people consent to be governed and therefore have an interest in maintaining the structures of society, in Gilead, the government must cover the streets and even individual homes with guards and guns. The possibility of surveillance must be constant. The only place that people are free is in their own heads, creating a significant amount of isolation between individuals. (2)
The focus of the Gileadean regime is on the control of sex and sexuality. They execute gays and lesbians; they destroy pornography and sexual clothing; they kill abortion doctors; they outlaw divorce and second marriages; and they ritualize bizarre sexual relations that they believe are supported by the Bible. It is unsurprising at the end of the novel to learn that the Gileadean regime eventually destroys itself. In attempting to separate sex from sexuality, the regime demonstrates both its underestimation of and fear of sexuality. (2)
Atwood, however, is careful not to portray women simply as victims. First of all, many women in Gilead support the regime and help to keep other women in line. Wives control Handmaids, and female government officials, called Aunts, enforce discipline on other women. Atwood may be reminding her readers that women have traditionally served to enforce the rules of a patriarchal society, from bearing responsibility for the socialization of young girls to the policing of adult nonconformists through ridicule or ostracism. In a way, The Handmaid’s Tale is about the present as well as the future, suggesting that until there are significant changes in women’s and men’s understandings and social practices, society will continue to be in danger of this kind of repression. (2)
(1)My translation from croatian to english Ziher hr, article ''ODLIČNO I VAŽNO''
(2) The Handmaid's Tale Critical Evaluation, Essay eNotes.com