The TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1984 novel The Handmaid’s Tale received a lauded debut in the US several months ago.
It has finally hit our screens, courtesy of Channel 4. The hype and early reviews revealed a common thread as many reviewers compared the dystopian world of the adaptation to the current political and social climate of the US. It only takes a brief scan through the Twitter hashtag to see that the regular viewing public find an uncomfortable level of resonance between the show and Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s attitudes towards women.
Women stripped of their lives
The setting is the Republic of Gilead (the new name for America) in the present day, and begins with a frantic car chase as the protagonist, Offred (Elisabeth Moss), is pulled apart from her daughter after her husband is shot dead. The name Gilead, a name referred to in the Bible as a fertile region of Palestine, is employed in dreadful irony in Atwood’s world, as a plague of barrenness and infertility causes it to be a society ruled by the fear of scarcity. And so, fertile women are taken from their families to be stripped of their lives and to become reproductive surrogates.
