Context Flashcards
Atwood’s studies
she studied Victorian novels that influenced her belief that novels should be about society as a whole, rather than the characters’ specific lives
Atwood’s research
on 17th-century American Puritans, who created a rigid and inhumane theocracy based on a few choice selections from the Bible which influenced Gilead
responds to modern US
responds to moderns US political scene
the religious right with its moralising tendencies was gaining power in America as the backlash to the left Free Love and Feminists movement
religion
HMT shows that religion can be sued as an excuse to reduce women’s rights, a political tendency which continues to occur over the world
compared to other dystopias
in an essay about the book, Atwood compares it to 1984, Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange- all with political undertones, that suggest that they world they portray aren’t far from our world
written
in the early 1980s
published in
1985
literary period
feminism
setting
Cambridge, Massachusetts under the government of the Republic of Gilead, which has replaced the US
set it here as she thought it was the last place such a thing could happen
point of view
first person limited
HMT was a response
to the growing political and social conservatism in US in the Regan era
also from her experiences travelling in Afganistan and Iran in the 1970s, when women’s rights were being stripped from them
“utopia”
comes from the greek for “no place”
Dystopian fiction like 1984
and HMT have taken on a new relevance following the election of Trump
with the American Institution bent on defunding abortion clinics, many have noticed parallels with HMT
Orwell’s influence
showed her that it isn’t labels, like Christianity or Socialism, that are bad, but the actions people do in their name
HMT and O+C
they both extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and produce a half prediction, half satirical novel
