Gilead in America
In <em>The Handmaid’s Tale,</em> a callous, theocratic regime uses scripture to justify forcibly removing children from their parents.
by Sophie Gilbert
Jun 20, 2018
4 minutes
This article contains spoilers through the 10th episode of Season 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The aura of timeliness that hovers around has, for the last two seasons, charged Hulu’s television adaptation of the novel. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 work of speculative fiction imagines a repressive theocratic regime staging a coup in America and forcing fertile women into sexual and reproductive slavery. Since its publication, it’s never been out of print. But the 2016 election of Donald Trump—whose evangelical vice president, Mike Pence, unless it is his wife—and the ongoing erosion of reproductive rights across America has made the story of Offred seem newly relevant
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