When looking into the context of Margaret Atwood’s the HanfMaids tale, it is important to understand the ways in which both past, present, and future ideas and aspects are intervened with each other.

Massalit Lecture.

• Notes from Dr Madeline Davies
• Novel is describes as both a ‘speculative fiction’ as well as a ‘critical dystopia’

What this means is that yes it acts as a warm to the future, and creates a new world that is separate to that of our own. But Atwood maintain critical focus on something that isn’t necessarily completely untrue or unrealistic for the future of our society. She uses ideologies and elements of previous events as a way of structuring and shaping the world in the novel, her rule when writing the book was to “not include anything that human beings has not already done in some other place or time”, this is quite a haunting concept considering the events in the novel .

Some key understands that she has spliced together in the book are

• Extreme political views of founding fathers of America: The Puritans
• The Puritans were members of a religious reform movements, that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century.
• The believe that they had a direct covenant with god to enact certain reforms , and that the Church must eliminate ceremonies and practises not rooted in the bible. – A lot of the regime in the novel operates under purism

Continually she incorporates aspects of totalitarianism regime, as she was living in Berlin where this was reflected in the lifestyles around her, this brought about the themes of cirvalism cruelty and censorship that are so prominent in the novel.

The novel is set in the US – based on it’s extreme political heritage, America was founded on religion extremis that hasn’t necessarily been completely dismantled or disregarded in modern times.

Final the ‘new right movement’ sprouted in the 1980’s the time when Atwood was writing the novel, and was in a position to reflect and comment on the messages and meanings behind this movement. The New Right supported regimes such as emasculation of men, and combatted woman having careers or control over their on bodies with topics such as abortion. Atwood was able from an outsider perspective to see this and it is reflected in her novel.

The handmaids tale act’s as not a far off dystopian fantasy that seems completely unlikely, but instead is so structured and entered around a splicing tangle of historic values and ideas, to modern theories and regimes.