Volume 7 – "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

The most famous dystopia of recent times, The Handmaid's Tale provides a female perspective: what Nineteen Eighty-Four might have looked like if Julia had been the protagonist or Brave New World if Lenina Crowne had been. Set in a post-revolutionary United States – now known as the Republic of Gilead – birth rates have collapsed and the new elite does not intend to let women slip out of its control. Reproduction is too important to squander on freedom.

In Atwood's work, dystopia is an authoritarian state disguised as a godly society. Gilead, however, is not simply a quaint religious community. Behind the seemingly archaic puritanical society lies a quasi-fascistic power structure, using a selection of Biblical injunctions and modern biological thought to justify their rule.

Within the story, there are questions. Who is the protagonist, Offred? What does her elusive narrative tell us? What hierarchies exist within the ruling power structure? The answers are not as straightforward as they might seem and, lurking beneath them, the methods by which people seize power, manufacturing support and excluding those they seek to suppress. Computerisation might not seem the most obvious theme, yet it provides a hidden thread running through the story.

Volume 7 looks at the many themes running through The Handmaid's Tale. Offred's story might leave us with questions, but her world tells us something else: power is only ever fleeting.

The Series