History Headscratchers / TheHandmaidsTale

** Probably just because it's less awkward to say. Most of the other names are things like OfDaniel or OfLawrence, which have no choice but to be pronounced in a kind of stunted way. Also, pronouncing it Off Red brings more attention to the other meanings behind the name i.e., she's slightly Off Red and not very good at staying in her role and she is being Offered (Offred is another, older way of pronouncing it).

** See HBO's ''Chernobyl'', Episode 4. The Soviet Liquidators did roughly the same thing to bury the radioactive particles, but with tractors and bulldozers instead of shovels. The thing is -- it most likely helps in the short-term as people are not exposed to it directly, but over time, radioactivity and toxic waste might "resurface".

** The Republic of Gilead didn't think it through. The handmaids can't eat solid food nor brush their teeth, which won't contribute to healthy pregnancies. Meta answer: the showrunners didn't think it through. (The thing is, in the book, everything is coordinated to make the handmaids the best possible "uterus" -- except for emotional well-being.)

The incel culture that wants women to stop being independent so they'll be available for sex on demand want sex for pleasure, not children. Maybe the culture was either not prominent enough or non-existent when Atwood wrote the novel, but the tv series also acts like men who believe women aren't human want them to only bear children and do chores, not provide sex for pleasure on demand. Men like Ariel Castro or the perps in every other episode of ''Series/ForensicFiles'' don't want rigid, controlled, unpleasant sex like the Ceremony and children, they want sex they can enjoy like the Sons of Jacob have forbidden; they use and abuse women for sex as an end itself. Why would misogynists create a society where they're free to oppress women... and don't use their power to get the type of sex real life misogynists and abusers of women want? A society founded by incels would turn all women into Jezebels -- sex slaves for male pleasure -- not forbid sex except for procreation.

* B) One of the themes seems to be how [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil nobody is ever willing to believe how]] StupidEvil Gilead is until it's too late. Like how everyone trusted the new leaders of the US even as they [[PuttingOnTheRiech Put On The Riech,]]the Canadian government doesn't believe or doesn't want to believe that Gilead will turn its cruelty toward the outside world with no regard to the same national soviernty that's stopped, or at least justified the rest of the world not stopping them, or how doing so will likely get the rest of the world to gang up on Gilead, and how ruling Canada won't be feasible since there's not likely to be anywhere near enough sympathetic Canadians now they they've seen Gilead's true colors.

** You may not be wrong (at least when it comes to the TV show). Some of the promotional interviews for Season 3 hint that the American South is [[UpToEleven worse]] than Boston. Which would indicate the Handmaids there ''have it good.''

*** According to one character "One day, they made us all Guardians." The implication is that most of the U.S. army and police still see Gilead as the legitmate government, and thus follow them even if they don't agree with all their policies. We're probably supposed to see them like the normal German police and Wehrmacht during WWII, JustFollowingOrders in contrast to the Sons of Jacob's fanatical SS. The problems with this are A. The Clean-werhmacht is a myth; it had problems with anti-semetism and authoritarianism even before the Nazis rose to power, at one point refusing to put down a pre-Nazi anti-democratic coup, and all of the Wehrmacht was well aware of the Holocaust, which to them, was simply an extension of the war with the USSR, the stated purpose of which was to kill or enslave everyone in the massive country that they saw as Jewish and Marxist.

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*** Maybe in real-life, but it fits the book's satire about how imbedded many of Gilead's ideas already are in U.S. politics to say that most of the army either joined the Sons of Jacob or at least weren't motivated enough to fight them, because the U.S. army is predominantly male, white, christiin and conservative, and the military and police have a history of supporting authoritiarian regimes because they give them more funding, power and glory.

Why would the misogynist incels who started this movement create roles that give women authority (the Wives and Aunts)? Why wouldn't they just give women with the title of Wives the roles of Marthas and have men do what the Aunts do? It's not because they've proven themselves useful or something -- Serena Joy had most of her power stripped away despite contribution, so why not all of it? [[https://22convention.com/ Real life movements like this]] are consistent in their misogyny; they don't have women give the propaganda speeches -- they believe "mansplaining" is the proper way to teach women to know their place. You could have men keep women in line just as easily as the Aunts. The existence of the Aunt class and giving the Wife class so much power and privilege makes no sense for a group whose paramount value is the inferiority of the female sex as a whole.

** It's not that Gilead doesn't know that there are other ways of producing babies, ie. IVF, or that they don't have the technology. They consciously made it a policy to go with the methods that they considered to be sanctioned by the Bible. It would arguably be more efficient to harvest eggs from women with viable ovaries, fertilize the eggs with sperm from young, healthy donors, and implant the resulting embryos in healthy wombs, but that's not considered a godly method. The story of Jacob's wives and their handmaids is the precedent for the Handmaid system, and considered to have God's seal of approval. The rulers of Gilead believe, or pretend to believe, that the plague of infertility is the punishment for the sinful lifestyle of the world, and that it is only by embracing a godly way of life that the plague will be lifted. By that logic, using a method like IVF would just be adding to the country's sins. Another contributory factor is the determination to ignore the possibility that men, particularly men in power, could be sterile. They don't test male fertility at all. They'd rather stick to the Handmaid system, and tell themselves that if a Handmaid doesn't conceive a Commander's child, it's her fault.

** In the books, Serena wears perfume, and the narrator says that it's a luxury and she must have a private source, not that it's not allowed and she got it on the black market. Handmaids aren't allowed to use hand lotion or face cream, supposedly because they're vanities but, according to the narrator, this prohibition stems from the Wives, who don't want Handmaids to look attractive. Handmaids, Marthas and Aunts are likely to be forbidden to wear cosmetics because that would be
, and Econowives probably can't afford them, but Wives are allowed to wear them.

** You may not be wrong (at least when it comes to the TV show). Some of the promotional interviews for Season 3 hint that the American South is[[UpToEleven worse]] than Boston. Which would indicate the Handmaids there ''have it good.''

** In the books, Serena wears perfume, and the narrator says that it's a luxury and she must have a private source, not that it's not allowed and she got it on the black market. Handmaids aren't allowed to use hand lotion or face cream, supposedly because they're vanities but, according to the narrator, this prohibition stems from the Wives, who don't want Handmaids to look attractive. Handmaids, Marthas and Aunts are likely to be forbidden to wear cosmetics because that would be vanity, and Econowives probably can't afford them, but Wives are allowed to wear them.

** There are varied beliefs on what lust is in Christian terms, and what constitutes as lust. Some believe that lust refers to immoral sexual desires (ie sexual desire for someone besides your spouse), others believe it refers to sexual addiction or idolatry of sex above other things, and others still believe any form of sexual desire (even in marriage) is sinful. It's not entirely clear what Gilead's views on it are (their entire system allows for sex outside of marriage, which is quite specifically condemned in the Bible) but it's possible that their views are that acting on sexual desire is okay as long as it's to conceive a child during marriage. So it seems Eden's mindset was, "This is the only time he's supposed to act on his sexual desire, so if he's not, does he not feel it for me?"

* Why do human rights issues that have never existed within western Christian circles (such as female genital mutilation, prohibition against women driving, and not allowing women to read), but are prevalent in certain Muslim communities, appear to be widespread in Gilead?

** I was actually wondering about this too, but then I learned more about Christian fundamentalist culture in USA, and... Well, while Gilead is undoubtedly an exaggeration, it's not THAT far off from their StayInTheKitchen ideals. And while they are a minority even among the Christians in USA, one can easily imagine their ideas both radicalizing and going more mainstream in the event of a crisis. Many elements are also allegorical, like the distinction between Wives and Handmaids being representative of MadonnaWhoreDichotomy. The only thing that I find a bit off, I guess, is forbidding women from reading, even religious texts (if it's about information control, strict censorship should do the trick). Lastly, the use of cliterectomy makes a frightening amount of sense in context. Amputation as punishment is already used extensively in Gilead, and in this case it also limits the "criminal's" ability to commit the "crime" again...

* From a meta-standpoint, why did Atwood say that Gilead came about via a violent revolution, the first stage of which was slaughtering the higher echelons of the U.S. government, if her goal was to satirize fundamentalism in American politics? Saying all of Congress and the president were slaughtered effectively lets the legitimate American politics system off the hook despite, in real life, Christian fundamentalism being one of the U.S. two primary political party's common platforms and the common presence of such fundamentalists in congress and the senate (and to a lesser extent, White House. She wrote the book in response to Reaganism). Seems like explaining Gilead as the result of one party manipulating the pre-existing system would both make the satire more pointed and premise more believable.

* Population Grown
** The Handmaid's get passed around to various men to have children. Would the girls then grow up to be Handmaids and if so, wouldn't that lead to a lot of inbreeding due to lack of available men so you'd have to be a Handmaid to your cousin or something? Which also doesn't solve the lack of population if now you have to worry about genetic diseases.
*** The Handmaids are supposed to be like, a one-generation solution ideally. The daughters of the Commanders are Daughters and, assumedly, the fertile ones will be married off to the Sons of other Commanders/high ranking people and the infertile ones will most likely be Marthas or something of that nature. More realistically there would probably be Handmaids for a while and that inbreeding may occur.
*** In the book, they are supposed to be an example for others and in the transitional phase. Definitely not "one generation only" solution. The daughters to commanders and wives are going to grow into Wives, most likely, but if they disobey or sin, off with them to the training for Handmaids and shipping them to the next infertile couple. Unless they are executed or sent to colonies, probably depending on the "sin" and their repentance and willingness to atone.
*** Records are kept of the biological origins of the children of Handmaids. When June looked up the records of the Handmaids, they had records of the children they bore before and after they became Handmaids, with original names and new names. "Agnes [=McKenzie=]" and "Nichole Waterford" might never have met, but it would be on record that they were biological half-sisters so that, if they both married and produced biological offspring, those children wouldn't be matched when marriages were arranged.

** The book had a brainwashed, UnreliableNarrator, and its implied the problem is more with the men than the women. Most of the Handmaids are women who committed some sort of crime against Gilead, like June committing adultery by sleeping with a married man or Moira being a feminist. Since they're fertile, they didn't get sent to the Colonies, with the Handmaid system acting as their redemption. So, yes, there's probably more fertile women, just some aren't Handmaids.
*** It may be a mixture of ideology and economics, like how North Korea still exists while suffering from constant famines and spending all their GDP on military, but they're propepd up by China as a deterrent against South Korea, Japan, and the States. Gilead's territory by contrast would be so broad that they don't need a China to prop them up- there's enough fertile land and infrastructure to keep things running for a little while. Meanwhile, the Gilead economy is gearing toward an "olden days" system to survive into the future. There's a Sci-Fi book series that shows this in a good way, ''1632''. Basically, aliens do something and an American coal mining town is transported to 1632 Germany, with all their modern tech and knowledge. The Americans realize that they can't bring the rest of the world to modern tech- they'll waste all their gasoline, bullets, and modern medicines in the process. So they begin a kind of controlled crash landing, aiming to scale their lifestyle back to the Industrial Revolution level, with allowances made for maintaining modern medicine and civics. Commander Lawrence might be guiding Gilead into a controlled crash landing so they'll survive when the birth crisis generation dies out in 30ish years. Returning to old farming methods, rapidly switching to sustainable energy sources, cleaning up radioactive sites while they have the bodies and technology to do so, cutting back on luxury to the point where ''clothing'' is uniform- they're literally preparing to live in the past during the future.
* Speaking as someone who has not yet had a chance to read the novel, I'm not entirely clear on how the handmaid system works - or rather, who gets "chosen" for it. In season one I assumed that women who had previously given birth, and thus proven to be fertile, became handmaidens whether or not they had done anything wrong by Gilead standards (the exception being any commandor's wife who might be able to bear her own children). I understood it as Gilead attempting to increase their birth rates by having control over every fertile woman, and that commandors and their wives were considered the elite and therefore those men were seen as having the most desirable genes to pass on, and their wives seen as the most suited to raise the children. In season two, however, Nick's wife, while not yet proven able to bear children, is certainly expected to do so. Did I just get it completely wrong, and only women who were sinners in the eyes of Gilead were eligible to be handmaids? It seems strange to me that they would choose to pair those women up with the commandors, rather than to have women considered to be ''pure'' bear their children.
** It's mentioned in a recent episode that an Econowife was caught breaking the law and was made to serve as a Handmaid to atone for her sins. It's also implied that June was forced in the same way because she was an adultress, she was Catholic, and she tried to escape. It's possible that if she had been Luke's first wife and they'd been the right religion, they would've been allowed to remain together. As for their purity, I think that's the purpose of the Ceremony and the Wife being present. The children are pure because in their minds God is creating a child between the Husband and Wife, the Handmaid is just a vessel.

* Who is the figurehead of this regime? Even in the coup was mounted by a bunch of 'concerned citizens', someone would bite, bribe and bugger his way to the top. And his picture would be on all the walls as a result. Fictional regimes always lack an 'Exulted Leader' - except for Nineteen Eighty Four's Big Brother, who nonetheless may not even be a real person. The only real life authoritarian regime I can think of had no real figurehead was the last incarnation of Burmas' military junta and its' council of cleptarchs. Ironically in its' last days, pictures of Aunt Suu could be found everywhere.

*** There’s always a cult leader

*** There seemed to be an element of 'For goodness sake Gilead is still around after five years so we have to deal with them' in the episode. Canada seems to be getting the majority of the refugees from Gilead since it's next door so it's not unreasonable for them to want to meet the leaders who started this mess. The Canadian leaders seemed to be looking at how to navigate relation and get a handle on the leaders despite their own feelings. The letters being published probably gave the people who were against the meeting the evidence they needed to point out that Gilead couldn't be negotiated with.

* How are the Handmaid's deemed to be fertile? Are all Handmaid's women who have already had children? And if they only want fertile women, wouldn't they want to test their fertility first before assigning them to be Handmaid's?

* At the end of Season 2/beggining of season 3, Emily smuggles Nicole/Holly to Canada, while June goes to try to rescue Hannah, but is caught. She then gets in trouble for trying to see Hannah. Why can't the powers that be in Gilead guess that June helped get Nicole/Holly to safety? I know Fred claimed that June and Serena tried to fight Emily off, but wouldn't it be suspicious that June, who has already tried to escape to Canada while pregnant with the same baby who escaped, then went to the house of her other daughter at the exact same time? And even if they don't suspect June, they must know that Emily didn't get to the Waterfords' house, steal a baby, and escape the country all by herself, shouldn't they be looking for members of the resistance, like they did after the second Ofglen's bombing? And even if they do suspect that June smuggled Nicole/Holly out, but are turning a blind eye because she's had 2 children, which seems unlikely, why wouldn't Aunt Lydia mention it during her outburst? Why wouldn't they try to keep a better eye on her?

** Gilead doesn't seem to care too much about providing medical treatment for conception and childbird in general, which itself is a headscratcher. Gilead may not have much in the way of medical equipment or medicines. Serena Joy had to get a pregnancy test on the black market! Artificial insemination requires a lot of medical resources, and is not always as effective as vaginal intercourse. Having sexual contact during conception may also play into their fundamentalist interpretation of the bible. The Bible passages about handmaids do not involve a doctor performing artificial insemination, after all. The 'ceremony' appears to be a religious rite which makes them feel as if the Wife is the one who is actually becoming pregnant. Having the handmaid near her baby also promotes breastfeeding, as seen when June is unable to lactate when separated from Holly/Nicole.

** Women not being allowed to read / drive isn't an Islamic-specific thing; For the vast majority of US history before WW1 people believed that women couldn't take fast trains or cars. As for FGM, said things are practiced in those countries because it's seen as an actual cultural rite. You can think of FGM as similar to foot-binding, said things are done by culture less to punish people and more because they're painful cultural rites. So, Gilead does said things out of punishment and less of culture.

** Fucking. YES. THIS is exactly why The Handmaid's Tale is bad Science Fiction. The power dynamics don't make sense at all. In a world where few women are fertile and capable of the continuation of the entire species, there is NO WAY they would become second class citizens. They would get to pick and choose who they'd choose as their mates, and anyone close to the handmaids would become the upper class by virtue of having access to the only way to continuing their genes. Has anyone here read ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan''? A freak accident kills all the males of every species on earth, leaving one guy alive. He instantly becomes a celebrity, because he's the only way anyone can have sex/children anymore. Handmaid's Tale doesn't make any sense, if you think about it for more than two minutes.

** The book is also based directly on the US's Christian fundamentalist movement. As in, things that evangelical churches have literally advocated as public policy, and everything that's exaggerated based on the same bible passages favored by dominionist and evangelical protestant churches. Many of the nastier passages are direct quotes... and not all from obscure sects, either, the primary source of idea-mining is the Southern Baptist Council. Gilead is pretty much the state that the SBC has openly professed to wanting, but with all of the ramifications explored semi-realistically instead of taking their claims of how they'd end up at face value. So while I don't have the "why would they want to do that" answer for you... the largest Christian denomination in the United States has in fact wanted to do it for at least half a century now, whatever the reason is.

** Don't expect ANYTHING in a fascist regime to make logical sense. Have you heard the argument that people only deserve health care if they're worthy, because they've "led a good life" (ie. born rich and without any genetic "flaw" to make them sick)? This is a different side of the same coin. The ruling class, in this case rich white extreme right wing religious fundamentalists, believe that they are chosen by God to forge a new society based on things cherry-picked from the Bible. If God hasn't given them a baby yet, it's because there is something wrong (likely her sins) with the "vessel" in which they're putting their sacred seed, not because of the seed itself. So they'll keep trying different vessels until one makes a baby.

* How the heck are a group of armed men with machine guns break into what is suppose to be one of the most secure places in the country? Machine guns are big and heavy, and Washington DC has a ban on assault weapons. No one with any common sense would have failed this sort of spot check. I get that it's suppose to explain the background of the story, but this explanation stretches the suspension of disbelief a little too far.

** The books mention they outlawed all prenatal care, and the show mentions if you can get pregnant at all, the chances of a normal baby is 1 in 5. The reasoning behind outlawing prenatal care was likely a return to traditional values and the fact that if you know you're giving birth to a pinhead baby, why would you want to get rid of it?

* In the tv series, Ofglen is given an operation (which I assume is female circumcision, but I'm no expert) to remove her ability to enjoy sex as a punishment. Sex for pleasure is not a privilege in Gilead that pure or elite citizens are allowed to enjoy while others aren't; even Commanders aren't allowed to enjoy sex. In any event, no Handmaids (which Ofglen is) are allowed to enjoy sex, so why does the series portray removal of sexual pleasure as a punishment reserved only for criminals? If it was the pain of the operation itself that was the punishment, that would make more sense, but that's not the explanation given. Furthermore, since no handmaids are supposed to enjoy sex, why aren't they all given the operation by default? (The fact that they give it to a Handmaid proves its effect on her fertility is not a concern.)

*** Wives, at this stage in Gilead's 'history' are the women who were already married to Commanders: i.e. just the women that the men liked for their own reasons prior to the coup. Their fertility is irrelevant as they are pure women who have desirable traits. Presumably there are fertile wives as, statistically, it would be unlikely for all the women in a friendship group to all suffer the same health problems in our own society and the infertility seems to be random (just a more extreme version of what is normal today). Plus, it is strongly implied that it's largely the men who are infertile, the Wives could indeed be fertile but not allowed to sleep with other men in order to procreate. If the cause of infertility is STDs, the Commanders frequent brothels in which the prostitutes have been sterilized or are infertile (i.e. you're probably not using condoms) and there is no investigation of male infertility it's possible that the Commanders are all catching this STD and are probably passing it on to their Handmaids. As for the idea of pregnant Marthas or other classes of women: the babies would probably be adopted by a 'Faithful' family.

** The next generation of Aunts is likely to be made up of girls growing up in Gilead, who could choose life as an Aunt over marriage. They are also likely to be get some new recruits from Wives who lose their husbands, as a widow is going to be in a precarious position if she has no family to support her. A retired Handmaid becoming an Aunt would be an intriguing possibility but it is possible that if a successful Handmaid was believed to be a true believer, somebody like OfMatthew, she could be made an Aunt when she was past her childbearing years, in the hope that she would be ideally placed to convince Handmaids in training that theirs is a blessed calling.

** The main task of an Aunt is to be a midwife and an early childhood nurse. These have traditionally been women's jobs, so the commanders probably didn't think too hard about whether it was better for men to do these jobs. As for having the job of the re-education done by the Aunts, there is historical precedence, as is every other detail of Gilead in the novel. For example, a lot of the day to day guard work in the Nazi concentration camps was done by other prisoners. I'm not sure why. Perhaps in the case of the Aunts, it helps to foster the feeling of women seeing each other as enemies, which is something the patriarchy is keen to promote.

** Gilead doesn't seem to care too much about providing medical treatment for conception and childbird in general, which itself is a headscratcher. Gilead may not have much in the way of medical equipment or medicines. Serena Joy had to get a pregnancy test on the black market! Artificial insemination requires a lot of medical resources, and is not always as effective as vaginal intercourse. Having sexual contact during conception may also play into their fundamentalist interpretation of the bible. The bible passages about handmaids do not involve a doctor performing artificial insemination, after all. The 'ceremony' appears to be a religious rite which makes them feel as if the Wife is the one who is actually becoming pregnant. Having the handmaid near her baby also promotes breastfeeding, as seen when June is unable to lactate when separated from Holly/Nicole.

The punishment for an Econowife who breaks the rules is being made a handmaid; thus, all Econowives must be fertile (which makes sense -- well, from the Sons of Jacob's perspectives -- since their husbands wouldn't qualify for a handmaid, sex outside marriage isn't permitted, and they want people to produce more babies). What if an infertile woman was married before the takeover and the couple was low-ranking in the new order? The new regime doesn't permit divorce. Would they nullify the marriage from the beginning for the crime of infertility?

** Women not being allowed to read / drive isn't an Islamic-specific thing; For the vast majority of US history before WW1 people believed that women couldn't take fast trains or cars. As for FGM, Said things are practiced in those countries because it's seen as an actual cultural rite. You can think of FGM as similar to foot-binding, said things are done by culture less to punish people and more because they're painful cultural rites. So, Gilead does said things out of punishment and less of culture.
** I was actually wondering about this too, but then I learned more about christian fundamentalist culture in USA, and... Well, while Gilead is undoubtedly an exaggeration, it's not THAT far off from their StayInTheKitchen ideals. And while they are a minority even among the Christians in USA, one can easily imagine their ideas both radicalizing and going more mainstream in the event of a crisis. Many elements are also allegorical, like the distinction between Wives and Handmaids being representative of MadonnaWhoreDichotomy. The only thing that I find a bit off, I guess, is forbidding women from reading, even religious texts (if it's about information control, strict censorship should do the trick). Lastly, the use of cliterectomy makes a frightening amount of sense in context. Amputation as punishment is already used extensively in Gilead, and in this case it also limits the "criminal's" ability to commit the "crime" again...

* Does Canada not seem remarkably calm considering a theocratic fascist regime with immense military power is just a few miles away? On top of that Gilead likely views Canada as a country of degenerates as they did the USA before the coup and would likely love to use their vast military power to take over a wealthy country with lots of resources. Not to mention we know there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of refugees in Canada who are all considered enemies of Gilead, a Republic not exactly known for being forgiving. Finally Canada is culturally and ideologically very similar to the US. Being as there were so many (former) Americans who supported the rise of Gilead it’s reasonable to suggest that there are many Canadians who would as well. Yet despite all this life in Toronto seems completely normal and we see that the border is lightly protected.
* From a meta-standpoint, why did Atwood say that Gilead came about via a violent revolution, the first stage of which was slaughtering the higher-echelons of the U.S. government, if her goal was to satirize fundamentalism in American politics? Saying all of congress and the president were slaughtered effectively lets the legitimate American politics system off the hook despite, in real life, Christian fundamentalism being one of the U.S. two primary political party's common platforms and the common presence of such fundamentalists in congress and the senate (and to a lesser extent, White House. She wrote the book in response to Reaganism). Seems like explaining Gilead as the result of one party manipulating the pre-existing system would both make the satire more pointed and premise more believable.

** Fucking. YES. THIS is exactly why The Handmaid's Tale is bad Science Fiction. The power dynamics don't make sense at all. In a world where few women are fertile and capable of the continuation of the entire species, there is NO WAY they would become second class citizens. They would get to pick and choose who they'd choose as their mates, and anyone close to the handmaids would become the upper class by virtue of having access to the only way to continuing their genes. Has anyone here read ''YTheLastMan''? A freak accident kills all the males of every species on earth, leaving one guy alive. He instantly becomes a celebrity, because he's the only way anyone can have sex/children anymore. Handmaid's Tale doesn't make any sense, if you think about it for more than two minutes.
*** Except that in Comics/YTheLastMan, Yorick becomes "a celebrity" in that he becomes famous, but he doesn't become ruler of the planet. He becomes a ''target''. He spends the entire series running away from people who are trying to gain control over him, including a fanatical cult that want to kill him. He spends the rest of his life as the subject of medical experiments under intense surveillance to the point that he's institutionalized for making a joke that his handlers thought might have a suicide threat.

*** Records are kept of the biological origins of the children of Handmaids. When June looked up the records of the Handmaids, they had records of the children they bore before and after they became Handmaids, with original names and new names. "Agnes McKenzie" and "Nichole Waterford" might never have met, but it would be on record that they were biological half-sisters so that, if they both married and produced biological offspring, those children wouldn't be matched when marriages were arranged.

If this took place in an alternate history, where women's status never changed and they never gained any more rights than they had centuries ago (and still do in many non-first world countries), the premise could make sense. But it takes place in a North America that used to be just like our world's, where the protagonist went to college and had a husband and child and lived with the same rights and freedoms North American women have now. Then that changed, and a new tyrannical regime took over that set all kinds of new restrictions, on men, as well, but mostly on women. Does the novel ever explain, why? What led people to the conclusion that these changes would serve any purpose? For that matter, what purpose are they supposed to serve? Even if it was a selfish purpose, like ensuring wealth and power for a select few, or an illogical purpose that a second look would show these methods would never accomplish, is one provided? For example, due to declining birth rates caused by radiation poisoning, the society wants more babies to be born. Well, they have access to the same scientific knowledge our society does that shows that men can be sterile as well as women, so why would they decide it was in their best interest to deny all those scientific facts and instead re-adopt the debunked superstition that only women can be infertile and that it's always and only the woman's fault if she can't conceive? Adopting and enforcing this superstition as fact only sabotages their efforts to produce more healthy babies. Yes, that's the point -- the novel's demonstrating that oppression of women hurts society -- but why would a society adopt rules that only hurt its goals? The rules imposed by the societies of ''BraveNewWorld'' and ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'' are unjust, but they serve the purpose of the regimes imposing them (the problem is that either that purpose itself is horrible, or the methods used to reach it have a huge price tag). Here, it seems the rules of this dystopian regime don't serve any purpose at all (unless the rulers just hate women and want them to suffer no matter what the cost to society?). What's the motive?

* Does Canada not seem remarkably calm considering a theocratic fascist regime with immense military power is just a few miles away? On top of that Gilead likely views Canada as a country of degenerates as they did the USA before the coup and would likely love to use their vast military power to take over a wealthy country with lots of resources. Not to mention we know there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of refugees in Canada who are all considered enemies of Gilead, a Republic not exactly known for being forgiving. Finally Canada is culturally and ideologically very similar to the US. Being as there were so many (former) Americans who supported the rise of Gilead it’s reasonable to suggest that there are many Canadians who would as well. Yet despite all this life in Toronto seems completely normal and we see that the border is lightly protected.

** Margaret Atwood took many influences from Islamist fundamentalism and Puritan culture to create the country of Gilead. Not to mention the original novel was written during the rise of the Reaganite Christian Right in the 1980s in which certain female televangelists were supporting a return to "traditional" roles for women.

** Women not being allowed to read is FridgeBrilliance. A big part about Gilead's doctrine is they cherry pick Bible quotes while leaving out the context. As June remembers, "blessed are the meek. They always left out that part about them inheriting the Earth." Marthas are essentially house slaves, and the quote Gilead probably got to justify this was about a woman named Martha cooking and cleaning; but if you look at the context of the situation, Jesus was telling her to stop doing those things so he could talk to her, which a woman could use to protest this. Besides, considering the number of people living in Gilead from before, they likely can't get away with editing the Bible.