The handmaid's tale as a dystopian novel Gupta Baijnath1, Singh Prabhakar2 1Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, DSN College, Unnao 2Associate Professor, Dept. of English, T D College, Jaunpur Online published on 3 July, 2021. Abstract Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale is written in the tradition of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World(1932) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four(1949). It offers a picture of an imagined society set in future which is highly terrifying and restrictive for women. The Republic of Gilead is founded on the concept of patriarchal superiority and it tames and subjugates women. This society is threatened with a lot of pollution and radiation. Therefore, sterility has come to affect the lives of men and women. However, male infertility is a profanity here. Handmaids are kept here for procreation. They are denied any rights and they cannot own anything, not even their birth names. They are known by the name of the Commanders they belong to like, Offred, Ofglen, Ofwayne and Ofwarren. They are reduced to just reproductive beings sans any feeling, emotion and ration. But if they fail to conceive after sleeping with the Commander on three dates over a certain period of time, they are sent to colonies as Unwomen and are made to clean radioactive wastes until they die. The novel revolves around Offred, a handmaid belonging to Commander Fred whose wife, Serena Joy, is sterile. Therefore, Offred is compelled to have wordless sex with the Commander in the presence of Serena so that she could produce an heir for them. She is kept in confinement. She hopes to be reunited with her husband and daughter some day. But she becomes a victim of the sexual politics of the Gilead Republic. Though Offred is helpless, she does burn with the desire to subvert the callous canons of the society that has shackled her. Top Keywords Dystopia, Gilead Republic, Handmaid, Sterility, Pollution, Radiation. Top |