How Does Margaret Atwood Address the Ethics of Survival in The Handmaid’s Tale?
Margaret Atwood addresses the ethics of survival in The Handmaid’s Tale by presenting a morally complex landscape where characters must navigate impossible choices between personal survival and ethical principles under totalitarian oppression. The novel demonstrates that survival in Gilead requires various forms of compromise, complicity, and moral ambiguity, as characters make pragmatic decisions that enable their continued existence but often involve collaboration with an oppressive system, betrayal of others, or abandonment of previously held values. Through protagonist Offred’s experiences and choices, Atwood explores how survival ethics operate differently under extreme oppression compared to normal circumstances, revealing that judgments about moral behavior must account for context, constraint, and the fundamental human drive to continue living. The text ultimately argues that survival itself constitutes a form of resistance worth preserving, yet simultaneously acknowledges the profound ethical costs that survival under oppression exacts, refusing to offer simple moral absolutes while maintaining that some actions remain unconscionable regardless of circumstances.
What Are Survival Ethics and Why Do They Matter in Dystopian Literature?
Survival ethics refers to the moral principles and decision-making frameworks individuals employ when facing circumstances that threaten their continued existence, particularly situations where conventional ethical guidelines may conflict with survival imperatives. In normal conditions, ethical systems generally assume that individuals have genuine choices between right and wrong actions, with moral behavior representing freely chosen commitment to principles despite potential costs. However, under extreme oppression, violence, or life-threatening conditions, the ethical landscape transforms dramatically as survival itself becomes uncertain and the range of available choices narrows severely. Survival ethics examines questions about what compromises are justifiable when facing death, whether self-preservation justifies actions that harm others, how to maintain moral integrity under coercion, and whether survival at any cost remains preferable to death with principles intact (Beauchamp, 1998). These questions become particularly urgent in dystopian literature, which frequently explores scenarios where oppressive systems force characters into impossible ethical dilemmas that have no clearly right answers.
In dystopian fiction, survival ethics matters profoundly because these narratives use extreme scenarios to illuminate moral questions relevant to ordinary life while revealing how quickly ethical certainties can dissolve under pressure. Dystopian texts like The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrate how totalitarian systems deliberately create moral confusion by forcing individuals into complicity, making survival dependent on actions that violate personal values, and eliminating options for morally pure behavior (Atwood, 1986). By examining how characters navigate these impossible situations, dystopian literature invites readers to consider their own ethical boundaries and contemplate what they might do under similar circumstances. The genre also serves cautionary functions by revealing how oppressive systems weaponize survival instincts, turning individuals’ desire to live into mechanisms for controlling behavior and preventing collective resistance. Atwood’s exploration of survival ethics specifically challenges readers to avoid simplistic moral judgments about people living under oppression while simultaneously maintaining that ethical considerations remain relevant even when survival is threatened, creating productive tension between understanding and judgment that prevents both comfortable moral superiority and complete ethical relativism (Fitting, 2004).
How Does Gilead Create Impossible Ethical Dilemmas?
Gilead systematically creates impossible ethical dilemmas by structuring society so that survival requires complicity with oppression, making morally pure behavior incompatible with continued existence. The regime’s assignment of Handmaids to Commanders’ households forces women into a situation where they must participate in their own rape through the Ceremony or face execution or exile to the toxic Colonies where death arrives slowly through radiation poisoning. This forced choice between sexual slavery and death eliminates the possibility of surviving while maintaining bodily autonomy, transforming survival itself into a form of collaboration with the system (Atwood, 1986). The regime’s prohibition against female literacy combined with severe punishment for reading creates situations where women must choose between intellectual self-preservation through accessing written knowledge and physical survival through compliance. The shopping partnerships that require Handmaids to travel in pairs create mutual surveillance where refusing to report a partner’s transgression might enable that individual’s small resistance but also places one’s own survival at risk if the partner reports first or if the Eyes discover the unreported violation.
The regime also creates ethical dilemmas through its system of rewards and punishments that make collaboration materially advantageous while resistance brings catastrophic consequences. Handmaids who successfully bear children receive temporary privileges including better food, respect from other women, and celebration of their accomplishment, while those who fail face increasing danger of being declared Unwomen and sent to die in the Colonies (Atwood, 1986). This reward structure attempts to make women invested in their own exploitation by providing tangible benefits for reproductive success. The system similarly positions Wives, Marthas, and Aunts in situations where their relative privilege depends on maintaining the hierarchy that oppresses other women, creating incentives for women to participate in each other’s subjugation. Aunts, who train and discipline Handmaids, must choose between refusing participation in the regime—which would result in their own elimination—and becoming enforcers of other women’s oppression. Serena Joy, as a Wife, maintains her relative comfort through her husband’s position but must witness and participate in the Ceremony that involves another woman being raped in her bed, forcing her to choose between material security and moral opposition to sexual violence. These structural dilemmas demonstrate how oppressive systems deliberately eliminate possibilities for ethical purity, ensuring that survival requires some form of complicity while resistance necessitates accepting potentially fatal consequences (Stein, 1996).
What Survival Strategies Does Offred Employ?
Offred employs multiple survival strategies that balance pragmatic accommodation with psychological resistance, demonstrating complex navigation of survival ethics. Her primary strategy involves outward compliance with Gilead’s demands while maintaining internal critical consciousness and preserving her sense of self through memory and private thought. She attends the Ceremony, wears the required red Handmaid uniform, uses the approved religious greetings, and generally conforms to behavioral expectations, recognizing that overt resistance would likely result in her execution without meaningfully challenging the regime’s power (Atwood, 1986). This strategic compliance represents what scholars term “tactical submission,” where individuals perform obedience externally while refusing to internalize the ideology that justifies their oppression. Offred distinguishes between her body, which she allows Gilead to use for survival purposes, and her mind, which she attempts to preserve as a space of autonomy and resistance. This mind-body separation enables her to endure violations while maintaining psychological integrity, though the novel reveals this separation’s incompleteness as psychological trauma inevitably results from bodily exploitation regardless of mental reservation.
Offred also pursues survival through careful relationship management, selectively trusting others while maintaining protective skepticism about potential informants. She gradually develops cautious friendship with Ofglen, sharing small subversive comments that test whether solidarity might be possible while remaining prepared to deny these comments if Ofglen reports her (Atwood, 1986). Her pragmatic acceptance of the Commander’s invitation to his study, despite its dangers and ethical complications, demonstrates survival-oriented opportunism as she recognizes that his patronage might provide protection or advantages. The relationship with Nick similarly reflects survival pragmatism, as emotional connection and physical pleasure provide psychological sustenance that helps her endure Gilead’s dehumanization, even though the relationship occurs within profoundly constraining power dynamics. Offred’s willingness to consider escape when Ofglen mentions Mayday demonstrates that her compliance remains strategic rather than resigned, as she remains alert to opportunities for liberation while recognizing that premature or poorly planned resistance would be suicidal. Her survival strategy thus combines conformity, selective risk-taking, relationship cultivation, psychological preservation, and readiness for eventual action, refusing both complete submission and reckless heroism in favor of context-sensitive pragmatism that prioritizes continued existence as the precondition for all other possibilities (Neuman, 2006).
How Do Other Characters Navigate Survival Ethics Differently?
Different characters in The Handmaid’s Tale navigate survival ethics in dramatically different ways, revealing the range of possible responses to impossible circumstances. Moira represents principled resistance that prioritizes freedom and dignity over survival security, demonstrating willingness to risk death rather than accommodate Gilead’s demands. Her violent escape from the Red Center through attacking an Aunt reflects refusal to accept the Handmaid role regardless of consequences, choosing dangerous resistance over safe compliance (Atwood, 1986). However, her eventual recapture and forced prostitution at Jezebel’s reveals the limits of individual heroic resistance, as even her extraordinary courage cannot overcome Gilead’s institutional power. Her emotional exhaustion and resignation when Offred encounters her at Jezebel’s demonstrates the psychological toll of sustained resistance and the difficulty of maintaining principled opposition indefinitely when it brings only suffering without achieving liberation. Moira’s trajectory suggests that while courageous resistance preserves dignity and inspires others, it may not constitute the most effective survival strategy under totalitarian conditions where individual defiance typically results in defeat.
Janine represents the opposite extreme, where survival comes through complete psychological capitulation and identification with the oppressive system. She internalizes Gilead’s ideology so thoroughly that she believes her Commander genuinely loves her and takes pride in successfully bearing a child, having apparently surrendered critical consciousness entirely (Atwood, 1986). Her emotional breakdown and delusion demonstrate how some individuals respond to overwhelming oppression through psychological fragmentation that makes accommodation more complete by eliminating the internal conflict between actions and values. While Janine’s strategy enables survival in the narrow sense of continued biological existence, it involves loss of autonomous selfhood that raises questions about whether this constitutes genuine survival or merely biological persistence without meaningful human consciousness. Offred’s predecessor, who hanged herself rather than continue as a Handmaid, chose death over accommodation, asserting final control over her body by ending her life on her own terms rather than living as Gilead’s property. This choice reflects the ethical position that some circumstances make survival morally intolerable, suggesting that dignity, autonomy, and integrity might constitute values worth dying for rather than living without. Serena Joy navigates survival ethics from a position of relative privilege, maintaining her status through strategic collaboration with the patriarchal system while also harboring private resentments about her own constraints. Her complicity in the regime that she helped create through her pre-Gilead activism reveals how survival often involves living with consequences of one’s own past choices. These varied approaches demonstrate that survival ethics under oppression does not have a single correct answer but rather represents deeply personal decisions about what compromises individuals can accept while maintaining tolerable relationships with themselves (Stillman & Johnson, 1994).
What Role Does Complicity Play in Survival?
Complicity plays a central and unavoidable role in survival within The Handmaid’s Tale, as Gilead’s structure ensures that merely continuing to exist requires participation in the oppressive system. Every character who survives makes choices that support or enable the regime’s continuation, whether through active enforcement, passive acceptance, or pragmatic accommodation. Handmaids who participate in the Ceremony enable the system’s reproductive exploitation, while those who refuse face death; their survival thus necessarily involves complicity with their own sexual enslavement (Atwood, 1986). The Wives who participate in the Ceremony, even as victims of their husbands’ patriarchal control, collaborate in the rape of Handmaids by holding them down and claiming resulting children as their own. Marthas who maintain households enable Commanders’ comfortable domestic lives, materially supporting the regime’s elite. Econowives who fulfill multiple roles in lower-status households accept the system’s class hierarchy and reproductive control in exchange for survival and basic family integrity. Even Handmaids’ bodies themselves become complicit as biological reproduction occurs regardless of consent or intention, making their fertility an unwilling but effective tool of Gilead’s demographic project.
The novel’s most troubling examination of complicity appears in characters who more actively enforce oppression to secure their own positions. Aunts like Lydia and Elizabeth train Handmaids in submission, conducting psychological indoctrination and administering physical punishment that makes them directly responsible for other women’s suffering (Atwood, 1986). Their complicity extends beyond passive accommodation to active perpetration of abuse, yet the text suggests even they occupy constrained positions where refusing their roles would result in their own elimination. The Eyes and Guardians who enforce surveillance and punishment similarly survive through becoming instruments of oppression, their physical safety purchased through making others unsafe. Nick’s position as a Guardian and potential Eye informant reflects complicated complicity, as his role in the security apparatus enables his survival while making him responsible for maintaining the system, even as his relationship with Offred and possible connection to Mayday suggests internal resistance. The text refuses to excuse complicity while simultaneously demonstrating its practical inevitability under totalitarian conditions, creating ethical tension without resolution. This examination of complicity reveals that survival under oppression involves moral contamination that cannot be entirely avoided, raising difficult questions about responsibility, judgment, and forgiveness for actions taken under duress. The novel suggests that recognizing complicity’s inevitability should generate compassion for those trapped in oppressive systems while simultaneously maintaining that some forms of collaboration—particularly enthusiastic enforcement or betrayal for personal advantage—exceed morally acceptable accommodation even under extreme circumstances (Beauchamp, 1998).
How Does the Novel Address the Question of Betrayal?
The Handmaid’s Tale explores betrayal as an inevitable component of survival under oppressive surveillance states that incentivize people to betray each other for personal safety or advantage. The regime’s system of mutual surveillance encourages betrayal by offering rewards for information about others’ transgressions while punishing failure to report observed violations. The shopping partnerships pair Handmaids to monitor each other, creating situations where one’s survival might depend on betraying a partner before being betrayed oneself (Atwood, 1986). The Eyes recruit informants throughout society, making every relationship potentially dangerous as anyone might be secretly reporting conversations and behaviors. This systematic incentivization of betrayal corrodes social trust, isolating individuals from each other and preventing the formation of solidarity that might enable collective resistance. The regime demonstrates sophisticated understanding that betrayal serves dual purposes: it provides information about dissent while simultaneously destroying interpersonal bonds that could foster opposition, making betrayal both a surveillance mechanism and a method of social fragmentation.
The novel presents betrayal as morally complicated rather than simply condemning it, recognizing that survival pressures create situations where betrayal might represent rational self-preservation. When Ofglen disappears and is replaced by a new Ofglen who warns Offred that the previous Ofglen hanged herself before the Eyes could arrest her, Offred experiences relief that she wasn’t betrayed alongside guilt about this relief (Atwood, 1986). This moment demonstrates the impossible ethics of survival, as betrayal’s potential justifies relief even though another woman died to protect her secret. Offred herself faces the potential need to betray others, as carrying knowledge of the Mayday resistance creates danger both for herself and for the network if captured and tortured for information. The novel raises questions about whether any loyalty obligation survives circumstances where maintaining that loyalty means certain death, and whether self-protective betrayal under torture or credible death threats carries the same moral weight as betrayal for rewards or advancement. The text suggests degrees of betrayal exist, distinguishing between betrayal under extreme duress versus betrayal for personal gain, while refusing to provide clear moral guidelines about when if ever betrayal becomes acceptable. The Commander’s claim that he arranged Offred’s relationship with Nick constitutes betrayal of the relationship’s perceived authenticity, revealing that even apparent personal connections might be manipulated for regime purposes. This pervasive potential for betrayal demonstrates how oppressive systems exploit human relationships as control mechanisms while simultaneously destroying the trust necessary for human flourishing (Stein, 1996).
What Is the Relationship Between Survival and Hope?
The relationship between survival and hope in The Handmaid’s Tale proves essential yet complicated, as hope enables psychological endurance but also creates vulnerabilities that oppressive systems exploit. Offred’s survival depends substantially on maintaining hope for eventual reunion with her daughter and Luke, for escape from Gilead, and for eventual systemic change that might restore her freedom. This hope provides purpose beyond mere biological persistence, transforming survival from animal continuation into meaningful existence oriented toward potential futures (Atwood, 1986). Her memories of her daughter fuel determination to survive because death would eliminate any possibility of reunion, making continued existence necessary despite its horrors. The hope that Luke might have survived and escaped to Canada similarly sustains her through degrading circumstances by maintaining connection to her former identity and relationship. Offred explicitly recognizes hope’s survival function, noting that maintaining even small hopes about Nick’s feelings or eventual escape possibilities helps her endure daily humiliations and violations that might otherwise prove psychologically unbearable.
However, the novel also explores hope’s dangers and the ways oppressive systems exploit it for control. Gilead deliberately cultivates hope among Handmaids through the possibility of pregnancy and the temporary rewards that successful reproduction brings, using hope for improved circumstances to motivate compliance and investment in the system (Atwood, 1986). The Commander’s visits to his study and arrangement of Offred’s Jezebel’s visit similarly provide hope for human connection and minor transgressions that make her situation seem more tolerable, potentially reducing her motivation for more radical resistance or escape. Hope thus functions ambiguously as both survival mechanism and control technique, enabling endurance while potentially preventing more confrontational responses to oppression. The novel suggests that survival requires carefully calibrated hope—enough to sustain psychological endurance but not so much that it produces complacency or prevents recognition of one’s circumstances’ true horror. Offred struggles with this balance, sometimes criticizing herself for excessive hope that might indicate collaboration with her own oppression, while recognizing that complete hopelessness would make continued existence intolerable. The ambiguous ending, where Offred enters a vehicle that might represent escape or capture, leaves her hope’s validity uncertain, suggesting that hope under oppression necessarily involves uncertainty and potential delusion, yet remains essential for continued resistance and survival despite this ambiguity (Neuman, 2006).
How Does Memory Function in Survival Ethics?
Memory serves crucial functions in The Handmaid’s Tale‘s survival ethics by maintaining connection to pre-oppression identity, preserving knowledge of alternative social arrangements, and providing psychological resistance against totalitarian attempts to control consciousness. Offred’s frequent flashbacks to her previous life with Luke and her daughter, her mother’s feminist activism, and her friendship with Moira constitute active memory work that resists Gilead’s demand for complete present-focused submission. These memories prove essential for survival by reminding her that her current existence represents aberrant oppression rather than natural inevitability, maintaining hope that circumstances might change because they have changed before (Atwood, 1986). Memory preserves her sense of continuous personal identity across her transformation from autonomous individual to reproductive vessel, preventing Gilead from fully succeeding in its project of recreating her as merely “Offred” by maintaining connection to the self she was and might become again. This memorial resistance represents ethical survival in the sense that she survives not just biologically but as a continuous person with history, values, and identity that transcend her current circumstances.
However, memory also creates ethical complications for survival, as remembering better circumstances can make present suffering more acute and painful. Offred sometimes wishes she could forget her previous life because memory makes accommodation harder by constantly reminding her what she has lost and highlighting the contrast between former freedom and current captivity (Atwood, 1986). The regime recognizes memory’s threat to control and attempts to eliminate it through prohibition against discussing the past, destruction of photographs and documents, and ideological teaching that presents pre-Gilead society as morally corrupt. Gilead’s project includes not just controlling present behavior but colonizing the past by rewriting history and preventing alternative memories from circulating. Offred’s preservation of memories thus constitutes resistance that endangers her survival if detected, as nostalgia for the previous world implies criticism of the current regime. The novel also explores how memory becomes unreliable under oppression, as Offred notices her memories growing distant and uncertain, questioning whether she accurately remembers events or has begun unconsciously revising them. This memorial deterioration raises ethical questions about the responsibility to remember accurately versus the pragmatic need to adapt psychologically to current circumstances. The tension between memory as survival mechanism and memory as obstacle to adaptation reflects broader paradoxes in survival ethics, where strategies that preserve humanity might also make survival more difficult (Stillman & Johnson, 1994).
What Does the Novel Suggest About Moral Responsibility Under Oppression?
The Handmaid’s Tale approaches moral responsibility under oppression with nuance that resists both complete absolution and harsh judgment, suggesting that individuals retain ethical agency even under extreme constraint while acknowledging that circumstances profoundly affect the moral valence of actions. The novel demonstrates that oppression does not eliminate responsibility but rather complicates it, as individuals continue making choices within severely restricted options while facing consequences incomparably more severe than those in free societies. Offred’s choices to participate in the Ceremony, develop relationships with the Commander and Nick, and strategically comply with most demands while preserving internal resistance all reflect ongoing moral agency, though agency exercised under duress that dramatically narrows the range of acceptable options (Atwood, 1986). The text suggests that responsibility should be understood contextually, with different moral standards applicable to those suffering oppression versus those wielding power, while maintaining that some actions remain unconscionable regardless of circumstances, particularly enthusiastic collaboration, betrayal for personal advantage, and cruelty beyond what survival requires.
The novel particularly emphasizes responsibility differences between victims forced into complicity and powerful actors who design and enforce oppression. The Commanders who created Gilead, the Eyes who enthusiastically implement surveillance and punishment, and the Aunts who exceed minimum necessary enforcement all bear responsibility that differs qualitatively from Handmaids’ unavoidable complicity in their own exploitation (Atwood, 1986). The text’s most severe moral judgment appears reserved not for those who accommodate oppression to survive but for those who exploit oppression for personal benefit or ideological satisfaction. The Commander’s casual use of Offred for entertainment and companionship demonstrates moral failure that his power makes inexcusable, as his position provides options for resistance or at minimum refusal of additional exploitation beyond what the system mandates. Serena Joy’s complicity carries particular weight given her role in advocating for policies that enabled Gilead’s creation, suggesting that responsibility extends to consequences of one’s advocacy even when those consequences eventually harm the advocate. The “Historical Notes” epilogue raises questions about moral responsibility for studying and teaching about oppression, as the academic symposium’s detached scholarly tone suggests that future generations might treat Gilead’s horrors as mere historical curiosity, failing their own responsibility to maintain moral engagement with past injustice. This multi-layered examination of responsibility demonstrates Atwood’s refusal to provide simple answers while insisting that ethical considerations remain relevant under all circumstances, requiring both compassion for those trapped in impossible situations and maintenance of moral standards that prevent complete ethical collapse (Beauchamp, 1998).
How Does the Ending Address Survival Ethics?
The novel’s ambiguous ending profoundly addresses survival ethics by refusing clear resolution about whether Offred’s survival strategies succeed and what moral evaluation those strategies warrant. When Nick arranges Offred’s removal from the Commander’s house, claiming the Eyes have come for her, she must choose whether to trust him and enter the vehicle or resist, potentially bringing immediate execution. Her decision to trust and enter the van represents survival pragmatism—accepting uncertain danger over certain death—while also demonstrating that survival requires continuous risk assessment and decision-making under incomplete information (Atwood, 1986). The ending’s ambiguity about whether this represents escape through Mayday or capture by the Eyes leaves Offred’s ultimate fate uncertain, refusing readers the comfort of knowing whether her survival strategies and ethical compromises resulted in eventual liberation or merely delayed inevitable destruction. This narrative choice emphasizes that survival ethics under oppression operates without guarantees, as even optimal decision-making cannot ensure positive outcomes when circumstances are controlled by overwhelming hostile power.
The “Historical Notes” epilogue further complicates survival ethics by revealing that Offred’s narrative survived as recorded tapes later discovered and transcribed, confirming that her testimony outlasted Gilead regardless of her personal fate. This revelation validates survival as resistance, as her continued existence long enough to record her experiences enabled future generations to learn about Gilead’s atrocities, making her survival meaningful beyond her individual life (Atwood, 1986). However, the epilogue’s academic tone and focus on authenticating the tapes rather than engaging with their moral content suggests that survival’s meaning depends partly on how future generations interpret and honor testimonies of oppression. Professor Pieixoto’s somewhat dismissive scholarly approach to Offred’s narrative raises disturbing questions about whether survival’s moral significance can be retroactively diminished by unsympathetic interpretation. The epilogue thus suggests that survival ethics extends beyond individual lifespans into collective responsibilities for preserving, honoring, and learning from testimonies of those who survived oppression. The revelation that Gilead eventually collapsed validates the hope that sustained Offred’s survival, suggesting that endurance itself contributes to eventual liberation even when immediate prospects seem hopeless, while simultaneously acknowledging that many individuals did not survive to see that liberation, raising questions about whether hope deferred or denied diminishes survival’s ethical value (Fitting, 2004).
Conclusion: What Does The Handmaid’s Tale Teach About Survival Ethics?
The Handmaid’s Tale ultimately teaches that survival ethics under oppression involves navigating impossible moral terrain where conventional ethical frameworks prove inadequate but ethical consideration remains essential. The novel demonstrates that survival in extremis requires compromises, complicity, and pragmatic decisions that might be morally unacceptable under normal circumstances, yet insists that not all compromises are equivalent and that some forms of collaboration exceed ethical bounds regardless of survival pressures. Atwood refuses both to condemn those who accommodate oppression to survive and to excuse all actions undertaken in survival’s name, instead presenting nuanced examination that demands contextual judgment while maintaining that moral responsibility persists even under extreme constraint (Atwood, 1986). The text reveals that survival itself constitutes resistance worth preserving, as continued existence enables testimony, maintains possibility for eventual liberation, and refuses oppressive systems the complete victory that victims’ deaths would represent.
The novel’s exploration of survival ethics remains urgently relevant for understanding contemporary moral challenges, as it illuminates how quickly ordinary people can be forced into impossible ethical situations when institutional oppression emerges. Atwood’s vision teaches that survival ethics cannot be predetermined through abstract principles but requires ongoing contextual judgment that balances competing values including life preservation, moral integrity, solidarity with others, and long-term resistance to oppression. The text ultimately argues for compassion toward those facing impossible choices while maintaining that some actions remain unconscionable, for recognition that survival involves necessary complicity while insisting that degrees of complicity matter morally, and for validation of survival as meaningful resistance while acknowledging survival’s profound ethical costs. These lessons prove essential for developing moral frameworks capable of addressing extreme circumstances without abandoning ethical consideration entirely, demonstrating that the most difficult moral questions rarely have clear right answers but nevertheless demand serious ethical engagement rather than simplistic judgment or complete moral relativism (Neuman, 2006).
References
Atwood, M. (1986). The Handmaid’s Tale. McClelland and Stewart.
Beauchamp, G. (1998). The politics of The Handmaid’s Tale. Midwest Quarterly, 40(1), 42-56.
Fitting, P. (2004). The turn from utopia in recent feminist fiction. In Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture (pp. 155-175). MIT Press.
Neuman, S. C. (2006). “Just a backlash”: Margaret Atwood, feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale. University of Toronto Quarterly, 75(3), 857-868.
Stein, K. F. (1996). Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Scheherazade in dystopia. University of Toronto Quarterly, 61(2), 269-279.
Stillman, P. G., & Johnson, A. S. (1994). Identity, complicity, and resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale. Utopian Studies, 5(2), 70-86.