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The Inspiration Behind “The Handmaid’s Tale”

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It's a funny thing: all at once, on November 9th of last year, old novels with dystopian themes suddenly seemed very relevant and had huge sales upticks. One of them, Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” came out in 1985. In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” fundamentalist Christian theocrats take over the United States and force some women — called handmaids — to bear children for infertile couples.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” has been adapted into a TV series for Hulu, which just premiered. When Margaret Atwood was writing the book, she took inspiration from, among other things, the rise of the Christian right in America during the 1970s and '80s, the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, and much less well-known, a woman in 17th century New England named Mary Webster, who was one of the people she dedicated the book to, and whom she later wrote a poem about. Atwood and Professor Bridget Marshall tell us the story of Mary Webster, who’s better known as Half-Hanged Mary.

And you can hear the full poem, read by actress Kristen DiMercurio, here:

 

  

The Handmaid’s Tale also bubbled up into Texas politics, where legislators recently introduced a bill that would ban a routine method for second trimester abortions, among other restrictions. Last month, 12 women wearing the red robes and white bonnets that the handmaids wear in Atwood’s novel protested these bills inside the Texas state senate chamber. 

Produced by Daniel Guillemette


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