The Handmaid’s Tale: science fiction or wake-up call?
Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale imagines a totalitarian society in which women's rights have been completely erased. Denied control over their own bodies, women are used as servants, wives, or, as in the case of the narrator Offred, 'handmaids'. Offred describes handmaids as "two-legged wombs", as they are ritually raped by powerful men and forced to bear their children.
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