Imagine waking up with the President and Congress shot dead and the United States run by a radical “Christian fundamentalist” (Beauchamp). In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, this terrible scenario is not a dream, but a reality. Atwood admitted in an interview with Mervyn Rothstien of The New York Times: "I delayed writing for about three years after I had the idea because I felt it was too crazy." Indeed, the dystopian society of the Republic of Gilead, once the United States, is a chilling thought but raises questions about the treatment of women in today's society. The Handmaids Tale is a futuristic science fiction novel told by a handmaid, a woman whose sole purpose is to conceive children, named Ofglen. The Canadian writer is known for hints of feminism in her novels, but The Handmaid's Tale moves away from soft feminism to radical feminism. Feminism is an ideology that favors the equality of women over men and has been an issue for centuries. In the United States, women did not gain the right to vote until the 1920s, and women were not accepted into the workforce until around the 1960s (Loveday). Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale depicts feminism in an anti-feminist environment through the perspective of restrictions on women and male power. Due to rising infertility rates, the Republic decided to enforce the use of Handmaids. The idea of ​​the Handmaids came from the Bible: "Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children; and she had a servant, an Egyptian girl named Hagar" (Jewish-Greek Bible, Genesis 16:1). Abram's wife Sarai could not bear children, so Hagar was assigned to bear children in Sarai's place. Atwood was smart to use Ofglen, a Handmaid, as the narrator of The Handmaid's Tale because s...... middle of paper ...... s Tale questions the treatment of women in every era in the hope that women are treated equally to men and it is up to the reader to respond. Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Anchor, 1998. Print.Beauchamp, Gorman. "The Politics of the Handmaid's Tale." The Midwest Quarterly 51.1 (2009): 11+ Literature Resource Center. Network. April 5, 2011.Klarer, Mario. “Orality and literacy as gender-supporting structures in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.” Mosaic [Winnipeg] 28.4 (1995):129+ Acedemic OneFile. Network. April 5, 2011.Loveday, Veronica. "Feminism and the women's rights movement." Historical reference center. EBSCO, September 30, 2009. Web. April 5, 2011. “No Conditioner in Gilead for Margaret Atwood.” Interview by Mervyn Rothstein. The New York Times. February 17, 1986. Web. April 5, 2011. The Key Jewish-Greek Study Bible. Chattanooga, Tennessee:AMG. Press.