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 INTRODUCTION
 Women’s bodies have long been “the battlegrounds” on which and for which men 

fight, as Ketu Karak explains in his article, “‘Stripping Women of Their Wombs’: Active 
Witnessing of Performances of Violence” (43). As he goes on to say, women’s rights, voices, 
and reproductive capabilities are commonly held hostage in times of social upset. This 
oppression of women, their bodies, and their rights proves no different in dystopian and 
apocalyptic representations of modern social upset and proves especially true in Bruce 
Miller’s award-winning television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s 
Tale. The post-apocalyptic narrative follows a young woman named June as she navigates 
the new and strange world that has taken the place of the United States of America. Nuclear 
contamination and widespread infertility plague this new nation, the Republic of Gilead, 
which results in a fertile womb becoming the most precious commodity. All women are 
enslaved, and those potentially capable of reproduction become known as Handmaids and 
begin new lives as “two-legged wombs” (Atwood 256). 
 In discussing Atwood’s novel, David Hogsette sums up June’s new world well when 
he says, “Women become nonpersons—individuals who lack the rights and opportunities 
that might enable them to counter openly society’s construction of them . . . The Republic of 
Gilead defines Handmaids solely in terms of the condition of their ovaries, commodifying 
them as objectified livestock with the sole purpose of repopulating North America” (263-
264).  While Hogsette addresses the novel, I would extend his arguments to Bruce Miller’s

Using the scholarship of James Berger, David Hogsettte, and other academics, this paper 

explores various contemporary issues seen throughout Bruce Miller’s TV adaptation of 

Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Investigating the Hulu series through 

the lens of post- apocalyptic and feminist theory, this paper examines the way that the series 

portrays female oppression, focuses on the power of storytelling in resistance struggles, and acts 

as a call for action to modern society to end the oppression of women. Examining the relevance 

of The Handmaid’s Tale in the time of the #TimesUP and #MeToo Movements, the essay 

provides a new context in which to view women’s oppression in modern society.

by Olivia Hershman, Ball State University

Oppression, Storytelling, and Resistance 
in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale



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TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale and argue that the modern adaptation gives voice to 

current feminist issues and dramatizes an unsettling future that most women find oddly 

familiar. Ultimately, Miller’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale is both a moving and 

cautionary one. Yet, while it models the familiar oppression of women and the battles for 

their bodies, I believe that Miller uses this platform to demonstrate the post-apocalyptic 

role feminine storytelling has in resistance and encourages audience members to take action 

against the kind of oppression seen in The Handmaid’s Tale.

POST-APOCALYPTIC SIGNIFICANCE

 I will first be discussing the ways Miller discusses female oppression and the role 

storytelling has in resisting such post-apocalyptic oppression. The first tactic Miller uses to 

display feminine oppression and the role of storytelling in resistance is by playing with the 

temporal reality his characters experience. The disorienting temporal frames the characters 

find themselves in serve to provide them with clearly defined “befores” and “afters.” They 

each clearly remember events before the onset of the post-apocalyptic world they now find 

themselves in. James Berger, in his book After the End, says,

 The apocalypse as eschaton is just as importantly a vehicle for clearing away the   

 world as it is and making possible the post-apocalyptic paradise or wasteland. 

 Temporal sequence becomes confused. Apocalyptic writing takes us after the end,  

 shows the signs prefiguring the end, the moment of obliteration, and the aftermath.  

 The writer and reader must be in both places at once, imagining the post-

 apocalyptic world and then paradoxically “remembering” the world as it was, as it  

 is . . . Every action before the apocalypse is simultaneously an action after the 

 apocalypse, and the event itself exists as a monstrous possibility made more or less  

 likely by actions that, if it occurs, will never happen. (6)

The befores and afters of the characters in the show become confused and often 

intermingle, each interacting with the other. For example, June remembers specific 

moments of her before; moments such as attending a feminist rally, writing a college paper 

on date rape, and the birth of her daughter. While she sometimes is unable to differentiate 

between her before and her after, ultimately, these before moments provide the lens through 

which June sees, and can contextualize, her after moments. Further, June’s after 

experiences give her context to understand her experiences in the before and how they 

brought her to her present situation. It is because June remembers what freedom felt like, 

what it was to hold a job, to exercise sexual agency, or be with her family in her before that

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she establishes a lens through which she is able to find the courage for resistance in her 

after.

 While her befores and afters may often get confused or impede upon each other, 

Miller ultimately uses this confused temporal sequencing to “take us after the end, show 

the signs prefiguring the end, the moment of obliteration, and the aftermath” (Berger 

6). As Berger says, the writer, the reader, or, in our case, the audience, must also be in or 

understand one temporal time frame in order to understand the other, just as June does 

throughout the narrative. The audience must comprehend the befores of The Handmaid’s 

Tale in order to grasp the meaning and significance of the afters that they are seeing on the 

screen. This temporally confused post-apocalyptic world that Miller creates in his television 

adaptation is one in which the past often piggybacks on the present, while the present 

can only be understood by remembering the past. As Berger continues, “Everything after 

the end, in order to gain or borrow meaning, must point back, lead back to that time; and 

everything before that beginning (seen as the ‘beginning of the end’) reconfigures itself 

into prologue and premonition” (xi).  Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, June must recognize 

her clear before and her clear after and must use one to survive and resist the other. This 

temporal confusion is one way Miller uses elements of post-apocalyptic literature to further 

exemplify feminine oppression throughout The Handmaid’s Tale.

MILLER’S ADAPTATION

 Now that I have discussed how Miller plays with the post-apocalyptic temporality of 

The Handmaid’s Tale, I will touch on how Miller’s adaptation differs from Atwood’s 

original novel, as it makes room within June’s story for hope and resistance, another 

important element of post-apocalyptic literature. While Miller does utilize the temporal 

confusion common in post-apocalyptic literature, his television adaptation further 

contrasts Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel by showcasing a post-apocalyptic world in which 

there is hope for oppressed peoples and a space for those oppressed peoples to resist their 

oppressors. While the television adaptation brings Atwood’s characters to life, the space 

Miller creates for hope and resistance greatly differs from that within the 1985 novel. 

Miller elaborates on the story of June’s husband, Luke, and allows audience members to 

follow Luke as he travels to a refugee camp in Canada and continues to search for June and 

their daughter. Luke’s character serves to captivate much of June’s memory and provides 

audience members a tangible link to the time before Gilead, while providing glimpses of the 

hope and freedom that may be possible in the after. Luke’s survival and escape to Canada 

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gives audience members the sometimes unrealistic hope that June and Luke may be able to 

return to a time resembling the before or at least create a new after for their family.

         Another hope-inducing addition to Miller’s adaptation is the survival and ultimate 

escape of June’s best friend, Moira, who not only escapes her bondage as a Handmaid but 

also life as an enslaved prostitute at a popular club and brothel called Jezebel’s. While 

Margaret Atwood ambiguously ends Moira’s narrative at Jezebel’s and includes no such 

happy ending, Miller again gives audience members hope that the feminine resilience and 

grit we see in Moira can indeed deliver an enslaved character to freedom. One of the last 

obvious differences between Atwood’s novel and Miller’s television adaptation is in the 

storyline of another Handmaid, Ofglen. After she is discovered as a member of the 

resistance group in Gilead, Ofglen faces her end. Atwood mercifully ends Ofglen’s life by 

suicide. However, Miller is not so kind and instead uses Ofglen’s story to reiterate how 

women’s bodies become the battleground in the fight for the future and how these women 

bear the cost of resisting their post-apocalyptic world of domination and oppression. When 

Ofglen is discovered to be a member of an underground resistance group, as well as a 

lesbian, she is tried and convicted of being a “gender traitor.” She is then forced to witness 

the death of her lover and undergo a clitoridectomy before being sent back to the Republic 

of Gilead to resume her life as a Handmaid. After everything she goes through, Ofglen 

comes back to the Republic and continues to push back against her oppressors and remind 

those around her that there is still hope. Ofglen’s character is the ultimate example of grit 

and resilience. Ultimately, Miller gives each character an ending with far more finality, but 

also uses their stories to promote resilience, grit, and hope. While Atwood leaves many 

endings up for discussion, Miller’s adaptation inspires audience members to resist the 

unjust and remain hopeful that the future can change for the better.

CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP & RELEVANCE

 Now that I have briefly discussed how Miller plays with temporal confusion—such as 

is common in post-apocalyptic writing—and how Miller’s adaptation differs from 

Atwood’s original novel, I will begin analyzing the scholarship on The Handmaid’s Tale. 

While Atwood’s novel has inspired much academic scholarship, there is no such scholarship 

on Miller’s recent and award-winning adaptation of the novel. Thus, I will be taking the 

theories and comments on Atwood’s novel and directly applying them to current feminist 

issues and Miller’s modern dramatization of June’s story. For example, Shirley Neuman, in 

her article, “‘Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale,” says,

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“June, in short, is a fictional product of 1970s feminism, and she finds herself in a situation 

that is a fictional realization of the backlash against women’s rights that gathered force 

during the early 1980s” (858). While I agree with Neuman that Atwood’s original novel is a 

product of 1980’s feminism and women’s rights issues, I believe that the re-adaptation of 

June’s story and the creation of Miller’s television series is the timely result of modern 

feminism. It not only serves to reanimate Atwood’s original creation but also speaks to 

issues that twenty-first century women are currently confronting, such as social and sexual 

oppression. Miller’s adaptation also explores the role storytelling has in resisting such social 

and sexual oppression, just as storytelling has become an important part in resisting social 

and sexual oppression in modern feminist movements.

 These modern movements have been gaining speed throughout the United States, 

such as the #MeToo and #TimesUP Movements. The frontrunners of the #MeToo 

Movement and those involved with the campaign to raise awareness and encourage 

solidarity against sexual violence and harassment were recently featured as TIME 

Magazine’s Persons of the Year. Millions of tweets and hashtags showed up just hours 

after the campaign’s worldwide relaunch. The movement included people from every 

demographic. Since then, the #TimesUP movement has swept through Hollywood, and 

hundreds have come forward with their narratives of sexual assault, harassment, and 

inequality in the workplace. For the men and women involved in these situations, there is a 

clear before and a clear after in which things will never be the same. Just as Berger says 

regarding apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic events,  “Everything after the end, in order to 

gain or borrow meaning, must point back, lead back to that time; and everything before that 

beginning (seen as the ‘beginning of the end’) reconfigures itself into prologue and 

premonition” (xi). These survivors of sexual oppression have faced their own apocalypses yet 

seemingly have found support and the courage to resist by telling their stories. Much like 

the characters of The Handmaid’s Tale, they must also use their befores to help create their 

afters. However, if we look at such media as Miller’s The Handmaid’s Tale, in which there 

is also a clear before and after, we understand that even though there may be a clear divide 

from which there is no going back, there is also room for hope, a chance to fight back, and a 

way to recreate an after. It is clear from even these few contemporary examples that Miller’s 

The Handmaid’s Tale speaks to current issues and provides audience members with the 

reassurance that, even though an apocalyptic event has occurred, there is still hope and 

room for resistance, as I will discuss later.

 In addition to writings by James Berger regarding post-apocalyptic literature and the

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genre’s temporal confusion and ambiguity, I will be referencing work by such scholars as 

Elisabeth Hansot, David Hogsette, and Karen Magro. I will ultimately discuss how Bruce 

Miller’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale not only exemplifies the familiar oppression of 

women but also how it explores the role of post-apocalyptic storytelling in resistance and 

how it remains a powerful call for modern social reform.

OPPRESSION

         While I have briefly touched on how Miller adopts pieces of apocalyptic theory, such 

as Berger’s, to show oppression in The Handmaid’s Tale, I will be taking a closer look at 

exactly how this feminine oppression is exemplified in the show. Like many post-

apocalyptic work that seeks to draw a strong emotional response from audience members, 

The Handmaid’s Tale depicts very intense and disconcerting oppression. While this 

oppression is startling, upon further examination, it is not too different from what modern 

women are familiar with and experience on a daily basis. To repeat a quote from Hogsette: 

“Women become nonpersons—individuals who lack the rights and opportunities that might 

enable them to counter openly society’s construction of them” (263). While this illustration 

of women may seem exclusive to the confines of Atwood’s novel and Miller’s adaptation, I 

would argue that this view of female oppression is also applicable to modern women. The 

fact that women are portrayed as such “nonpersons” in the narrative as well as in our 

current society is what, I believe, makes Miller’s adaptation so relevant to today’s society, as 

I will discuss later.

 In Miller’s adaptation, no woman is excused from the oppression enacted by the 

Republic of Gilead. Even the elite women of society and infertile wives of influential 

government officials are barred from reading, writing, or speaking out of turn. This is 

exactly, as Shirley Neuman describes, the ideal “post-feminism” woman of the 1980s: “[they 

should be] submissive and more abnegating than any wife this side of the Orient” (860). 

This is precisely how the women in Miller’s Gilead are seen. Again, these parallels are what 

make Miller’s adaptation so relevant. All women of Gilead are commodified based on the 

reproductive capabilities of their wombs. However, the Handmaids of Gilead are treated 

as slaves; they have absolutely no rights, no voice, and no freedoms. They are physically 

abused, sexually assaulted, and mentally manipulated. They are stripped of everything 

that previously defined them as human, separated from their innate “personhood,” and 

“render[ed] non-human,” all of which succeeds to make these incredible acts of oppression 

possible (Katrak 41). 

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 In exploring how apocalypse intersects with this female oppression, I will be 

using James Berger’s definition of apocalypse as events that function as “definitive 

historical divides, as ruptures, pivots, fulcrums separating what comes before from what 

comes after . . . All preceding history seems to lead up to and set the stage for such events, 

and all that follows emerges out of that central cataclysm” (5). According to this definition, 

the dystopian world presented in The Handmaid’s Tale most definitely qualifies as an 

apocalypse, especially for any female character. Miller presents a clear before and a clear 

after in which June finds herself, which acts as a historical divide between the then and the 

now. Again, we see Miller playing with June and the audience’s sense of post-apocalyptic 

temporal reality. Everything that came in the before allowed for the Republic of Gilead to 

emerge in the after. Both June and the audience must understand one to create a frame for 

the other.

 For example, in the before, June was a book editor and was free to practice her 

literacy at any time. However, literacy and free thought were some of the first things to 

disappear in the after. Women are banned from and severely punished for reading in 

Gilead. Yet, June encounters several instances of literacy in the after: playing Scrabble with 

the Commander and reading the message scratched into her closet. In order to understand 

why June is so fascinated with and encouraged by these chances at literacy and reading, the 

audience must understand her before and the very literate world June experienced in the 

before. In order to understand the magnitude of the freedoms June experienced in the 

before, we must understand the oppression she, and every other woman of Gilead, is 

currently experiencing in the after. This is just one example of how Berger’s theory of the 

before, after, and a dividing apocalyptic event play a role in The Handmaid’s Tale and in 

June’s narrative account.

STORYTELLING

 Complementing June’s interaction with literacy throughout her after, we see her 

exercising the storytelling skills she possesses by, quite obviously, telling her story to 

audience members. Despite the horrendous oppression and suffocating slavery she 

experiences, June finds a way to tell her story, and through her rebellious narrative acts, she 

retains her identity and her sense of hope. Identity and use of language are closely linked 

throughout June’s tale. Handmaids are not allowed to read, write, or speak out of turn. They 

are given new names that signify their “masters” and to whom they belong. This lack of 

literacy and restricted speech keeps them within the realm of Gilead-acceptable identities

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and does not give them the power to recreate their own identities. Regarding Atwood’s 

novel, David Hogsette says, “[The Handmaid’s Tale] examines the political, social, and sexual 

dimensions of discourse, focusing specifically on oppression enforced by institutionalized 

control of acquiring knowledge and using language and on the self-liberating potential 

of an individual’s act of storytelling” (263). Applying this scholarship to Miller’s television 

adaptation, we clearly see the control of literacy and language, as discussed previously. 

Throughout the show, we see June navigate the political, social, and sexual “dimensions 

of discourse,” yet she lacks the language to participate fully and establish her identity as 

a participant in such discourse (Hogsette 263). By restricting the language use of women, 

Gilead ultimately silences and excludes them from almost all social dialogue.

 This repression of language serves only to make the language and storytelling that 

is available even more powerful because it is so controlled. In Episode Four, June finds the 

words “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum” carved into her closet wall. “Don’t let the 

bastards grind you down” has since become a war cry for many feminist issues and a 

running theme of June’s story. She says, “There was an Offred before me. She helped me 

find my way out. She is dead. She is alive. She is me. We are Handmaids. Nolite Te Bastardes 

Carborundorum, bitches” (“Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum”). This act of storytelling by 

a former Offred simultaneously establishes her own identity and passes along the message 

that she existed, that she believed in the person who would come after her, and that she 

ultimately believed in the hope that her written resistance provides.  

 Like the woman who left the message in the closet, June and the other Handmaids 

find ways to tell their stories as well and, ultimately, find ways to retain or recreate their 

identities through their storytelling abilities. While it is obvious that June is eventually able 

to use her voice and tell her story, her act of storytelling throughout her experience serves to 

both remind June of her former identity and to help her create a new one. The act of 

storytelling is what I believe gives June the strength to resist. Throughout her experiences, 

she frequently flashes back to her past and tells herself, and her audiences, stories from 

her life before. We travel with her into memories from her past: the day her daughter was 

born, times with her best friend Moira, and conversations she had with her husband Luke. 

As Elisabeth Hansot says regarding the novel, “[These stories] reestablish some continuity 

with her discredited past and give amplitude to her impoverished present” (57). June’s act of 

storytelling gives her a way to not only connect herself with her before, but provides a way 

for June to use her before to understand and resist her present self and the post-apocalyptic 

after in which she finds herself.

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 These memories are what help June revisit her previous identity as a wife, a mother, 

a friend, and a free person. They help her to form a new identity in the strange context of 

her present situation. Her memories and stories are how she remembers a time before and a 

time when things were different. They, along with her act of storytelling, are what bring her 

back to the realization that life can and should be different and that she does have the power 

to fight back. Addressing June’s capacity to fight back against her oppression, scholar David 

Hogsette says, 

 [The Handmaid’s Tale] demonstrates through June that women, able to take risks and  

 tell their stories, may transcend their conditioning, establish their identity, joyfully  

 reclaim their bodies, find their voices, and reconstruct social order . . . language use 

 is both politically oppressive and, ultimately for June, self-liberating . . . Writing, or 

 in her case speaking out, validates an individual’s existence; it proves that writer-  

 speaker was, at some point, or still may be, alive . . . Someone was present to write 

 it . . . by creating her own text, her own narrative, June similarly creates and validates  

 her existence, her humanity, and her vision of reality and preserves her experience for  

 future audiences . . . (264, 269)

While this theory was written in regards to Atwood’s novel, it is easily applicable to the 

television show, as well as to modern instances of oppression in which women used their 

linguistic and storytelling abilities to resist their oppressors.

 Gilead thinks that by restricting women’s uses of language and literature, it will be 

able to suppress their voices and their identities as well. However, it only strengthens the 

power of their stories and the power of the limited words they have access to. It also proves 

that they have hope in not only an audience to listen to their stories but also in a future in 

which such an audience would be free to hear their stories.

ACTION

 June’s narrative thus acts to both startle audience members and move them to 

recognize the similarities between Gilead and our current social climate. When Atwood 

originally penned June’s story, it was seen as “a fictional product of 1970s feminism, [where 

June] finds herself in a situation that is a fictional realization of the backlash against 

women’s rights that gathered force in the early 1980s” (Neuman 858). While I agree that this 

may have been the case of Atwood’s novel, I would add that Miller’s recent adaptation of 

The Handmaid’s Tale is a product of twenty-first century feminism and ultimately serves as a 

cautionary tale and as a call to action for our current society. The show clearly depicts

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many of the issues that second-wave feminists faced, yet the issues presented are all eerily 

familiar to women of the twenty-first century. It makes audience members wonder if any 

positive strides have been taken in women’s rights in the past forty years. Shirley Neuman 

expands on what The Handmaid’s Tale shows us about this time before, the time members of 

the Republic of Gilead use to condone their behavior. I believe that the things she mentions 

are the very issues that Miller’s adaptation also strives to address. She says,

 [the time before] also tells us that it was not safe for a woman to go for a run or into  

 a laundromat at night, to open a door to a stranger, to help a stranded motorist; that  

 women didn’t walk in certain places, locked doors and windows, drew curtains, left  

 lights on as precautions or perhaps “prayers”; that women needed to “take back the  

 night” and to replace kitchen table abortions with legal freedom of choice; that date  

 rape was common enough to be an accepted subject for a term paper; that 

 pornography . . . was a fact of life; that women were “found” . . . in ditches or forests  

 or refrigerators in abandoned rented rooms . . . ; that one did not allow one’s children 

 to walk alone to school because too many disappeared; that less terminally lethal   

 circumstances included singles bars, blind dates, the terrible gap between the   

 ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn’t as well as a dedication to  

 anorexia, silicone implants, and cosmetic surgery as a means to realize “possibilities”  

 proffered by fashion magazines; that fathers left without paying child support,   

 mothers wound up on welfare, and the wretched little paychecks of women would  

 have to stretch to unsubsidized daycare . . . (Neuman 866)

It is clear that these things are widely seen in both our current society and the time before 

Gilead. This causes me to wonder if our society, left unchecked, could, or maybe has, turned 

into a narrative like The Handmaid’s Tale. LGBTQ and women’s rights, poverty, literacy, 

sexual slavery, war, toxic pollution, political conflict, “sexual politics, a woman’s decision 

to bear children, her access to power, and her ability to determine her own destiny” are all 

still issues at the forefront of our current political climate as Karen Magro discusses in her 

article, “Gender Matters: Revisiting Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The 

Penelopiad through the Lens of Social Justice” (20). Miller utilizes and manipulates Atwood’s 

original story to draw attention to these issues, which we still need to address and solve or 

otherwise risk our world completely turning into one like the Republic of Gilead.

 Perhaps the most frightening part of The Handmaid’s Tale is that these eerily 

familiar changes didn’t happen all at once. As June says, “When they slaughtered Congress, 

we didn’t wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn’t

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wake up then either . . . They said it would be temporary. Nothing changes instantaneously. 

In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it” (“Late”). And, 

like a gradually heating bathtub, the United States depicted in the show only makes small 

changes at first. This should make us, as an audience and as committed members of society, 

jump up and call out these injustices that we see. In the beginning of Gilead, women slowly 

lose their rights, their jobs, their money, and their independence, and people don’t say much 

about it. America’s democracy is gradually taken over by a militaristic Christian government 

and almost all personal freedoms are eradicated. While this totalitarian way of life greatly 

contrasts with the democracy that Americans formerly prided themselves on, like June says, 

things changed slowly, but eventually things changed completely. Furthermore, we are 

currently seeing issues of women’s rights and oppression in our current world, such as those 

that inspired the #MeToo and #TimesUP Movements. While there are so many uncanny 

similarities between our world and Gilead, The Handmaid’s Tale shows us that there is a way 

to resist and that not only recognizing this oppression but sharing personal narratives of 

oppression is a large step in the direction of resistance and justice.

 By showing this violence against women and this incredibly unjust society, Miller 

succeeds in “involve[ing] and affect[ing] audiences as active witnesses” and works to trigger 

a sense of social justice that “they take outside the theatre” (Katrak 31-32). Miller’s 

adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale should not only serve to dramatize 

oppression against women, but it demonstrates the role storytelling has in fighting and 

surviving such oppression. Ultimately, it should motivate audience members to notice and 

take action against the oppression and human rights issues that we easily see in our own 

world.

WORKS CITED

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985.

Berger, James. After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse. University of Minnesota   

 Press, 1999.

Hansot, Elisabeth. “Selves, Survival, and Resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Utopian 

 Studies: Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 1994, pp. 56-69. 

 EBSCOhost, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20719313. 

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Hogsette, David S. “Margaret Atwood’s Rhetorical Epilogue In The Handmaid’s Tale: The  

 Reader’s Role in Empowering June’s Speech Act.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary  

 Fiction, vol. 38, no. 4, 1997, pp. 262–278. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00111619.1997.105431 

 80.

Katrak, Ketu H. “‘Stripping Women of Their Wombs’: Active Witnessing of Performances  

 of Violence.” Theatre Research International, vol. 39, no. 1, Oct. 2014, pp. 31–46. 

 EBSCOhost, doi:10.1017/s0307883313000539.

“Late.” The Handmaid’s Tale, season 1, episode 3, Hulu, 29 Apr. 2010. Netflix, www.hulu.com.

Magro, Karen. “Gender Matters: Revisiting Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The  

 Penelopiad Through the Lens of Social Justice.” Notes on American Literature, vol. 22,  

 2013, pp. 20-28. EBSCOhost, proxy.bsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/log 

 in.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=90667091&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Miller, Bruce, creator. The Handmaid’s Tale. Daniel Wilson Productions Inc., 2017.

Neuman, Shirley. “‘Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale.”  

 University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 3, 2006, pp. 857–868. EBSCOhost,    

 doi:10.3138/utq.75.3.857.

“Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundom.” The Handmaid’s Tale, season 1, episode 4, Hulu, 29 Apr.  

 2010. Netflix, www.hulu.com.

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