Reaganism and the Handmaid's Tale

In The Handmaid's Tale, author Margaret Atwood paints a disturbing portrait of a Puritan society formed out of the ruins of a revolutionary war. After the President, his cabinet, and Congress are murdered by terrorists, America struggles to find itself in the aftermath. A new society, The Republic of Gilead, forms which discourages individualism, encourages religious conformity, denounces female status and sexuality, and ritualizes procreation. Written in 1985, Atwood's story takes Reaganism philosophy to the extreme and tells of a society that takes the core values of Reaganism and brings them to fruition in this true Brechtian social drama. By taking the fears of a liberal society and exaggerating them to global proportions, Atwood shows that the society of The Handmaid's Tale, is closer to reality than one would wish to believe. In his article, "The Age of Reaganism", Andrew Kopkind highlights some important elements of Reaganism, including "the family unit over the heterogeneous community, male authority over sexual democracy, patriotism over nationalism, selfishness over altruism, one of the more frightening aspects of Gilead is the strict class delineation. In Gilead, slavery is not outlawed, only renamed as "positions of honor" (Atwood 13) and a "privilege" (Atwood 8).