The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Dramatized and Directed by John Dryden
Produced by Jane Quill
BBC Radio 4 Classic Serial 01/01/2000
Length 3 x 1 hr Episodes
Coded from tape at 128/44.1
(SciFi/Fantasy ? not really but it seems to be the only place to put these dystopian tales)
Margaret Atwood's (1985) chilling vision of 21st-century America dramatized in three parts by John Dryden.
"Faultless acting and imaginative, varied and multi-layered sound effects make this one of the best
listening experiences I have had." ....Independent on Sunday
"This three-part adaptation uses a documentary style, recorded entirely on location in the US, and
avoiding the use of a single studio......" Time Out
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the
United States of America. Because of dangerously low reproduction rates, Handmaids are assigned to bear
children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving. Offred serves the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy,
a former gospel singer and advocate for “traditional values.” Offred is not the narrator’s real name—Handmaid
names consist of the word “of” followed by the name of the Handmaid’s Commander. Every month, when Offred is
at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she must have impersonal, wordless sex with the Commander while
Serena sits behind her, holding her hands. Offred’s freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely
restricted. She can leave the house only on shopping trips, the door to her room cannot be completely shut,
and the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police force, watch her every public move..........................
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Margaret Atwood conceived the Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale as one logical outcome of what she
termed the 'strict theocracy' of the 'fundamentalist government' of the United States' Puritan founding
fathers. Her Gileadean government maintains its power by means of surveillance, suppression of information,
're-education' centres, and totalitarian violence. Its major national issue, sterility consequent on nuclear
and chemical pollution, it addresses through sexual surrogacy, turning its few fertile women into 'Handmaids'
to its highest-level Commanders and their wives, using as justification the biblical story in which the barren
Rachel directs her husband Jacob to 'go in unto' her servant Billah: 'and she shall bear upon my knees, that I
also may have children by her'. We learn about Gilead through one of its (self-described)
'two-legged wombs' or 'ambulatory chalices', the Handmaid Offred, who records her story after she has
escaped the regime. Caught up in a dystopian state that the novel hypothesizes as the logical extension not
only of Puritan government but also of the agenda articulated during the 1980s by America's fundamentalist
Christian Right..............."
(Quoted from 'Just a Backlash': Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid's Tale by Shirley Neuman)
Part 1 of 3
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Replies
T_H_A_N_K Y_O_U!!!
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Part 3 of 3
The Handmaids Tale 3.MP3
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Part 2 of 3
The Handmaids Tale 2.MP3