engleski

Margaret Atwood's The Testaments: Sequel as feminist revision of The Handmaid's Tale?

Feminism as women’s struggle for equal rights has been an ongoing process in American society which has faced backlash periodically. However, the backlash against feminism has not always been direct, and has taken different shapes in the U.S. media. Both the aggressive direct response and the indirect undermining of women’s rights were imaginatively used and described in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and its follow-up novel The Testaments (2019). The Handmaid’s Tale indicated the dangerous possibility of easily stripping women of their hard-won rights which were here lost due to the mass passivity, while The Testaments explores the fight against the totalitarian patriarchal regime described in The Handmaid’s Tale. This thesis will explore the relationship between the two novels in such a way that the sequel will be read as a feminist revision of The Handmaid’s Tale which was written at a time when postfeminism was widespread in American society. The Testaments could serve as a warning about the consequences of postfeminism, while The Handmaid’s Tale directly describes how deeply postfeminism was rooted, not only in society, but also in the individual, and highlights the importance of organised struggle against totalitarian ideas and regimes.

feminism, postfeminism, anti-feminism, women’s rights, The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments

nije evidentirano