How close are we to a Handmaid’s Tale reality?
.... The handmaids in Atwood’s book are subject to strictly enforced dress codes and are provided uniforms similar to a Catholic nun’s habit, except bright red. Red is the symbol of their societal status as women who are kept solely to conceive children for the wealthy. You may think this is extreme, but in 2017 when you have a president who says “[he] likes the women who work for him ‘to dress like women,” it may not be so far off. .....
Plot
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In the near future, human fertility rates collapse as a result of sexually transmitted diseases and environmental pollution.[3] With this chaos in place, the totalitarian, Christian theonomic government of "Gilead" establishes rule in the former United States in the aftermath of a civil war.[4][5][6] Society is organized by power-hungry leaders along a new, militarized, hierarchical regime of fanaticism and newly created social classes, in which women are brutally subjugated, and by law are not allowed to work, own property, handle money, or read.[6] Worldwide infertility has resulted in the conscription of the few remaining fertile women in Gilead, called "Handmaids", according to an extremist interpretation of a Biblical account.[6] They are assigned to the homes of the ruling elite, where they must submit to ritualized rape with their male masters in order to become pregnant and bear children for those men and their wives.
Alongside the red-clad Handmaids, much of society is now grouped into classes that dictate their freedoms and duties. Women are divided into a small range of social categories, each one signified by a specifically colored dress in a similar style. Handmaids wear red, Marthas wear green, and Wives wear blue. Econowives, the lower-class women who still have minimal agency, are sort of a mixture of all these categories, so they wear stripes. Wives are expected to run their households, Marthas are housekeepers and cooks, Aunts train and oversee the Handmaids; additionally, the Eyes are a secret police watching over the general populace for signs of rebellion, Hunters track down people attempting to flee the country, and Jezebels are prostitutes in secret brothels catering to the elite ruling class.
June Osborne, renamed Offred (Elisabeth Moss), is the Handmaid assigned to the home of Gileadan Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his wife Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski). She is subject to the strictest rules and constant scrutiny; an improper word or deed on her part can lead to brutal punishment. Offred, who is named after her male master like all Handmaids, can remember the "time before", when she was married, had a daughter and had her own name and identity, but all she can safely do now is follow the rules of Gilead in the hope that she can someday live free and be reunited with her daughter. The Waterfords, key players in the rise of Gilead, have their own conflicts with the realities of the society they have helped create.
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