In 2017 a troubling vision of America arrived on television screens. Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale depicted a country that had been transformed into Gilead, a theocratic dictatorship. Women were stripped of their civil rights. Those who were fertile were enslaved as “handmaids”, childbearing vessels for the ruling class.
The show had its premiere on Hulu, a streaming service, not long after Donald Trump’s inauguration, when people feared democratic backsliding and the creep of religious fundamentalism into politics.
