Owning Gilead: franchising feminism through Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments

Abstract

ABSTRACT Margaret Atwood’s most famous dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), is one of those stories whose message seems to carry across the ages. The hyperreal patriarchy-as-terror-regime that The Handmaid’s Tale portrays has become a well-known shorthand in feminist protest culture. Its presence became even more prominent in response to Donald Trump’s 2016 election, and its visibility as a protest symbol there and at other events aimed at curbing women’s rights was strengthened by the visual imagery of the novel’s most recent adaptation. The Handmaid’s Tale and Atwood’s 2019 addition to its storyworld, The Testaments, with adaptations across media, have effectively given shape to what has become a media franchise. As its uses in the context of feminist politics and populism show, this franchise refers not only to commercial concerns; it also references a form of political enfranchisement in that it offers tools and language for calling out patriarchy. We argue that the conglomerate of Gilead media texts engenders a fraught franchise in both commercial and politically emancipatory senses. While only reluctantly ‘offering itself up’ for commercial exploitation, the franchise makes itself freely and prominently available to feminist protest culture.