This isn't science fiction. Its a reality that many choose ignore. 
 One day in all the banks, the account holders who had "F" or "Female" in records weren't able to access their accounts anymore. It was only the beginning. 
 The protagonist's name is Offred - "Of Fred". As a woman, she cannot have an identity of her own without a male partner. The women are necessary to carry an offspring and are useful as long as they are capable to do so. Those who are "capable" of bearing an offspring get to be the handmaid and allocated to a..man. 
 Women aren't allowed to read and that's why there are pictorial representations at the market. Women cannot dress the way they want thus giving them a dress code that covers their body completely. They cannot walk around with freedom. Men and women are beaten or killed in public if they don't fall in the line. 
 Doing anything other than state's prescribed code of conduct gets deemed as Sin. Not wrong. But sin. 
 This isn't a story that can happen in some distant future. Societies exist in this very archaic and barbaric rule of the state. We aren't free from people who carry such a thought - a thought that a woman's primary role is to bear a child. The fundamental thought behind the book isn't something I cannot ignore or pass up as dystopian extremity. The shades of it exists in our society irrespective of its advancement. 
 I am just left with melancholia now.