what year does the handmaid's tale take place
The Handmaid's Tale The novel is set in an indeterminate future, speculated to be around the year 2005,[13] with a fundamentalist theonomy ruling the territory of what had been the United States but is now the Republic of Gilead. Individuals are segregated by categories and dressed according to their social functions. The complex sumptuary laws (dress codes) play a key role in imposing social control within the new society and serve to distinguish people by sex, occupation, and caste.
The Handmaid's Tale (TV series) In the near future, fertility rates collapse as a result of sexually transmitted diseases and environmental pollution.[5] With this chaos, the totalitarian, theonomic government of "Gilead" establishes rule in the former United States in the aftermath of a civil war.[6][7][8] Society is organized by power-hungry leaders along with 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.[8]