SOURCE: “The Calculus of Love and Nightmare: The Handmaid's Tale and the Dystopian Tradition,” in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 38, No. 2, Winter, 1997, pp. 83-95.
In the following essay, Feuer discusses gender, essentialism, and ambiguity in The Handmaid's Tale, noting parallels with George Orwell's 1984. According to Feuer, Atwood's ironic presentation of a totalitarian “woman's culture” reflects schisms in contemporary feminist theory.
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