Arnold E Davidson, "Future Tense: Making History in The Handmaid's Tale," in Margaret Atwood: Visions and Forms, edited by Kathryn van Spanckeren and Jan Garden Castro, Southern Illinois University Press, 1988, pp 11321.

Examines how the imaginary country of Gilead is more of a reflection of a state of mind than a political reality. Also included in this book is an autobiographical forward by Margaret Atwood.

Barbara Ehrenreich, "Feminism's Phantoms" in The New Republic, Vol 194, No 11, March 17, 1986, pp. 33-5. Interprets the novel as a warning about feminism's repressive tendencies.

Mark Evans, "Versions of History: 'The Handmaid's Tale' and Its Dedicatees, in Margaret Atwood. Writing and Sub jectivity," edited by Colin Nicholson, St. Martin's, 1994, pp 177-88.

Discusses Puritanism in the novel.

Barbara Garlick, "The Handmaid's Tale' Narrative Voice and the Primacy of the Tale," in Twentieth-Century Fantasists. Essays on Culture, Society and Belief in Twentieth Century Mythopoeic Literature...