From Episodic Novel to Serial TV: The Handmaid’s Tale, Adaptation and Politics

Abstract

This article analyzes the changes in The Handmaid’s Tale’s moral and political outlook as it tracks different forms of complexity in the novel, the film, and the TV series. While the sense of female empowerment increases with each adaptation of this tale of forced sexual servitude in fictional theocratic state of Gilead, the essay argues that Hulu’s TV series (created by Bruce Miller, 2017–) develops an intriguing interaction between the interiority of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel and the exteriority emphasized in Volker Schlöndorff’s 1990 film. In so doing, the TV series Escher-twists across related binaries between activity/passivity and personal/political actions as well. By expanding, displacing, and creatively intersecting storylines which the novel cut short, the series weaves an intricate perspectival web that invites the viewer to participate in its mind games.

Keywords

• the handmaid’s tale
• adaptation
• tv series
• moral complexity
• politics
• feminism
• margaret atwood
• volker schlöndorff
• bruce miller