Benutzer:Verena.eisenkoeck/Gender Roles in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale/Pre-reading phase

Gender Roles in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

1. Welcome - Hints & Tips
   
2. Pre-reading
   
3. Reading: Chapter 1
   
4. Reading: Chapters 2-13
   
5. Reading: Chapters 14-24
6. Reading: Chapters 25-30
7. Reading: Chapters 31-39, 40-46 and Historical Notes
8. Post-reading

Researching The Handmaid's Tale

The dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) was written by Margaret Atwood. In this novel, Atwood paints a very negative picture of our future: a future characterised by the oppression of women and very conservative gender roles.

The following article deals with the background that, among other things, motivated Margaret Atwood to write this novel. Read the article carefully and then do the tasks below.

Task 1

What do the words in red mean? Try to guess from the context and match the terms with their definitions. You can use a monolingual dictionary!

Task 2

Copy the following questions into a Word document and answer the questions:

• According to the text, what is the novel The Handmaid’s Tale about? What is the main theme?
• Sum up on what social and environmental developments the novel is based on (using bullet points).
• Do some further research and answer the following questions in a couple of sentences:
  • What is a Puritan?
  • What is Listen America! all about?

Reading: Chapter 1