The New Right in America

English Lit: Edexcel A Level The Handmaid's Tale, topic 4.3.2

Political Context - America and the New Right

One of the strongest political links between the novel and real life is the growth of the New Right in America in the 1980s.

Atwood collected clippings from newspapers to inspire her creation of Gilead.
A lot of her research focused on the increasing political strength of right-wing religious fundamentalist groups, especially their support for President Ronald Reagan, who was part of the Republican party.
Reagan promoted traditional family values, conservative beliefs and a strong, evangelical Christian faith.
He was voted in as President from 1981 to 1989.

Reagan’s rhetoric appealed to the Bible belt of America and warned against the perceived sins of homosexuality, abortion and divorce.
Reagan was quoted as saying: "within the covers of the Bible are all the answers for all the problems men face".
This is very like the rhetoric of characters like Aunt Lydia, Serena Joy and The Commander.

The New Right’s ideologies borrowed from Puritan beliefs, especially the ideas of women being primarily for procreation and seen as inferior to men in marriage.

Fears grew in America in the 1980s as a result of falling fertility rates (known as the ‘Birth Dearth’).
The New Right used this as an opportunity to promote traditional heterosexual family values and promote the role of women as ‘procreators’ in order to save society from the ills of homosexuality, falling birth rates and AIDS.
Atwood extrapolates this fear and creates a world where women’s only use is as walking "wombs" or to assist the sexual or domestic needs of men.