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Towards the end of her feminist dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Margaret Atwood proposes a link with Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous collection of medieval narrative poems The Canterbury Tales. In the metafictional Historical Notes which provide a postscript to the novel, Professor Pieixoto points out that the text ‘was not a manuscript at all when first discovered, and bore no title. The superscription “The Handmaid’s Tale” was appended to it… partly in homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer’ (Atwood 1996, p. 313). Atwood’s central protagonist, Offred, tells the story of her life as a concubine living within the household of Commander Fred and his wife, Serena Joy. After overthrowing the democratically elected government of the USA, the Republic of Gilead has restructured society along ultraconservative religious and social lines and removed women’s rights with frightening speed. As the Commander’s ‘Handmaid’, Offred possesses far less freedom and autonomy than Chaucer’s medieval women, the Wife of Bath and the Prioress.
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