This thesis discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) in relation to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and examines to what extent Atwood used Jacobs’s...Show moreThis thesis discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) in relation to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and examines to what extent Atwood used Jacobs’s slave narrative as a template for her dystopian novel. With this comparison, this thesis considers whether Atwood’s novel marginalizes Afro-American experiences of slavery and to what extent The Handmaid’s Tale can be seen as a product of white feminism through a focus on the concept of intersectionality.Show less
This thesis discusses the socio-political factors that contributed to the rising popularity of the dystopian genre in the early and late 20th Century. This is done in part by placing the dystopian...Show moreThis thesis discusses the socio-political factors that contributed to the rising popularity of the dystopian genre in the early and late 20th Century. This is done in part by placing the dystopian novels The Iron Heel (by Jack London) and The Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood) in their respective historical contexts.Show less