1. The symbolism of wings

2. THT influence on contemporary fashion. Is there an irony here?
THT influence on contemporary fashion.
Is there an irony here?

3. https://www. nytimes. com/2017/06/30/us/handmaids-protests-abortion
Handmaids’ bonnets have become a symbol for protest against anti-abortion legislation.

4. Costume links to America’s Puritan past
“Nations never build apparently radical forms of government on foundations that aren't there already. Thus China replaced a state bureaucracy with a similar state bureaucracy under a different name, the USSR replaced the dreaded imperial secret police with an even more dreaded secret police, and so forth. The deep foundation of the US – so went my thinking – was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the republic, with their talk of equality and their separation of church and state, but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England, with its marked bias against women, which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself.”
Margaret Atwood, 2012
1980s context of the Religious Right wasn’t only reason for the choice of a regime based on religious extremism.

5. Interesting fact Who is The Handmaid’s Tale dedicated to?
''We all write books about our ancestors from time to time, and this is my book about my ancestors… I was a 1630's Puritan on both sides of my family. One of the people the book is dedicated to is Mary Webster, who was one of my ancestors. My mother's mother's maiden name was Webster. Mary Webster is one of the interesting people - she was the witch who got hanged and it didn't take. It didn't kill her. So she lived on, much to the consternation of everyone.''

6. Take the Wings challenge!
How does it feel to wear a Handmaid’s ‘wings’? Describe your experience in 3 words.

8. Find out more about how women have adopted the symbolism of THT