The Handmaid’s Tale has just released its final season. It’s a chance to take a quick look back at the origins of Gilead, the chilling totalitarian regime that transformed the United States into a brutal theocracy. How did an extremist group manage to overthrow the government and impose such an oppressive system? If you’ve forgotten the details or are simply curious to understand how everything went wrong, we’ll take a look.
A coup under the guise of chaos
It all begins with the Sons of Jacob, an extremist religious group convinced that America has strayed from its traditional “moral values” while the world burns under the fire of capitalism and pollution. Their goal? To regain control of the country by imposing an ultra-radical reading of the Bible, and significant moral prohibitions. Little by little, conservative rhetoric is making its way into public opinion. The Overton window is beginning to shift. Parents (and especially women) are being criticized for prioritizing their careers over their family lives. Same-sex marriage is no longer recognized on American soil, and you will soon need your partner's written consent to use contraception.
At the beginning of the season, we see that women are gradually being pushed out of the workforce, regardless of the field they work in. This latent situation crystallized at the time of a coordinated terrorist attack that eliminated the President of the United States, the majority of Congress, and the Supreme Court justices. The country was plunged into chaos. Officially, these attacks were attributed to terrorists. This media and political manipulation allows the sons of Jacob to justify the declaration of martial law and begin dismantling democracy.
Under the pretext of restoring order, the religious group suspended the Constitution, established strict control of the media, and eliminated all political opposition. Within months, they took complete control of the country. It's not a brutal revolution: it's a methodical takeover.
The Fertility Crisis: A Perfect Pretext
Another key element in Gilead's rise lies in the global fertility crisis. In the world of The Handmaid's Tale, environmental pollution and disease have rendered the majority of women infertile. Birth rates are dropping dramatically, plunging the world into near panic.
The Sons of Jacob use this crisis as justification to completely restructure society around the control of fertile women and begin a drastic demographic rearmament. Women become a national resource. This is where the Handmaid system comes into play: fertile women are captured, “re-educated” in centers like the one run by Aunt Lydia, then assigned to powerful families to produce children, if possible on a production line. It should not be mentioned that in this totalitarian context, contraception and abortion become crimes punishable by death.
This system is presented as a divine solution to save humanity, but it is based on the commodification and brutalization of women’s bodies: ritualized rapes during Ceremonies, total deprivation of autonomy and constant surveillance, strict control of lifestyle… An extremist interpretation of religious texts, which transforms fertile women into objects at the service of the Nation. Those who cannot have children are relegated to the rank of Martha (domestic servants), or are sent to clean up toxic waste in the Colonies, where they are doomed to a slow and painful death.
Complicit inaction
This is arguably the most terrifying point in the rise of Gilead, as told in the novel and the series. During the numerous flashbacks that punctuate the episodes, we realize that everything could have been avoided if more people had resisted from the beginning. Even before the Sons of Jacob officially took power, many Americans had already begun to accept certain conservative ideas advocating a return to traditional values. Police violence intensifies, ideas become more radical, and after terrorist attacks, citizens are panicked and ready to accept anything to regain a semblance of security.
This gradual slide towards oppression is brilliantly described in the first season: “When they banned us from working, we didn't lift a finger. When they froze our bank accounts, we didn't lift a finger. When they took our bodies, we didn't lift a finger. And now it's too late.” It confirms that it's not attacks or a spectacular event that tip a society over: everything was already ready for the people to accept the slide into religious totalitarianism. It was the accumulation of small but significant actions—and, more importantly, the inaction in the face of these actions—that led to the political rise of Gilead.
An Echo of Voluntary Reality
What makes The Handmaid’s Tale so powerful (and so frightening) is that its story seems strangely plausible. Margaret Atwood, the author of the original 1985 novel, has always insisted that she didn’t invent anything: everything that happens in her book is inspired by real or historical events. One only has to note how certain decisions (restrictions on abortion, control of the bodies of minorities, religious extremism, etc.) echo current events to be convinced of this. The rise of Gilead reminds us that democracy is never guaranteed.
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