The Handmaids Tale TORRENT Season 2 HDTV – 2018 [S02] FREE DOWNLOAD TORRENT HD 1080p x264 WEB-DL DD5.1 H264 HEVC x265 MP4 720p DVD Blu-ray. Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic. A white, wide-brimmed bonnet and a red cloak have come to mean one thing: women’s oppression. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale seared this image into our souls with its. Aug 12, 2018 - The Handmaid's Tale recap: season 2, episode 12 – has the regime gone too far? Offred could be making a return to the commander's house.

Margaret Atwood has announced a sequel to her bestselling feminist dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, titled The Testaments. It will be published in September 2019.

“Dear Readers,” wrote Atwood in a press release announcing the book on Wednesday. “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”

Margaret Atwood: ‘I am not a prophet. Science fiction is really about now’

The Handmaid’s Tale follows one woman’s struggle to survive in a dystopian future America, renamed Gilead, where women possess few rights, are used as breeding vessels and are not allowed to read or write. The novel was first published in 1985, and quickly recognised as a modern classic.

It has sold more than eight million copies in English and has gained a new readership in recent years, because of its perceived relevance amid global discussions of sexual harassment, abortion rights and the rise of populist politicians such as Donald Trump. The critical success of the 2017 television adaptation, starring Elisabeth Moss in the lead role of Offred has also helped extend the book’s audience.

The Testaments will be set 15 years after Offred’s final scene in The Handmaid’s Tale and narrated by three female characters. It will not be connected to the television version, which has extended beyond Atwood’s 1985 novel to continue Offred’s story.

The novel ends enigmatically, with Offred being placed in a van that will possibly deliver her to freedom outside Gilead. An epilogue is narrated by an professor delivering a lecture about the authenticity of Offred’s story in the year 2195, based on cassette tapes he discovered in Maine.

“As a society, we’ve never needed Margaret Atwood more,” said Becky Hardie, deputy publishing director at Chatto & Windus. “The moment the van door slams on Offred’s future at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the most brilliantly ambiguous endings in literature. I cannot wait to find out what’s been going on in Atwood’s Gilead ­– and what that might tell us about our own times.”

After the success of the television adaptation, the distinctive red robe and white bonnet of the handmaidens began to be adopted as a symbol of female oppression. with silent protesters donning the costume at pro-choice rallies in Argentina and Ireland, and at the September hearings for US supreme court judge Brett Kavanaugh, after he was accused of sexual assault. In 2017, Atwood’s novel spent 16 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list, while UK publisher Vintage reported a 670% year-on-year increase in sales.

Atwood has previously teased a sequel, most recently in an audiobook adaptation for Audible. At the end of the epilogue, she added a Q&A session that ended with the lecturer saying: “I hope to be able to present the results of our further Gileadian investigations to you at some future date.”

“I am in consultation with the professor, but he is being very cagey about this,” Atwood told Canadian website the Loop at the time. “He evidently doesn’t want to make any promises before he has finished authenticating his new discoveries.”

Handmaid

Handmaids are a class of women in the Republic of Gilead. They are perhaps the most important - but also the most oppressed - class of women in Gilead, as they are tasked with breeding and thus supplying Gilead with more children. Fertile women who in some way break the laws of Gilead are forced to become Handmaids - otherwise, they will be sent to the Colonies, where they will almost certainly die. They are assigned to the homes of Commanders and sometimes Angels, where their task is get pregnant by the men, so as to provide them and their Wives (if she is incapable of conceiving) with a child. The novel's main protagonist, Offred, is a Handmaid, as are a few of the secondary characters.

AttireEdit

Handmaids have to wear red - the colour of blood; therefore, life. They wear full-skirted, ankle length red dresses, that cover their figures. The dresses are full sleeved, and they wear flat-heeled, red shoes 'to save the spine'. When they go outside, the Handmaids must wear red gloves, and they can wear red shawls or cloaks if it is cold or raining outside. Even their umbrellas are red. The only item of clothing they wear that is not red are a pair of white colored 'wings', which they wear on their heads to frame and hide their faces. The 'white wings' give the Handmaids next to no peripheral vision; they can only see what is directly in front of them. The idea is to 'prevent us seeing, but also from being seen'.^[2]

These women also carry a specific mark or accessory that identifies them as Handmaids: in the novel, their ankles are marked with tattoos; in the film, bar-coded bracelets are permanently attached to their wrists; in the TV series, red tags with serial indentifiers are painfully affixed to their ears.

OriginsEdit

The concept of Handmaids comes from the Biblical story of Rachel and her husband Jacob, in Genesis. Rachel was unable to conceive children, so she suggested that Jacob impregnate Rachel's maid Bilhah and thus get children that way.

Role in societyEdit

In Gilead, Handmaids are fertile women, who are supposed to be impregnated by Commanders or Angels whose Wives are infertile, thus providing them with children. Only high ranking men - such as Commanders - are allowed to have a Handmaid assigned to them. Handmaids are 'trained' in their role in the Rachel and Leah, or 'Red' Center, before being sent out on their first assignment. Handmaids are not supposed to have identities; they are forbidden to use their real names and are given new names whenever they are assigned to a new Commander. Their name consists of the word 'of', coupled with the first name of their Commander; for example 'of-Fred' = Offred or 'of-Glen' = Ofglen.

The novel does not mention the process and criteria for matching Handmaids and Commanders, although in the TV series, it is revealed that a household can refuse an undesirable Handmaid and that the women who had produced healthy babies are coveted items, and couples may resort to small bribery of Aunts to ensure the presence of this particular Handmaid at their household in the future.

Handmaids have three chances to get pregnant in three different households during two year assignments. If, after the third time, they are not able to produce a living, healthy baby, they will be declared Unwomen and sent off to the Colonies. Handmaids that become infertile or reach a certain age without having ever conceived are also sent to the Colonies, as are women who refuse to become Handmaids.

Handmaids usually live with the couple they are assigned to, in a spare room, though they occasionally go to sleep at the Red Center, where they live when they have not been assigned to anyone. They are sometimes required to help around the house, taking part in prayer time, shopping and helping to cook, but the rest of the time, they mostly stick to their rooms, having little else to do. They are required to take a walk once a day, to keep their abdominal muscles functioning. Handmaids are not allowed to be alone except when they bathe, use the bathroom, or sleep. When they go out in public, they are always accompanied by another Handmaid, and occasionally a Guardian, to protect pregnant Handmaids.

If a Handmaid conceives, then she is venerated (and envied) by many other women. She no longer has to take the walk or do chores; it is in fact considered risky for pregnant Handmaids to be out in public, in case something happens to the baby, or she is attacked by jealous women. Once a Handmaid gives birth, provided the baby is healthy, then it will immediately be given to the Wife of the Commander they are assigned to, who receives all the credit for the Handmaid's hard work. The Handmaid is generally ignored or overlooked, although she may be comforted or congratulated by her fellow Handmaids. Handmaids are allowed to stay with their babies for a few weeks, breastfeeding them, but after they are weaned, the Handmaids are forced to leave the household and are assigned to a new Commander. In the TV series, it is revealed that a Wife may be opposed to the presence of the Handmaid at the household after the baby is born; in that case, the Handmaid will go back to the Red Center and resort to a breast pumping machine to extract the needed milk. The babies they give birth to are not regarded as 'theirs' but rather their Commander's and his Wife's. It is likely that they never see their children again. The only comfort is that Handmaids who have successfully given birth to healthy children will never be declared Unwomen nor sent to the Colonies (unless, of course, they break the laws of Gilead).

Gilead forces fertile women into becoming Handmaids on the basis of both gender-based and religious-based crimes. June, for instance, relates that she was forced to become a handmaid because Gilead outlawed divorce and invalidated any marriages in which one of the partners was divorced; she was thus deemed to be an adulterer because her husband, Luke, divorced his first wife to marry her. On the other hand, Emily mentions in 'Offred' that she 'got caught at the airport', with her flashbacks in 'Unwomen' suggesting that her (later deemed illegal) marriage to a woman was the reason she was forced to become a Handmaid. In 'Baggage', an Econowife, Heather, tells June that fertile Econopeople are threatened with being forced to become Handmaids if they break Gilead's laws.

Known HandmaidsEdit

Below is a list of 60 Handmaids that have been mentioned or portrayed in either the novel, the movie or the TV series. Please note that the 31 Handmaids slain at the new Rachel and Leah Center have yet to be completely indentified (some of their patronymic names were listed during the mass funeral and a few real names were mentioned by Rachel Tapping in a Canadian conference, meaning that some of the patronymic names listed below might correspond to some of the real names mentioned by Tapping). Characters that have yet to be seen after the bombing but have not been definitively identified as deceased will be listed as 'unknown' until this scenario changes.

References Edit

1. ↑Episode 8, 'Jezebels'
2. ↑Page 11: I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight, in their red shoes, flat-heeled to save the spine and not for dancing. The red gloves are lying on the bed. I pickthem up, pull them onto my hands, ɹnger by ɹnger. Everything except the wingsaround my face is red: the colour of blood, which deɹnes us. The skirt is ankle-length,full, gathered to a ɻat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The whitewings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from beingseen.
3. ↑Episode 'After'