The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood | Coleman’s Notes A Level Student Guide
What happens when a society takes control of language, memory, identity — and the female body?
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale presents the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian theocracy that has replaced the United States and imposed a rigid social hierarchy in which women are denied many of their former rights.
At the centre of the novel is Offred, a Handmaid assigned to the household of the Commander and Serena Joy. Her prescribed role is reproductive, but beneath the outward conformity survives a private world of memory, desire, anger, fear and resistance.
Through Offred’s fragmented account of her life before and during Gilead, Atwood explores how authoritarian systems seek to control not only behaviour but also language, history, sexuality, relationships and individual identity.
Yet The Handmaid’s Tale is also a novel about storytelling itself: who controls a story, whose voices survive, and how later generations interpret the evidence left behind.
This Coleman’s Notes guide provides the detailed literary analysis and examination preparation required for confident A Level study.
Inside the guide
✓ Complete plot summary
✓ Detailed section and chapter analysis
✓ Essential Gilead reference guide
✓ Character relationship guide
✓ Offred in depth
✓ The Commander
✓ Serena Joy
✓ Nick
✓ Moira
✓ Ofglen
✓ Luke and Offred’s daughter
✓ Aunt Lydia and the Aunts
✓ Janine and supporting characters
✓ Power, control and oppression
✓ Gender and patriarchy
✓ Women and reproductive control
✓ Identity and individuality
✓ Language as a means of control
✓ Memory and the past
✓ Love, sexuality and intimacy
✓ Resistance and rebellion
✓ Religion and ideology
✓ Surveillance and fear
✓ Complicity and survival
✓ Storytelling and the power of narrative
✓ Gilead and dystopian fiction
✓ Symbolism, imagery and motifs
✓ Fragmented structure and chronology
✓ First-person narrative and unreliable knowledge
✓ The significance of the Historical Notes
✓ Historical and literary context
✓ Key quotations and analysis
✓ A Level literary methods
✓ Structured essay plans
✓ Model answers
✓ Exam & Revision Questions
✓ Quick Recall revision
✓ Key episodes for close analysis
✓ Critical debates for A Level
✓ Exam technique
✓ Final revision checklist
Perfect for
A Level English Literature students • examination revision • essay preparation • teachers • tutors • independent learners
The guide helps students move beyond plot summary to explore the novel’s major interpretative questions.
How does Gilead establish and maintain power? How does Atwood use language as both an instrument of oppression and a form of resistance? How reliable is Offred’s reconstructed narrative? What is the significance of her memories of life before Gilead? And how do the Historical Notes alter our understanding of everything we have just read?
Students are encouraged to connect these debates with Atwood’s narrative methods, structure, imagery, symbolism and context, helping them develop sophisticated, evidence-based A Level arguments.
This is a digital product, available for download following purchase.
Individual Student Guide — £7.95
Coleman’s Notes® — Understand • Analyse • Revise • Succeed
