Reproductive conscription and eugenic horror in Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale

First released in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has since become a seminal work of feminist speculative fiction. Set in the former United States, the fictionalized Republic of Gilead presents a terrifying reproductive theocracy in which all women are subjugated and fertile women are forcibly conscripted into biological slavery. Often satirical and wry, the novel has been celebrated for its depictions of biological essentialism which reduces the titular Handmaids to the status of reproductive vessels for the state. Such representations of biological essentialism define Atwood’s novel as a work of eugenic fiction which echoes the policies and practices of reproductive control that dominated the early eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Furthering this connection is the novel’s use of botanical and agricultural metaphors that continually liken women to both fertile plants and breeding stock, reflecting the language employed in early eugenic rhetoric. In transforming the novel for television, the Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–present) extends such metaphors, visually literalizing them to create a work of eugenic horror, which violently and emphatically depicts the consequences of reducing women to their reproductive capacity. In doing this, the television adaptation not only heightens its source text’s eugenic themes but also provides a space in which to reframe Atwood’s Handmaid protagonist, Offred, reconfiguring her as the horror genre’s Final Girl, who not only survives the eugenic horror to which she is subjected but also overcomes it.