Abstract:

It is possible to evaluate future governing models as binary oppositions. In this framework there is a utopia on one hand and a dystopia on the other. While utopias set out an ideal future; dystopias draw a dark and worrying picture. Though both of them are imaginary, they are not detached from reality. Optimistic predictions of utopia and pessimistic fears of the dystopia have always been linked to the real world. Dystopic narratives constituting the subject of this study are considered as warnings that draw attention to the defects in current social order and reveal the adversities that may occur if these defects are not eliminated. Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that dystopias are male-dominated and therefore have a masculine point of view. Feminist dystopias that emerged in the late twentieth century were written by female writers. As a result, such feminist utopias present narratives in which women are placed at the centre of discussion, and thus, criticize patriarchy. This study opposes the view that the examples of feminist dystopia are ‘paranoid predictions of the future’ and accepts such narratives as ‘allegories of the conservative reality of the existing male-dominated order’. In this context, the television series adapted from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale is discussed as one of the representatives of the feminist dystopia genre. This paper explores the representation of how a hegemonic order uses tools of domination and the possibilities of resistance in the series, which criticizes the patriarchal order, through elements of the dystopia genre by conducting a qualitative content analysis.  

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