Context Is All: Feminism and Theories of Citizenship

Abstract In Margaret Atwood’s powerful novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the heroine Offred, a member of a new class of ‘two-legged wombs’ in a dystopian society, often thinks to herself, ‘Context is all: Offred reminds us of an important truth: at each moment of our lives our every thought, value, and act—from the most mundane to the most lofty—takes its meaning and purpose from the wider political and social reality that constitutes and conditions us. In her newly reduced circumstances, Offred comes to see that matters beyond one’s immediate purview make a great deal of difference with respect to living a more or less free and fully human life. But her realization comes too late.