“A Woman’s Place”: Myth, Body, and Nation in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale

This thesis investigates the role of myth in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Through an analysis of concepts such as the body and nation, I investigate the mythical underpinnings of gender, race, social reproduction, and capitalism in Gilead as well as the veritable history of oppression and imperialism in the United States that informs the Gileadean imaginary. I interrogate myth’s utility in creating nations and worlds, real or imagined, and the mechanisms of myth that make this possible. Using the works of authors such as Roland Barthes, Kalindi Vora, Achille Mbembe, and others, I read The Handmaid’s Tale series as a text that reveals how truth can be distorted by myth but can be demythologized to belie intention, historically contextualize, and inspire resistance. Written in the midst and wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, this thesis is also a meditation on auto-ethnographic and textual resistance.