The Handmaid’s Tale is hands down, my favorite book of all time. I was first introduced to the book by a fellow feminist friend of mine who I had coffee with weekly. While on the subject of books, she told me that this book was a definite must-read for each and every woman—And after reading it, I couldn’t agree more.

The Handmaid’s Tale revolves around the question “What if women had no rights?”

The story is set in a land called the Republic of Gilead, where women range many different social levels permitted to women. The main character, Offred, is a Handmaid, and much like the title depicts, she tells the story of what it is like living the life of a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead.

Offred, as well as the other Handmaids are fertile women who have a monthly reproductive ritual. They are forced to wear red cloaks with a white head-dress which obscures their peripheral vision, and exist to bear children for the “Wives,” who are the highest class of women.

In Gilead, women are denied independence. What they knew in their lives before forced by the government to become Handmaids or other social classes of women under the Republic, must be forgotten. A woman’s husband and children whom she had in her earlier life are now gone and her purpose is to serve the men of Gilead respectively for what social class they are in. Women are now not allowed to own property, arrange their own affairs—social or otherwise, make their own reproductive choices, they are no longer allowed to read, wear makeup, they have no money of their own, and they are only allowed to wear one thing, day after day, that has already been arranged by the government.

The Handmaid’s Tale makes you think about your womanhood, what it is like to be a woman living right now, what rights you have as a woman, and perhaps what we all take for granted in our every day lives. Margaret Atwood makes people evaluate their lives, as well as themselves and this novel will do nothing less.