Exploration of womanhood through literature and television adaptations : extended metaphors in The handmaid\u27s tale and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

My study examines characterization and symbolism in The Handmaid\u27s Tale (1985 and 2017) and Alias Grace (1996 and 2017), both novels and recent television adaptations, to explore the way these fictions critique the issues of patriarchal control and of seemingly immutable gender stereotypes. It argues how the afterlife of source texts is manifested by their adaptations, which encapsulate contemporary resonances through extended social implications, and demonstrate a marked cautionary quality that transcends second and third wave feminism contexts, to indict patriarchal oppression of women in the contemporary world. The paper will further deploy their transcultural potential to project the narratives and implications onto my own generation in the Hong Kong context