The story tells that the world in the future is suffering from serious pollution, the birth rate has dropped sharply, and parts of the United States have experienced bloody revolutions and established the male totalitarian society of Gilead. Those in power practice polygamy, women are regarded as state property, and fertile women are called "maids" and are forced to serve as reproductive tools of the ruling class. The heroine Offred is one of them. She deals with the rulers, the rulers' brutal "wives", and the older woman "Martha" who takes care of the housework for the rulers, hoping to find her taken away daughter while staying alive.