Hope in the Totalitarian Kingdom Religion and the manipulation of history are the most important steps in the creation of a totalitarian state. In the novels discussed the reader comes to understand that true oppression results when hope and power are removed in their entirety. Katherine Burdekin's novel Swastika Night portrays women as degraded and removed, stripped of identity, femininity, and important self-efficacy as social actors. However, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale presents a more inclusive and historically aware society, albeit still defined by the separation of citizens into a strict, sexist, man-made hierarchy governed by religious authority. Allowing women to participate leaves women with the opportunity to shape their own environment, through underground movements, and by influencing the men around them. While society and religion may influence Handmaids, Aunts, and other levels of women as they displace and defame memories of a longed-for past, the wounds of disenfranchisement are too fresh for history to truly be erased. The distinctive and definitive difference between the two dystopian societies discussed is the active presence of women and, through women, of hope. “As a woman is above a worm, so a man is above a woman. As a woman is above a worm, so a worm is above a Christian” (Burdekin 7). This excerpt from Holy Hitler's fictional book in Swastika Night is a great example of the totalitarian religion in the fictional German Empire and the hierarchy that comes with it. produces. This religious principle takes shape in the practices of modern life for all inhabitants of Germany and its conquered lands. Burdekin places this dogma in the exposition of the novel as it succinctly explains the restrictions of s...... middle of paper ......ion of women by men. Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986. Print.Burdekin, Katharine. The night of the swastika. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1985-1937. Print.Collins, Patricia. Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. Kingston, Paul. “The Joyless Republic of Gilead: A Political Scientist's Reflections on Margaret Atwood's Opera Production of The Handmaid's Tale.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75.3 (2006): 833-834. Online.Neuman, SC (Shirley C.). “‘Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and the Handmaid's Tale.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75.3 (2006): 857-868. Online.Petterson, Fredrik. “Discourse and Oppression in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.” Degree thesis. Linnaeus University, Sweden: 2010. Online.