¹ It may be important to differentiate between the concepts of “space” and “place” for the purposes of this article. In the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, and human geography, these two concepts occupy distinct spheres of culture. As Denise Lawrence-Zuniga writes, “Space is often defined by an abstract scientific, mathematical, or measurable conception while place refers to the elaborated cultural meanings people invest in or attach to a specific site or locale.” In other words, place moves beyond geography to consider how people endow spaces with social importance. To that end, “space” is used in this essay in reference to the region known as the American West; “place” is used in reference to the meanings with which the West has been imbued. Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, “Space and Place,” Oxford Bibliographies Online, 30 March 2017. For more on the concept of “place” see Basso, Keith, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

² The Handmaid's Tale (2017–present) is produced and broadcast in the United States by Hulu, in Canada by CTV Drama Channel, in the United Kingdom on Channel 4, in Australia on SBS on Demand, and and Ireland on RTÉ, which was also the first station to broadcast the second season in Europe.

³ The show premiered in the United Kingdom in May 2017.

⁴ The Nielsen ratings, operated by Nielsen Media Research, are an audience measurement system of American television viewership that for years has helped television networks decide whether to cancel or renew television shows. Nielsen started reporting on Hulu viewership in July 2017. For more on Nielsen ratings of The Handmaid's Tale see Dana Feldman, “Hulu Subscriptions Surge Past 20M with ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ and Lineup of New Shows,” Forbes, 2 May 2018, at www.forbes.com/sites/danafeldman/2018/05/02/hulu-subscriptions-surge-past-20m-with-the-handmaids-tale-and-new-shows; Rick Porter, “‘Handmaid's Tale’ Season 4 Opens Big in Nielsen Streaming Ratings,” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 May 2021, at www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/handmaids-tale-season-4-premiere-nielsen-streaming-1234960260; Tyler Hersko, “‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Shoots to the Top of Nielsen's Streaming Ratings,” IndieWire, 18 June 2021, at www.indiewire.com/features/general/handmaids-tale-nielsen-streaming-ratings-1234645256.

⁵ Here the Handmaids are taught obedience to the regime, submission to their Commanders and Wives, and the importance of bearing children for the ruling elite and the good of Gilead. Discipline is sadistic, often featuring public shaming and beatings in front of other Handmaids. More than just a place, the Red Center therefore becomes a symbol of oppression, where women are stripped of their rights, identity, and individuality.

⁶ While the novel and the Hulu series both make it clear that the Colonies are used by the regime as a means of control, the novel does not specify the exact location of the Colonies, which reside entirely outside the narrative action of the story. It is only in the second season of the Hulu series that audiences are shown a map of Gilead and the former United States, thereby revealing the location of the Colonies as being in the American West and Southwest. Another significant difference is that, in the novel, men are also sent to the Colonies; in the series, only women. See “The Word,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 2, Episode 13, MGM Television, 11 July 2018, Hulu.

⁷ Tompkins, Jane, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 201, 18Google Scholar.

⁸ Connell, R. W., Masculinities, 2nd edn (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 185Google Scholar.

⁹ Ibid., 194, 195.

¹⁰ Tasker, Yvonne, “Contested Masculinities: The Action Film, the War Film, and the Western,” in Hole, Kristin, Jelača, Dijana, Kaplan, E., and Petro, Patrice, eds., The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender (London: Routledge, 2016), 111–20, 111Google Scholar.

¹¹ Johnson, Susan Lee, “‘A Memory Sweet to Soldiers’: The Significance of Gender in the History of the ‘American West’,” Western Historical Quarterly, 24, 4 (1993), 495–517, 495Google Scholar.

¹² Thumim, Janet, “Maybe He's Tough but He Sure Ain't No Carpenter: Masculinity and (In)Competence in Unforgiven,” in Kitses, Jim and Rickman, Gregg, eds., The Western Reader (New York: Limelight Editions, 1998), 341–54, 348Google Scholar.

¹³ Will Wright defines the “Classical Western” as “the story of the lone stranger who rides into a troubled town and cleans it up, winning the respect of the townsfolk and the love of the schoolmarm.” He also discusses the “Vengeance Western”: “Unlike the classical hero who joins the society because of his strength and their weakness, the vengeance hero leaves the society because of his strength and their weakness. Moreover, the classical hero enters his fight because of the values of society, whereas the vengeance hero abandons his fight because of those same values.” Will Wright, Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 32, 59, original emphasis.

¹⁴ Ibid., 84, 86.

¹⁵ Stephen McVeigh, The American Western (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 45.

¹⁶ Of course, the history of the actual West involves women as well as men and historians have contributed much to our understanding of the role women played in the settlement, incorporation, culture, and politics of the West. See, for example, Sandra Myres, Westering Women and the Frontier Experience 1800–1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982); Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson, eds., The Women's West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); Ron Lackmann, Women of the Western Frontier in Fact, Fiction and Film (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 1997); and Virginia Scharff and Carolyn Brucken, Homelands: How Women Made the West (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010).

¹⁷ Victoria Lamont, Westerns: A Women's History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016). See also Peter William Evans, “Westward the Women: Feminising the Wilderness,” in Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye, eds., The Book of Westerns (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1996), 206–13; and Sue Matheson's wonderful Women in the Western (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).

¹⁸ Other examples include The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995) and True Grit (Henry Hathaway, 2010). For more on the “essential” role of women in westerns see Matheson.

¹⁹ For more about how The Missing falls short of being feminist see Maureen Schwarz, “Searching for a Feminist Western: The Searchers, The Hired Hand, and The Missing,” Visual Anthropology, 27 (Dec. 2013), 45–71.

²⁰ See, for example, Debra Birnbaum, “‘Godless’ Team on Making a Western, Feminism, and Directing Horses,” Variety, 16 Nov. 2017, at https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/godless-netflix-jeff-daniels-michelle-dockery-scott-frank-1202617026; Alex Maxx, “How Godless Is Shaping a Brand-New, Pro-Women Western,” PopSugar, 8 Dec. 2017, at www.popsugar.com/entertainment/godless-feminist-western-44302291; and Amy Soto, “Godless: A Feminist Western,” Medium, 9 Dec. 2017, at https://medium.com/22westmag/godless-7659f91dfe56.

²¹ Within the diegesis of the series, the “Sublime” is a virtual Edenic world designed by Delos Park's Westworld creator John Ford (Anthony Hopkins) that allows the park's robotic hosts to live the rest of their conscious lives free from the violent humans who dictated their stories within the park itself. In Season 4, the Sublime becomes the paradise to which Dolores and Bernard hope humans can escape their now host captors and all can live in harmony in this “Valley Beyond.”

²² Unless otherwise noted, references to “The Handmaid's Tale” concern the Hulu series, not the source novel.

²³ Jane Tompkins, “Language and Landscape: An Ontology for the Western,” ArtForum, 28, 6 (Feb. 1990), 94–99, available at www.artforum.com/features/language-and-landscape-an-ontology-for-the-western-205207.

²⁴ McVeigh, 38. See also See Richard Aquila, ed., Wanted Dead or Alive: The American West in Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); Jon Tuska, The Filming of the West (New York: Doubleday Books, 1978); and Wright, Six Guns and Society.

²⁵ “Incorporation” is a process by which territories come under the governmental control of the United States or a municipality becomes chartered under the auspices of a particular state. In either case, the newly incorporated town, city, or region can then elect government officials and have the autonomy to set up the legal apparatus in their community.

²⁶ McVeigh, 44.

²⁷ Robert G. Athearn, The Mythic West in Twentieth-Century America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 272.

²⁸ Kitses and Rickman, The Western Reader, 21.

²⁹ Gerard Bouchard, Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 23; Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 6.

³⁰ “Offred,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 1, Episode 1, MGM Television, 26 April 2017, Hulu.

³¹ Ibid.

³² “Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 1, Episode 4, MGM Television, 3 May 2017, Hulu.

³³ “Jezebels,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 1, Episode 8, MGM Television, 31 May 2017, Hulu.

³⁴ “The Word,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 2, Episode 13, MGM Television, 11 July 2018, Hulu. Again, the location of the Colonies is not specified in the novel; it is only in the visual realm that the Colonies become associated with the American West.

³⁵ “Unwomen,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 2, Episode 2, MGM Television, 25 April 2018, Hulu.

³⁶ Amber Dowling, “‘The Handmaid's Tale’ Team on Crafting the Colonies as ‘Romantic’ Purgatory,” Variety, 9 May 2018, at https://variety.com/2018/tv/features/the-handmaids-tale-bruce-miller-artisans-crafting-the-colonies-interview-1202791821.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Examples of movies that utilize the bell tower include Bells of San Angelo (William Witney, 1947); High Noon (Fred Zinneman, 1952); 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves, 1957); 3:10 to Yuma (James Mangold, 2007); The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960). For more on the imagery seen in classic westerns see Michael Budd, “A Home in the Wilderness: Visual Imagery in John Ford's Westerns,” Cinema Journal, 16, 1 (1976), pp. 62–75.

³⁹ Tompkins, “Language and Landscape,” 4.

⁴⁰ “Unwomen,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 2, Episode 2, MGM Television, 25 April 2018, Hulu.

⁴¹ For more about the sounds commonly used and associated with the western see Kendra Preston Leonard, ed., Re-locating the Sounds of the Western (London: Routledge Publishing, 2018).

⁴² Wright, Six Guns and Society, 6.

⁴³ “Seeds,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 2, Episode 5, MGM Television, 16 May 2018, Hulu.

⁴⁴ “June,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 2, Episode 1, MGM Television, 25 April 2018, Hulu.

⁴⁵ Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1893, 197–227, 198.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ John E. O'Connor and Peter C. Rollins, “Introduction: The West, Westerns, and American Character,” in O'Connor and Rollins, Hollywood's West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, and History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 1–34, 6.

⁴⁸ Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, 6.

⁴⁹ Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 638.

⁵⁰ Dippie, Brian, Custer's Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 3Google Scholar.

⁵¹ See Limerick, Patricia Nelson, Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁵² Tasker, “Contested Masculinities,” 111.

⁵³ For more about the Women's Land Army of World War I and World War II see Carpenter, Stephanie Ann, “‘Regular Farm Girl’: The Women's Land Army in World War II,” Agricultural History, 71, 2 (1997), 163–85Google Scholar; Weiss, Elaine F., Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008)Google Scholar; and Weiss, “Before Rosie the Riveter, Farmerettes Went to Work,” at www.smithsonianmag.com/history/before-rosie-the-riveter-farmerettes-went-to-work-141638628, 28 May 2009.

⁵⁴ The Women's Land Army was a national effort, with women working in agriculture in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, Oregon, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and other states throughout the war. Carpenter, 170.

⁵⁵ See, for example, articles in the Spanish American (New Mexico), 26 Oct. 1918, 3, col. 4; Estancia (New Mexico) News-Herald, 29 Aug. 1918, 4, col. 1; Deming (New Mexico) Graphic, 26 July 1918, 5, col. 2; and Deming Graphic, 16 Aug. 1918, 1, col. 5.

⁵⁶ Kuletz, Valerie, The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West (Oxford: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Considine, Laura, “Rethinking the Beginning of the ‘Nuclear Age’ through Telling Feminist Nuclear Stories,” Zeitschrift für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, 12 Dec. 2023, 185–93, 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ Masco, Joseph, The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post–Cold War New Mexico, new edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 18, 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ The audience find this out when Rita says to June, “Alison's not going to Canada. She's going deeper in; resistance cell out west somewhere.” “Mary and Martha,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 3, Episode 2, MGM Television, 5 June 2019, Hulu.

⁶⁰ See, for example, Hendershot, Heather, “The Handmaid's Tale as Utopian Allegory: Stars and Stripes Forever, Baby,” Film Quarterly, 72, 1 (2018), 13–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Courtney Landis, “A Woman's Place Is in the Resistance : Self, Narrative, and Performative Femininity as Subversion and Weapon in The Handmaid's Tale,” MA thesis, Millersville University of Pennsylvania; and Aino-Kaisa Koistinen and Hanna Samola, review of The Handmaid's Tale, Science Fiction Film and Television, 11, 2 (2018), 347–51. Other critics have discussed the racial undertones of the show. See, for example, Neville-Shepard, Meredith, “‘Better Never Means Better for Everyone’: White Feminist Necropolitics and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 109, 1 (2023), 2–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶¹ Campbell, Neil, “Post-western Cinema,” in Witschi, Nicolas S., ed., A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), 409–24, 414Google Scholar. See also Johnson, Michael K., Hood Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos: Conceptions of the African American West (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² Tompkins, “Language and Landscape,” 4.

⁶³ “Offred,” The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, Season 1, Episode 1, MGM Television, 26 April 2017, Hulu.