The Handmaid's Tale (1986)

Some comments on the book

Many readers are surprised to hear Atwood's novel labeled science fiction,
but it belongs squarely in the long tradition of near-future dystopias which
has made up a large part of SF since the early50s. SF need not involve
technological innovation: it has been a long-standing principle that social
change can provide the basis for SF just as well as technical change. The
Handmaid's Tale is partly an extrapolation of Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring, attempting to imagine what kind of values might evolve if
environmental pollution rendered most of the human race sterile. It is also
the product of debates within the feminist movement in the 70s and early
80s. Atwood has been very much a part of that movement, but she has
never been a mere mouthpiece for any group, always insisting on her
individual perspectives. The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the
rise of the religious right, the election of Ronald Reagan, and many sorts
of backlash (mostly hugely misinformed) against the women's movement
led writers like Atwood to fear that the antifeminist tide could not only
prevent further gains for women, but turn back the clock. Dystopias are a
kind of thought experiment which isolates certain social trends and
exaggerates them to make clear their most negative qualities. They are
rarely intended as realistic predictions of a probable future, and it is
pointless to criticize them on the grounds of implausibility. Atwood here
examines some of the traditional attitudes that are embedded in the
thinking of the religious right and which she finds particularly threatening.
But another social controversy also underlies this novel. During the early
80s a debate raged (and continues to rage, on a lower level) about feminist
attitudes toward sexuality and pornography in particular. Outspoken
feminists have taken all kinds of positions: that all erotica depicting
women as sexual objects is demeaning, that pornography was bad though
erotica can be good, that although most pornography is demeaning the
protection of civil liberties is a greater good which requires the toleration
of freedom for pornographers, however distasteful, even that such a thing
as feminist pornography can and should be created.
The sub-theme of this tangled debate which seems to have particularly
interested and alarmed Atwood is the tendency of some feminist anti-porn
groups to ally themselves with religious anti- porn zealots who oppose the
feminists on almost every other issue. The language of "protection of
women" could slip from a demand for more freedom into a retreat from
freedom, to a kind of neo-Victorianism. After all, it was the need to protect
"good" women from sex that justified all manner of repression in the 19th
century, including confining them to the home, barring them from
participating in the arts, and voting. Contemporary Islamic women
sometimes argue that assuming the veil and traditional all-enveloping
clothing is aimed at dealing with sexual harassment and sexual
objectification. The language is feminist, but the result can be deeply
patriarchal, as in this novel.

Without some sense of the varying agendas of mid-20th-century feminists

and the debates among those agendas this novel will not make much sense.
Women who participated in the movement from the late sixties and early
seventies responded to this novel strongly, often finding it extremely
alarming. Younger women lacking the same background often found it
baffling. Ask yourself as you read not whether events such as it depict s are
likely to take place, but whether the attitudes and values it conveys are
present in today's society.
Atwood's strong point is satire, often hilarious, often very pointed. Humor
is in short supply in this novel, but it is a satire nonetheless. Atwood's love
for language play (apparent in the anagram of her name she uses for her
private business "O. W. Toad") is a major feature of the protagonist of this
novel. Her jokes are dark and bitter, but they are pervasive.
There are numerous biblical references in the following notes. You should
provide yourself with a Bible, preferably a King James Version, which is
what Atwood uses most of the time. Or use a great searchable Web Bible.

Epigraphs
Genesis 30:1-3 is one of several passages that make clear that in
patriarchal Hebrew times it was perfectly legitimate for a man to have sex
and even beget children by his servants (slaves), particularly if his wife
was infertile. It is unknown how widespread was the custom described
here, of having the infertile wife embrace the fertile maidservant as she
gave birth to symbolize that the baby is legally hers. Atwood extrapolates
outrageously from this point, as is typical of dystopian writers: it is highly
unlikely that the puritanical religious right would ever adopt the sexual
practices depicted in this novel; but she is trying to argue that patriarchal
traditions which value women only as fertility objects can be as demeaning
as modern customs which value them as sex objects. She makes clear that
this is a theoretical exercise designed to stimulate thought about social
issues rather than a realistic portrait of a probable future by comparing
herself to Jonathan Swift, who in A Modest Proposal highlighted the hard-
heartedness of the English in allowing the Irish masses to starve by
satirically proposing that they should be encouraged to eat their own
children. It is not so obvious what the application of the third epigraph is
to this novel. It seems to say that no one needs to forbid what is
undesirable.

KEY THEMES

Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments

Because Gilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by

dramatically decreased birthrates, the state’s entire structure, with
its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy, is built around a
single goal: control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem
head-on by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through
their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or
jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become
subversive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands
or the state.

Despite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation

creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman. They
are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of
ovaries and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in
the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body
an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh
surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful.
Gilead seeks to deprive women of their individuality in order to
make them docile carriers of the next generation.

Language as a Tool of Power

Gilead creates an official vocabulary that ignores and warps reality

in order to serve the needs of the new society’s elite. Having made
it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles.
Whereas men are defined by their military rank, women are defined
solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas.
Stripping them of permanent individual names strips them of their
individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated
as subhuman, denoted by the terms “Unwomen” and “Unbabies.”
Blacks and Jews are defined by biblical terms (“Children of Ham”
and “Sons of Jacob,” respectively) that set them apart from the rest
of society, making their persecution easier. There are prescribed
greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct
greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created
terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as “Prayvaganzas,”
“Salvagings,” and “Particicutions.” Dystopian novels about the
dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the connection
between a state’s repression of its subjects and its perversion of
language (“Newspeak” in George Orwell’s 1984 is the most famous
example), and The Handmaid’s Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead
maintains its control over women’s bodies by maintaining control
over names.

The Causes of Complacency

In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure

oppression willingly as long as they receive some slight amount of
power or freedom. Offred remembers her mother saying that it is
“truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a
few compensations.” Offred’s complacency after she begins her
relationship with Nick shows the truth of this insight. Her situation
restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former life
allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the
tiniest fragment of her former existence. The physical affection and
companionship become compensation that make the restrictions
almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does
not say yes when Ofglen asks her to gather information about the
Commander.

Women in general support Gilead’s existence by willingly

participating in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian state. While a
woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she
exercises authority within her own household and seems to delight
in her tyranny over Offred. She jealously guards what little power
she has and wields it eagerly. In a similar way, the women known as
Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean
state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep
a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same function
for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule.

Atwood’s message is bleak. At the same time as she condemns

Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their
complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered
strength and stopped complying, they would likely fail to make a
difference. In Gilead the tiny rebellions of resistances do not
necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck
rather than resistance.

Complicity

The Handmaid’s Tale explores the ways in which ordinary people

become complicit in the appalling acts of a totalitarian regime.
Although the novel’s women are all to some extent victims of the
Gileadean state, many of them choose complicity rather than
rebellion. Serena Joy is miserable and has very little freedom, but
she enjoys and exploits the power she wields over Offred. More
seriously, the Aunts are not just complicit in the regime’s crimes:
they are amongst the novel’s worst perpetrators, responsible for
torture and psychological abuse. Offred’s place on the spectrum of
complicity is ambiguous. She hates and fears the regime, and does
not believe in its values. Being true to her own beliefs would require
her to rebel, but she does not. Instead she accepts her role without
complaint. Even in her own head she refuses to call the Ceremony
“rape,” because “nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up
for” (Chapter 16). Offred’s choices invite us to wonder where
passivity ends and complicity begins.
Seeing

The Handmaid’s Tale draws on the feminist idea that in a male-

dominated society, the way men look at women is a form of control
and even violence. Offred’s “white wings” (Chapter 2) severely limit
her own ability to see. Meanwhile she constantly feels observed—
and threatened—by eyes. She sees the patch of plaster in her
bedroom ceiling as a “blind plaster eye” and the convex mirror on
the stairs as a “fisheye” (Chapter 17). The secret police of the
Gileadean regime are known as the “Eyes,” and their emblem, a
winged eye, is painted everywhere. Offred thinks of these eyes as
male, even comparing eyes to penises and penises to eyes, for
instance when she describes the Commander’s penis as a “stalked
slug’s eye” (Chapter 15). However, while the novel endorses a
feminist concept of the way men look at women, it also warns that
feminist concepts alone don’t offer protection from male domination.
The only character who outright states the idea that the way men
look at women can be a form of violence is Aunt Lydia. “To be seen
—to be seen—is to be—her voice trembled—penetrated.” (Ch. 5).
Aunt Lydia’s quote suggests that even feminist concepts can be co-
opted and used to oppress women.

Reproduction

The Handmaid’s Tale argues that legally controlling women’s

reproductive freedom is morally and politically wrong. The suffering
of Offred and the other Handmaids is directly caused by the
Gileadean state’s desire to own and control women’s fertility.
Certain details link Gilead’s goal of controlling women’s
reproductive function with the political goals of the 20th century U.S.
religious right. For instance, Gilead executes doctors known to have
performed abortions. At the same time, one of the causes of the
sharply declining birthrate in Gilead is the number of women who
have chosen to become infertile. The Handmaid’s Tale argues that
women’s reproductive function can be a form of wealth, a “national
resource” (Chapter 12), in order to warn us that figures in power will
always be tempted to control women’s bodies.

Characters

Offred

Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel, and we are
told the entire story from her point of view, experiencing events and
memories as vividly as she does. She tells the story as it happens,
and shows us the travels of her mind through asides, flashbacks,
and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She
possesses enough faults to make her human, but not so many that
she becomes an unsympathetic figure. She also possesses a dark
sense of humor—a graveyard wit that makes her descriptions of the
bleak horrors of Gilead bearable, even enjoyable. Like most of the
women in Gilead, she is an ordinary woman placed in an
extraordinary situation.

Offred is not a hero. Although she resists Gilead inwardly, once her
attempt at escape fails, she submits outwardly. She is hardly a
feminist champion; she had always felt uncomfortable with her
mother’s activism, and her pre-Gilead relationship with Luke began
when she became his mistress, meeting him in cheap hotels for
sex. Although friends with Ofglen, a member of the resistance, she
is never bold enough to join up herself. Indeed, after she begins her
affair with Nick, she seems to lose sight of escape entirely and
suddenly feels that life in Gilead is almost bearable. If she does
finally escape, it is because of Nick, not because of anything she
does -herself. Offred is a mostly passive character, good-hearted
but complacent. Like her peers, she took for granted the freedoms
feminism won and now pays the price.

The Commander
The Commander poses an ethical problem for Offred, and
consequently for us. First, he is Offred’s Commander and the
immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he also
bears responsibility for the entire totalitarian society. In person, he is
far more sympathetic and friendly toward Offred than most other
people, and Offred’s evenings with the Commander in his study
offer her a small respite from the wasteland of her life. At times, his
unhappiness and need for companionship make him seem as much
a prisoner of Gilead’s strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself
feeling sympathy for this man.

Ultimately, Offred and the reader recognize that if the Commander

is a prisoner, the prison is one that he himself helped construct and
that his prison is heaven compared to the prison he created for
women. As the novel progresses, we come to realize that his visits
with Offred are selfish rather than charitable. They satisfy his need
for companionship, but he doesn’t seem to care that they put Offred
at terrible risk, a fact of which he must be aware, given that the
previous Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to the
Commander were discovered. The Commander’s moral blindness,
apparent in his attempts to explain the virtues of Gilead, are
highlighted by his and Offred’s visit to Jezebel’s. The club, a place
where the elite men of the society can engage in recreational
extramarital sex, reveals the rank hypocrisy that runs through
Gileadean society.

Offred’s relationship with the Commander is best represented by a

situation she remembers from a documentary on the Holocaust. In
the film, the mistress of a brutal death camp guard defended the
man she loved, claiming that he was not a monster. “How easy it is
to invent a humanity,” Offred thinks. In other words, anyone can
seem human, and even likable, given the right set of circumstances.
But even if the Commander is likable and can be kind or
considerate, his responsibility for the creation of Gilead and his
callousness to the hell he created for women means that he, like
the Nazi guard, is a monster.

Serena Joy

Though Serena had been an advocate for traditional values and the
establishment of the Gileadean state, her bitterness at the outcome
—being confined to the home and having to see her husband
copulating with a Handmaid—suggests that spokeswomen for anti-
feminist causes might not enjoy getting their way as much as they
believe they would. Serena’s obvious unhappiness means that she
teeters on the edge of inspiring our sympathy, but she forfeits that
sympathy by taking out her frustration on Offred. She seems to
possess no compassion for Offred. She can see the difficulty of her
own life, but not that of another woman.
The climactic moment in Serena’s interaction with Offred comes
when she arranges for Offred to sleep with Nick. It seems that
Serena makes these plans out of a desire to help Offred get
pregnant, but Serena gets an equal reward from Offred’s
pregnancy: she gets to raise the baby. Furthermore, Serena’s offer
to show Offred a picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with Nick
reveals that Serena has always known of Offred’s daughter’s
whereabouts. Not only has she cruelly concealed this knowledge,
she is willing to exploit Offred’s loss of a child in order to get an
infant of her own. Serena’s lack of sympathy makes her the perfect
tool for Gilead’s social order, which relies on the willingness of
women to oppress other women. She is a cruel, selfish woman, and
Atwood implies that such women are the glue that binds Gilead.

Moira

Throughout the novel, Moira’s relationship with Offred epitomizes

female friendship. Gilead claims to promote solidarity between
women, but in fact it only produces suspicion, hostility, and petty
tyranny. The kind of relationship that Moira and Offred maintain
from college onward does not exist in Gilead.
In Offred’s flashbacks, Moira also embodies female resistance to
Gilead. She is a lesbian, which means that she rejects male-female
sexual interactions, the only kind that Gilead values. More than that,
she is the only character who stands up to authority directly by
make two escape attempts, one successful, from the Red Center.
The manner in which she escapes—taking off her clothes and
putting on the uniform of an Aunt—symbolizes her rejection of
Gilead’s attempt to define her identity. From then on, until Offred
meets up with her again, Moira represents an alternative to the
meek subservience and acceptance of one’s fate that most of the
Handmaids adopt. When Offred runs into Moira, Moira has been
recaptured and is working as a prostitute at Jezebel’s, servicing the
Commanders. Her fighting spirit seems broken, and she has
become resigned to her fate. After embodying resistance for most of
the novel, Moira comes to exemplify the way a totalitarian state can
crush even the most independent spirit.

Luke

Although he does not appear in the present-action story, Offred’s

former husband Luke is a major presence in the novel. Offred
remembers him lovingly, and feels anguish when she cannot
preserve her memory of him: “night by night he recedes, and I
become more faithless” (Chapter 40). The word “faithless” here
suggests that Offred feels bound to Luke by a traditional idea of
romance, in which Offred owes unswerving loyalty to her husband.
Some readers have found this loyalty troubling in light of the only
thing we know about Luke’s past, which is that he was unfaithful to
his first wife. There are other hints, too, that Luke was not entirely
untouched by the belief in male supremacy which has come to the
fore in Gilead: “he teased [Offred’s mother…] he’d tell her women
were incapable of abstract thought” (Chapter 20). Offred recalls that
when legal measures were first introduced to oppress women, she
thought: “He doesn’t mind this […] We’re not each other’s anymore.
Instead, I am his” (Chapter 28). In Offred’s memories of Luke, The
Handmaid’s Tale draws a connecting line between the male-
dominated society of Gilead and the feelings and behavior of men
in our own era.

Aunt Lydia

Offred often remembers—and quotes—Aunt Lydia, one of the Aunts

responsible for Offred’s “re-education” at the Red Center. Aunt Lydia
is one of the least likeable faces of the Gileadean regime. Armed
with a cattle prod, she is responsible for some of the most
misogynist statements in the novel, and also some of the most
extreme distortions of religious ideas. For example, when she
warns Offred and the other Handmaids to be careful of Wives, she
says: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do”—quoting
Jesus on the cross—before adding “You must realize that they are
defeated women,” because they have been unable to bear children
(Chapter 8). By making a woman an especially hateful
representative of the Gileadean government, the novel suggests
that women are complicit in sustaining the male-dominated regime.
The “Historical Notes” section states this idea outright: “when power
is scarce, a little of it is tempting.” However, the “Notes” section also
offers a more sympathetic explanation for the motives of the Aunts.
By joining the Aunts, women “escape redundancy, and consequent
shipment to the infamous colonies.”
Quotes by theme:

Complacency
“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does,
most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as
usual, now. We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same
as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing changes instantly: in a
gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew
it.”

Offred reflects on a conversation she had with Moira in college. She

finds it hard to believe that they were once so casual and carefree
in a way that life in Gilead doesn’t allow. Here, she admits that they
weren’t unaware of the changes happening around them. Like
everyone, they preferred to pretend the changes weren’t happening
and live their lives as usual. The willing ignorance eventually led to
the rise of Gilead, which shows how dangerous ignoring a situation
can be.

“I didn’t go on any of the marches. Luke said it would be futile and I

had to think about them, my family, him and her.”

Offred recalls that when she was fired from her job because women
were no longer allowed to work, there were some small protest
marches she didn’t join. She and her husband resigned themselves
to the changes happening in their world. As they felt powerless to
resist the new regime, they tried to focus on their family instead.
However, because not enough people tried to fight back, their family
ended up being torn apart anyway.

“I said, I have made a life for myself, here, of a sort. That must have
been what the settlers’ wives thought, and women who survived
wars, if they had a man. Humanity is so adaptable, my mother
would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as
there are a few compensations.”

Offred considers Ofglen’s offer to help her escape Gilead, and she
rationalizes her desire to stay. Now that she has begun seeing Nick
secretly, she feels she has something more to live for compared
with the years she went without love or affection. Although her
situation has improved a bit, her willingness to remain essentially a
prisoner in Gilead shows how little it takes to make her ignore the
atrocities taking place in her world.

Identity

“Rita scowls at me before slipping in to stand behind me. It’s my

fault, this waste of her time. Not mine, but my body’s, if there is a
difference.”

Offred reacts to the pessimistic expression of a member of the

household during preparations for the procreation ceremony. Since
authorities in Gilead restrict Handmaids’ roles to conception and
childbirth, Offred begins to see that only her fertility matters to
others. In this wry observation, Offred assumes the blame for not
producing, differentiating between herself and her body. Her
complex character with intellect and a sense of humor contrasts
with the mindset of those she serves, who see her only worth lies in
her ability to conceive a child.

“My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses
now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name
is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell
myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name
like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one
day.”
As Offred remembers the day she and her husband and daughter
tried to escape across the border, she recalls the name she had
then. In Gilead, a Handmaid’s name derives from the name of the
man whom they serve, easily changeable and anonymous. Offred
tries to downplay the loss of her name but instead realizes a name
holds more meaning than a simple telephone number. In taking
away her name Gilead stripped her of her identity, now buried
treasure in Offred’s consciousness.

“Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around?

Without it I too am disembodied.”

Offred thinks of her husband and daughter and wishes she could
hold them. Part of her identity in her former life was being a wife
and mother, and now that she can no longer care for her family or
give and receive any physical affection, she experiences
dissociation. She feels “disembodied” due to being separated from
her family, depicting how detrimental a lack of love can be to the
spirit.

“I am Ofglen,” the woman says. Word perfect. And of course she is,
the new one, and Ofglen, wherever she is, is no longer Ofglen. I
never did know her real name. That is how you can get lost, in a
sea of names.

Ofglen’s replacement responds to Offred’s asking about Ofglen.

Offred had only known her previous shopping partner as “Ofglen,” a
woman whose identity existed only in relation to the man she
served. The new Ofglen’s quick answer shows how replaceable
Handmaids are in Gilead. Stripping people of their names deprives
them of their identities, another way Gilead takes away freedoms.

The role of women

“The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling

themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and
shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on
them, no wonder these things used to happen. Things, the word she
used when whatever it stood for was too distasteful or filthy or
horrible to pass her lips. A successful life for her was one that
avoided things, excluded things. Such things do not happen to nice
women.”
Offred recalls Aunt Lydia’s account of how women used to behave,
particularly in the warm times of year. Aunt Lydia postulates that
when women dressed provocatively, they invited men to take
advantage of them. By saying that crimes wouldn’t happen to nice
women who cover themselves up, Aunt Lydia places all the blame
on the women who are the victims rather than on the men who are
the perpetrators. Aunt Lydia’s practice of blaming women performs
an important role of indoctrination in Gilead’s mandated conformity.

"There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially.

There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren,
that’s the law.”

When Offred goes to the doctor for her monthly checkup, the doctor
offers to try to impregnate her, explaining that most men like the
Commander are sterile. His observation shocks Offred, as Gilead
statutes outlaw suggesting the possibility of male sterility.
Responsibility for failure of a couple to conceive officially falls on the
woman regardless of the man’s state of health. The law represents
another example of society’s use of women as scapegoats.

“But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump
finger. Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison. Who led
them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us. She did. She did.
She did. Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen? Teach
her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.”

Offred recalls a Handmaid teaching session in the Red Center.

Janine had shared that she was raped as a teenager and had an
abortion. The Aunts make the rest of the Handmaids tell Janine that
it was her fault. Not only do the Aunts want Janine to internalize the
idea that she led her rapists on, but they also want to indoctrinate in
the others that women are to blame in these situations. The group
chant demonstrates the behavior the Aunts want to instill, namely,
women should take pleasure in shaming each other.

“He doesn’t mind this, I thought. He doesn’t mind it at all. Maybe he

even likes it. We are not each other’s, anymore. Instead, I am his.”

Offred reflects on her husband Luke’s reaction to her job loss. She
feels he supports her in a way that emphasizes her dependency on
him. Offred senses the power shift between them and wonders if
Luke enjoys having more power than she has. Although Offred can’t
know exactly how Luke feels and never asks him, she experiences
his comfort level with the change as a kind of betrayal. They are no
longer equals. Even before the rise of Gilead, when she would
become the property of the Commander, she felt like her husband’s
property.

There’s hardly any point in my thinking, is there? I say. What I think

doesn’t matter. Which is the only reason he can tell me things.

Offred makes a guarded statement to the Commander during one of

their nights together in his study. As he presses her to tell him what
she thinks about their new society, she plays dumb by telling him
she doesn’t think much. Sharing her opinions may prove risky, while
deflection may keep herself safe and keep him talking. Like the rest
of Gilead, the Commander believes women aren’t a danger
because they have no original thoughts of their own.

“We’ve given them more than we’ve taken away, said the
Commander. Think of the trouble they had before. Don’t you
remember the singles’ bars, the indignity of high school blind dates?
The meat market. Don’t you remember the terrible gap between the
ones who could get a man easily and the ones who couldn’t? Some
of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped
their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the
human misery.”

The Commander reminds Offred of the plight of women before

Gilead as he gestures to the old beauty magazines he allows Offred
to read. He contends that Gilead’s mores have improved women’s
lives because they no longer need to be concerned with their
appearance or how to get a man. The Commander, like others in
power in Gilead, sees women as one-dimensional, just as they
appear to be in his fashion magazines.

Imprisonment

“My arms are raised; she holds my hands, each of mine in each of
hers. this is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being.
What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and
thus of the product. If any.”

Here, Offred describes her and Serena Joy’s positions during the
procreation ceremony. Many aspects of a Handmaid’s imprisonment
in Gilead appear as rituals for her own good or marks of her special
status as a potential childbearing woman. The Ceremony is one of
these rituals: as the Wife holds her surrogate’s hands, the
connection designed to symbolize one being functions to restrain
the Handmaid. The true purpose for Serena Joy’s presence is to
exert control, even pin Offred down if necessary.

“Now and again we vary the route; there’s nothing against it, as long
as we stay within the barriers. A rat in a maze is free to go
anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”

Offred describes how she and Ofglen sometimes take different

ways to and from their shopping trips. Although Offred and the other
Handmaids can leave their houses without direct supervision, they
can only go as far as the walls of the city. Offred understands that
though it seems like a kind of freedom to be able to go different
places, within their own “maze” they are just as much prisoners as
anyone in a jail cell.