The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

Is it healthy to have an obsession with such a depressing dystopian novel? I guess it’s no more depressing than the political news of today. What is this morbid fascination with disturbing alternate futures that attracts us? Well, in the case of The Handmaid’s Tale, it is definitely the succinct, intricate weaving of narrative and subtle reflections of the real world’s problems. Too many dystopian works these days are written as polemics and agendas, or are cliché and uninspired. But The Handmaid’s Tale is a classic work of literature that builds its plot around one singular character, knowing only what she’s told of the world she lives in, whether it’s word-of-mouth, propaganda, or both. Because if you did live a life like Offred’s, in which the act of reading anything is a crime, you would only have your wits and memories at hand.

This is going to be a page-by-page analysis with no bias from adaptations. While brilliant, the Hulu TV adaptation has reshaped the lore of the original novel to suit a modern portrayal of The Handmaid’s Tale, which can be confusing to understanding the original story. Controversially, I think the film was the most faithful adaptation, but not the best produced. Without a doubt, the TV series is my favorite show and I am greatly anticipating the third season premiere in 2019.

Without further ado, grab your own copy or E-reader, and let’s begin.

Intro

The foreword to the novel proper is three quotations. The first can be considered the tagline for the book, especially, “Give me children or I die.” The whole concept of Handmaids is taken from this Biblical structure, also the proper name for “The Red Center,” which is officially, “The Rachel and Leah Re-education Center.” Also, note the Biblical character Jacob, which lends the name for the “Sons of Jacob,” the extremist Christian organization who would stage the initial military coup, toppling the American government and turning it into the Republic of Gilead.

The second quotation is from Jonathan Swift's A Modern Proposal, a satire submitted during an overpopulation crisis, which is the opposite of the problem the world of The Handmaid’s Tale is happening. Swift sardonically suggests that they can kill two birds with one stone—both the overpopulation and food shortage problem—by eating the unwanted children. This piece is entirely black comedy as a commentary on anti-abortion and the stigma associated with it, as also highlighted in this section:

“There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it willprevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of womenmurdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent among us, sacrificingthe poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense than theshame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhumanbreast.” (source)

This quotation’s inclusion in the foreword of the novel displays an antithesis of The Handmaid’s Tale motifs (infertility vs. too much fertility), showing that even in a world overabundant with babies and children, anti-abortion and anti-contraception laws would be still inhumane.

The final quotation isn’t as abstract as you might think it is. It speaks to common sense. Of course, you shouldn’t eat stones in the desert; no telling what that could do your teeth or digestive system! But the point is that there wouldn’t be a sign to tell you otherwise, it’s hardwired into your sense of logic. Just like there are no signs that say, “Thou shall not imprison and rape women,” that should be common sense. This is tragically also a commentary in real-life culture—the argument that people shouldn’t have to be told not to rape.

For Whom?

More often than not, novels are dedicated to personal friends of the author. But in this foreword, the dedication is more than mere shout-outs to inspirational friends. Margaret Atwood dedicates the novel to Mary Webster and Perry Miller, who have both had influences on the subject matter of The Handmaid’s Tale. The author has stated that she believes Mary Webster is possibly an ancestor of hers. Mary Webster was accused of being a witch in Puritan times and her accusers attempted to hang her, but she survived and lived on another 14 years. (source)

Perry Miller was a Harvard professor and authority on American Puritanism. Since much of Atwood’s novel has integrated aspects of Puritan rituals and clothing, we can assume that Puritan culture greatly influenced her ideas for the fictional Republic of Gilead and its caste system. (source)

Pt. I: Chapter 1

The beginning paragraph is a brief summary of the decades that have past, indicating that the gymnasium is in an aged but repurposed school building. From the articles of clothing mentioned (“felt-skirted… later in miniskirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green hair”), I can hazard a guess at the novel being based in the 80s or early 90s. The timeline will be much more important later.

In passive voice, Atwood paints a picture of times gone by, when there were school dances—homecomings and proms, specifically, so this was a high school building. The protagonist waxes nostalgic over those days, when people had high expectations of sex, but were let down from the actual experience… such is life.

“We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?” She reminisces of times where she had hope for her future, then juxtaposes by lifting off the veil of time, showing her reality. She’s in an army cot among other women in the same army cot while two “Aunts” are patrolling with electric cattle-prods. Eesh, hell of a transition, that!

The Aunts are the supervisors of these women. You can’t help but notice the metaphor in hindsight of them having cattle-prods—they and other officials of Gilead do treat their charges like cattle. Next, the protagonist considers the guards and mentions the “Angels.” The irony of Angels having guns isn’t lost on the reader. The protagonist highlights the desperation of the supervised and captive women here: “They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well… Something could be exchanged… some deal made, some tradeoff, we still had our bodies.”

The women still practice some control by whispering their names to each other. It’s rumored that the protagonist’s real name is June, as indicated by the list of names at the bottom. Since all the names show up later in the novel except June, it’s presumed to be her real name. In the TV adaptation it is, but Atwood herself said it wasn’t her intention for her real name to be June, but encouraged her fans to call her June if they wished.

Pt. II: Chapter 2

Wait, that was an awfully short first part, wasn’t it? Well, without spoiling the rest of the novel (because the novel being sectioned into parts does have a purpose), keep in mind that the protagonist isn’t exactly allowed to keep a consistent journal. She can’t even read or write without the threat of her fingers being chopped off. Also, it’s a sectioning off of the main narrative and her intermissions of memories. In the parts named Night, she’s more retrospective and analytical than continuing the main plot, but each memory and musing is important to the story and her characterization.

Starting Chapter 2, we’re already smacked in the face with suicidal ideation; specifically, how the chandelier has been removed because it could be used as a means to hang oneself. This could serve as a warning. But think about it, the entirety of Gilead’s operation is a warning. From Offred’s perspective, she’s just making observations of her prison.

Offred muses about her room and the decorative things in it. One particular description of the braided rugs is all too thematic of the lore…” archaic, made by women in their spare time, from things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?” In Gilead, women have been repurposed like craft materials. They are now doing their “traditional” role, according to Gilead’s skewed Biblical doctrine (i.e. housekeeping, childrearing, homemaking), so they are no longer “wasting their time” with careers, promiscuity and intellectual pursuits.

Offred wanders if this room, its layout, the pictures on the wall are government-issued, meaning that the government would require this setup for Handmaids in all households. It’s a way to tell the reader that this is not just a weird cult, it’s a large body of totalitarianism, a mass curtailing of human rights. Offred remembers Aunt Lydia’s instruction (brainwashing is a better term for it), comparing Handmaids’ roles to being in the army. Except the majority of Handmaids hate Gilead and don’t want to defend it. Aunt Lydia is patronizing at the best of times, speaking to the Handmaids like petulant children. I believe that she might have been a principal of an all girls school or something similar, but no backstory is officially given.

“Like other things, thought must be rationed.” It’s hard not to miss the possible Orwellian 1984 allusions, particularly its coined word, “thought-crime.” Atwood mentions 1984 as an inspiration for The Handmaid's Tale, though she desired to write a dystopian novel from a feminine perspective. While Winston Smith's tale was entrancingly horrifying in its narrative, the plot was political and broad-spectrum, examining the effects of a totalitarian world on the surface. The Handmaid's Tale is more personal because while totalitarian, she hasn't been stripped of her humanity. It's up to the reader to decide whether this was intentional or she managed to fight her Big Brother's attempts to brainwash her.

Offred compares her room to a guest room and rooming house for pregnant women in times of old. She muses over the things she’s been given, that it isn’t a traditional prison. She remembers Aunt Lydia saying it “is not a prison but a privilege”. But let’s be frank here – it could a luxurious suite with Egyptian cotton bedsheets, suede chaise lounges, and birds of paradise paintings framed with diamonds and gold trim, but she’s still a prisoner within her own mind and her body is not her own.

She hears a bell and notes that time is measured in bells “as once in nunneries”. Such is an apt analogy since the Handmaid uniform is like a nun’s habit, complete with white-winged headdress. The outfit is almost all red which, according to Atwood, represents fertility, menstruation, and childbirth. It's also considered to be associated with sex and promiscuity, a la The Scarlet Letter. The white wings serve to constrict their view of the world and to prevent wandering eyes. In a way, Gilead has eliminated sexual harassment; or at least, publicized sexual harassment (i.e. whistling, catcalling, hitting on, groping). They are still harassed by their Commanders, Wives, and Aunts, but in Gilead, the irony is paved over with hypocrisy and propaganda.

Offred is adamant to correct herself when she refers to the room as hers. This is not her home, it is her prison, her gulag in which she’s expected to work for her keep. She doesn’t want to allow herself to become complacent, because that’s how this mess all started. She leaves out of the room, remarking on the furnishings and embellishments of the house, how its aged and was once for large families. Offred notes that the sitting room is “motherly,” ironic since the owners have no children. The color motif strikes again in a glass mural of red and blue, representing Handmaid and Wife respectively. Offred walks past a mirror and notes that her reflection is fairy-tale almost, and this brings Red Riding Hood into mind. “A Sister, dipped in blood.” This shows that she doesn’t identify her own reflection as herself, possibly representing a loss of identity, which is overall true given her status.

The color themes continue, demonstrating that this is a society divided into castes. She notes the umbrella stand with black (Commander), blue (Wife), and red (Handmaid) umbrellas. I’ve touched on the purpose of red for the Handmaids earlier, so let’s go over the other colors. Wives wear blue to symbolize the Virgin Mary. It’s a much more subdued color than red, signifying the Handmaids importance. Red and blue are also primary colors and mixed together make purple, a color that was once associated with aristocrats and royalty, meaning that Wives having a Handmaid grants them greater social status. The Commander’s color is black, a color of authority and darkness. Notably, black isn’t considered a color, it’s a shade, so it could be representative of how they distinguish themselves above the other castes as the ruling class.

Marthas are domestic servants that clean and cook for the household. Their caste name is taken from the Bible, Martha was the sister of Mary of Bethany, who admonished her sister for just sitting on the floor listening to Jesus while she served food and took care of domestic hospitalities. It’s oddly fitting since Rita thinks Offred as a lazy slut that doesn’t have to work hard as she does. Marthas wear green and wear veils when they leave the house. Not much can be found in study guides online, so I’ll have to hazard a guess on the significance of the color green. Green is the color of grass and of land, also of plants and trees. So it could be a representation of returning to roots, of “traditional values” as Offred said before. Green also signifies wealth, meaning that households with Marthas signify affluence.

Offred has succumbed to listening outside doors for news, even if it’s mere gossip. She eavesdrops on Rita and Cora’s conversation about Offred. Rita implies that she wouldn’t “debase herself like that.” It’s notable here that the help thinks Offred had a choice in becoming a Handmaid, and later Offred will imply that this was her choice. But I personally don’t believe that deciding between sexual servitude and an agonizing death is in the spirit of “choice.” Handmaids, after all, have been stripped of their choice. But this only highlights that not even household maids know the true extent of Gilead’s depravity. This shows that indoctrination doesn’t just happen to the Handmaids, it’s a nationwide propaganda. It is unknown how the Marthas were exactly commissioned to become domestic servants, possibly they were part of the movement pre-Gilead (“Sons of Jacob”) and believe they are performing a civic obligation.

This scene also brings to light the toxicity of Gilead and how it pits women against one another. With the Aunts, they had considerable power over the Handmaids, armed with cattle prods and able to beckon a guard at will to subdue rebellion. However, the Handmaids and Marthas can be considered equals in a sense, but the stigma of Handmaids is that they are unclean, adulterous women turned servile and therefore contaminated by sin. It’s not unheard of today in our culture. Evangelical women turn their noses down at promiscuity and join in with misogyny. For instance, there are women defending Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of his rape accusation.

Cora and Rita illuminate other aspects of Gileadean inhumanity, particularly the Colonies, essentially toxic gulags in which “Unwomen” are sent to work themselves to death shoveling radioactive sludge. Unwomen is the term for a woman that has proven herself unworthy of Gilead “mercy.” According to Offred, some choose to go to the Colonies over becoming a Handmaid. It seems the Colonies are for those who broke Gilead laws after integrating. They are for the women that live past their primes as Marthas, Handmaids that fail to conceive after three postings, dissidents of the regime (if they aren’t Salvaged), non-whites, and any other infraction that Gilead deemed ungodly. Hanging offenses seem to be preserved for direct enemies of the state, namely other religious sects and non-Gileadean Christianity, homosexuals, particularly volatile dissidents, and abortion doctors. The justice system in Gilead is inconsistent at best because it’s basically state-sanctioned genocide.

Cora mentions having gotten her tubes tied, which is a bold admission considering the regime’s murderous attitudes toward self-sterilization and contraception. Offred mentions that she wishes she could stay in the kitchen regardless of Rita’s silent convictions toward her. She’s lonely and wishes she had anyone to talk to, some semblance of a social life. She fantasies over having mundane discussions of pains and aches over coffee, something she misses from her pre-Gilead life. “How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it. At least it was talk. An exchange, of sorts.” Shows that even conversations are seen as suspicious and therefore discouraged.

Next, we get a brief glance of things Rita and Cora have heard happening in other households. From stillborn babies to discussions of poisonings. No, Gilead is certainly not the picturesque familial fantasy they claim it to be. Offred wants to help Rita make bread, to feel the dough on her hands. Her loneliness has made her desperate for affection, even synthetic versions of flesh. She would ask Rita, but the Marthas would be too afraid to allow a breach of assigned duties.

She breaks from her reality, tangentially pondering the meaning of fraternize. She recalls her husband telling her the definition and reflects that there was no accompanying phrase for women, so he invents one, sororize. This tells that Gilead is not a place for friends, not obvious ones anyway. She returns to the present to take tokens from Rita, for groceries. Women are not allowed money or to read in this society, so labels are replaced with pictures. Rita remarks that she wants fresh eggs this time, a none-too-subtle allusion at Offred’s purpose as a baby factory.Description text goes here

The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

Chapter 3

One motif you’ll see recurring throughout the novel is Offred’s descriptive prose about Serena Joy’s garden, specifically her flowers. The Commander’s Wife dutifully dotes on her garden, which symbolizes her desperate want for a child. The flowers are her children, the only life she can fertilize and raise to adulthood. Note also of Serena Joy’s introduction, that she is the Commander’s Wife, not her own identity. This represents that even elite women of Gilead are oppressed and owned by men. Offred is reminded of how she also had a garden in the past, a way to pass time, something she isn’t permitted now.

Offred notes that the Commander’s Wife also spends her time knitting scarves for the Angels (soldiers fighting the holy war at Gilead’s borders). The scarf patterns are childlike, another demonstration of her cloying need for motherhood. Offred supposes that the scarves are rolled back into balls of yarn and knitting is just a pastime to make the Wives think they’re doing their part for the regime. Offred is jealous of her knitting, because at least she’s allowed to have hobbies.

Offred remembers the first time she met Serena Joy. She’s already made clear of her standing that after that first day, she has to use the back door to enter the house. She remembers Aunt Lydia telling her that she believed Handmaids deserved front doors, because “Yours is a position of honor.” However, lower castes of the households wholly disagree. Serena Joy is not welcoming, ushering the Guardian carrying Offred’s bags to leave them on the porch. This could symbolize that she believes Handmaids have to carry their own burdens, that they don’t deserve help.

Offred takes stock of the Wife’s appearance. She’s dressed in fine, glamorous attire, complete with diamond jewelry. She carries a cane, telling the reader that’s she handicapped; specifically arthritis from her age. Offred again remembers Aunt Lydia’s instruction, that she should feel sympathy for the Wife because “it isn’t easy for them.” Oh, how embarrassing it must be for her, having need for a breeding slave! Sorry, reader, I personally do not like Serena Joy at all.

While in her sitting room, Serena Joy lights a cigarette, a first show of elite hypocrisy. No doubt, cigarettes had been banned because they lower fertility rate and increase chance of birth defects. Offred supposes that there was a black market and this gives her momentary hope. It’s not at all uncommon for strict religious organization and cults to have rampant hypocrisy in their higher ranks. I went to an Independent Fundamental Baptist academy in grades 5 to 9, and the preacher constantly went on about the “sanctity of traditional marriage” and imposed the sexist dress code where girls had to wear skirts and dresses fashioned off a Deuteronomy verse. Come to find out, he had affair after affair on his wife and supposedly groomed the teenage girls in the higher grades. But I digress.

Offred supposes that Serena Joy might be a Wife that bent the rules, allowed for illicit trade offs. Serena Joy is vocally mocking Offred, of this being her second posting. Handmaids are only given three postings, which is to say a certain amount of time and Ceremonies (the horrifying ritual in which Commanders rape the Handmaids on their fertile days while the Wives cradle them from behind). If they don’t conceive in three postings, they are rumored to be sent to the Colonies or executed.

Offred is detail-oriented, taking in the tired appearance of Serena Joy and the color of her eyes, with some beautiful imagery I might add, “Not so her eyes, which were the flat hostile blue of a midsummer sky in bright sunlight, a blue that shuts you out.” She considers aloud that Offred’s role is like a business transaction. Serena Joy makes her feelings of Offred quite plain because she doesn’t consider her high status enough to call her “ma’am.” In the television adaptation, Offred refers to her as “Mrs. Waterford,” but we don’t know the Commander’s or his Wife’s last name in the novel, though it’s speculated to be Waterford in the novel’s epilogue, which is where the show’s iteration of the Commander’s last name comes from and his wife, respectively.

Offred notes that her previous posting, the Wife preferred to stay in her room and get drunk. She’s melancholic about Serena Joy, wishing that she could have been like a motherly figure. Serena Joy makes it clear that her husband is off bounds. Offred mistakenly says “ma’am” again, reminding her of wind-up dolls. “She probably longed to slap my face. They can hit us, there’s Scriptural precedent. But not with any implement. Only with their hands.” I think this might be satire on Atwood’s part, because spanking children is a hot-button issue of evangelical groups; they argue that spanking is allowed, but not with an instrument, only a flat hand. Opponents of spanking argue that it shouldn’t matter what you child with, hand or otherwise, it’s still abuse because it hurts the child and studies show that it doesn’t work in the long run. Children don’t learn to obey, they learn to fear.

Serena Joy notes that faithful marriage is something “they” fought for, which reveals her to be very much in collusion with the forces of Gilead, even if she’s in an indirect role now. Offred thinks that she knows Serena Joy from somewhere and flashes back to a memory of being a child, surfing through TV channels. When she couldn’t find any, she watched an evangelical show where personalities would tell Bible stories and sing gospel hymns. Serena Joy sung soprano and could cry and smile at the same time. Offred ends the novel by saying that the same woman that sung gospel hymns on Christian television was the Wife she served now. So, if a popular televangelists had to be submissive in this regime, it really is worst than Offred thought.

Chapter 4

Offred snaps back to present, to where she’s walking out among the lawn. More fertility imagery, with worms emerging from wet soil, dying out in the sunlight. She walks past a gate and the driveway where a Guardian (driver for the Commander) is washing his car. I don’t know cars that well, but I’m guess the names Whirlwind, Chariot, and Behemoth are made up models or at least mean different models than what we know in the real world, unless there are Commanders being escorted in cars like this, which would be absurd and hilarious. Offred notes that one thing hasn’t changed, “the way men caress good cars.”

Guardians guard (I know, shocking!) the Commander’s house and its household. Offred notes that he’s low status and hasn’t been assigned a wife, meaning that Gilead sanctions arranged marriages. She supposes that Nick isn’t “servile enough” and I’m guessing this means he doesn’t suck up to higher ranking positions. Offred supposes that he might be more than a Guardian, even an Eye (special operatives, spies within Gilead politics—they’re referred to as the “Eyes of God”). Offred is attracted to him and Nick seems to reciprocate, but Offred is astounded by this. She’s been ingrained with the Gileadean doctrine that women shouldn’t flaunt their sexuality, that it’s sinful to give in to lust or even accept affection from men.

Offred waits at the corner, remembering Aunt Lydia’s instruction about patience. She also thinks Aunt Lydia talks to them (Handmaids) like children, comparing her to a ballet teacher. Her shopping partner, Ofglen, approaches and they exchange the state-sanctioned greetings. Even speech is policed in Gilead, and they are both supposed to watch each other. If one of them is suspected of breaking laws, the other will be held accountable for not informing their household of their partner’s illicit behavior, regardless of whether they knew about it. Offred recalls having a previous partner before this one, noting that “on a certain day she simply wasn’t there anymore and this one was there in her place.” This demonstrates to the reader that these women, regardless of their roles as baby factories, are expendable and can be replaced at a moment’s notice.

They talk about the war, the civil war going on between Angels at the frontlines and Baptists in the Blue Hills. Gilead forbids any sect of Christianity not beholden to their doctrine. This gives us a clue that the South, which was/is the Bible Belt in our timeline, is one section of resistance against Gilead, since the Southern States are known (in our timeline) to be predominantly Baptists. Huh, the most prominent Christian regions before pre-Gilead becoming enemies of a Christian extremist takeover. Say what you will about the Southern Baptist Convention, but Baptist doctrine is definitely more humane than Gilead’s brand of Christianity. And this is coming from someone that went to an Independent Fundamental Baptist Christian academy. Not my best years, but at least I wasn’t made a sex slave. That’s irony for you.

This Ofglen knows things that she shouldn’t, considering how they can’t read or write. She could have been eavesdropping on conversations like Offred does, but we’ll later find out just how much she does know about Gilead. They approach the first barriers which are decorated with Guardians holding machine guns. Not just pistols—machine guns. What exactly do they do day-to-day that requires automatic weapons? Offred refers to them by their full title, “Guardians of the Faith” and describes their green uniforms with crests: “two swords, crossed, above a white triangle.” Free Mason imagery, anyone? Offred notes that the Guardians “aren’t real soldiers. They’re used for routine policing and other menial functions…” Yes, “menial functions,” that require machine guns. Offred notes that they are “either stupid or older or disabled or very young.” The prime example of people you want to trust with machine guns. More satire to paint how careless religious extremists are with guns? You decide.

Offred remembers an incident in which a Guardian shot a Martha because they thought she was reaching for a bomb. She recalls Rita and Cora’s conversation about it, which is where she heard of the incident, probably. Cora defends the actions of the Guardians, but Rita angrily admonishes them. Then she says, “All the same. She worked hard. That was a bad death.” Implying that they thought there was such a thing as “good deaths.” Note that Offred’s memories will not have quotation marks around past dialogue. This is possibly done to separate past and present dialogue, or to separate flashbacks from the main narrative.

Offred seems to dare herself to touch the young guardian’s face, to flirt with him, something forbidden by law. She considers these thoughts to be a small piece of defiance, though she doesn’t act on them. She imagines coming back during the night, taking off her headdress, a sacrilege. We get another preview of the caste system and some of the events that take place. She notes that the black-painted vans that pass through the checkpoints sometimes have noises, possibly sexual noise. We see double-standards, Guardians being permitted to break laws because “Nobody’s heart is perfect,” yet that same exact reason is why some women are Handmaids.

Offred notes that the guardians probably don’t think like men used to think of sex, which is revealing that men of the regime are being affected as well. They have to abstain from sexual contact in order to be promoted, married, and given a Handmaid of their own. So, in a way, having a Handmaid for Commanders is like a perverted little elitist bonus. I think this is why Commanders deprive lower ranking men of sex, because it instills more power and smug authority in their (the Commanders’) position. Offred and Ofglen go through the gate and she teases the guardian by swiveling her hips. She’s momentarily ashamed of her actions (again, the brainwashing of Gilead is evident by her self-policing) but then she prides herself, this glimpse of femininity displayed so brazenly. “I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone.” She notes that even masturbation is a sacrilege among Guardians. In this way, she’s able to assert power, if only for a minute.

Chapter 5

Offred walks the street with Ofglen, noting how picturesque the neat lawns and hedges are. It’s quiet and she observes the houses like they are museums, which in a way, they are. Remnants of previous owners, before the regime happened and each house was repurposed for Commanders’ households. She also notes the lack of children. These houses are in the eye of the storm, where outside attacks do not happen…or supposedly, do not happen. After all, Gilead is known for bolstering propaganda, much like the Nazi Party did to cover up failures in their attempted conquests.

Offred acknowledges that doctors, lawyers, and university professors used to live in the big houses, before such professions were purged. She morosely remembers her and her husband planning for their futures while walking these streets. A few other castes are allowed to walk the streets within reason. There are some Econowives, wives of the poorer male castes. They wear blue, red, and green to symbolize that they do all the duties the richer castes have separate help for. Offred notes that would be widows walking the path, in all black.

Offred avoids stepping on the cracks, remembering her doing this as a child. She travels further back in her memories to when she used to go jogging on sidewalks. “Women were not protected then.” There’s the obvious scoff of the reader, or maybe that’s just in my head, but remember that Offred is quite possibly brainwashed into Gilead’s doctrine or at least, halfway. She goes over the old rules of those days, unspoken rules to avoid getting assaulted or abducted. She thinks about Laundromats and that she would put her own clothes and money into. She misses these little freedoms.

A quotation of note: “There is more than one kind of freedom… Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.” Ironic, since Handmaids are still being raped. It’s just not called rape. Offred and Ofglen are outside a clothing store, Lilies of the Field. She notes that the previous lettering of the shop was covered over because “even the names of shops were too much temptation for us.” She notes that the store used to be a movie theater, where women could wear what they want to see the cinema talents of Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Katharine Hepburn. Aunt Lydia’s words haunt Offred once more, “We were a society dying of too much choice.”

Offred and Ofglen go into the grocery store, where they wait in line. Offred notices they have oranges today, which had been a problem since the Libertheos (Liberation Theology) took Central America. This seems to be a resistance movement, but Offred sees them as enemies since she’s been brainwashed by Gilead to think so. This also tells us that Gilead hasn’t taken over the whole of America, it’s only a sizeable section, possibly the Northeast. She doesn’t have tokens for oranges and reminds herself to tell Rita about them for next time. A further aspect of the control, to where she can’t even buy oranges at a moment’s whim. Offred notes that she might see someone from the Red Center here and she desperately wants to see Moira, her best friend from before. She notes that Ofglen is still piously silent with her head down.

A very pregnant Handmaid walks into the store accompanied by her Guardian. Pregnancy has become a rarity in society, so the Handmaids are envious of her success. It’s also a calming thing to see, an assurance to Handmaids, that by having children can save their lives. Offred notes that Ofwarren does not need to be out at all, daily walks no longer prescribed. She merely wants to flaunt her rounded belly and gloat. Considering this is the extent of what Handmaids are allowed to do, it’s a monumental event. Offred compares the pregnant belly to a fruit, an allusion to the greeting phrase, “Blessed be the fruit.”

Offred suddenly remembers who the pregnant Handmaid is; it’s Janine from the Red Center. She’ll be an important key member later on in the narrative. Her and her shopping partner go into a butchery called All Flesh. Offred mentally notes to tell Rita and Cora that Ofglen is getting steak for her Commander. Such little ordinary details being gossiped about shows just how starved they get for entertainment. Offred says that nothing is wrapped in plastic anymore and she trails off about she used to hoard plastic shopping bags. There’s actually a real life research study being done about plastic in the water supply around the globe affecting fertility rates. Isn’t that terrifying?

In the middle of her inner monologue retelling of the plastic bag story, she cuts off. She can’t be in public while remembering this, possibly because she gets emotional. Getting emotional in public is possibly dangerous in Gilead or she’s merely embarrassed to be seen in those human moments. She sees a group of Japanese tourists in the distance. Considering Gilead’s racism, it’s strange that they would allow such tourism. But I’m guessing they have to have something to offer the rest of world now. There’s not much global lore in the novel, but in the TV adaptation, they discuss sanctions by the UN, the UK, and even entertain trade deals with Mexico. There are even scenes of a refugee center in Ontario, Canada called Little America.

Offred notes that the Japanese female tourists seem undressed to her in their skirts and open-toe sandals. “We are fascinated, but also repelled. They seemed undressed. It has taken so little time, to change our minds about this.” She then reminds herself that she used to dress like this. This is evidence of Gilead’s brainwashing and oppression against women, that even the women being oppressed are self-policing their own bodies. The interpreter showing the group around is possibly an Eye, but asks if they can take the Handmaids’ picture. Handmaids have been told not to let them, possibly because such pictures can be evidence other countries can use against Gilead. A real life example: architectures of the Nazi death camps didn’t want the public to know what their actual plans were because it would inspire backlash. Gilead possibly told a part of the truth about their regime, just not the whole truth.

Aunt Lydia’s words haunt Offred once more, saying modesty is like invisibility. She also compares being seen so brazenly to being penetrated, which is ironic, considering that’s exactly what Handmaids experience, though she meant it in a metaphoric sense. Offred gets distracted by the female tourists’ feet, by their nail polish. She misses these vanities of painting her toenails and wearing sandals. Then comes the ultimate question from the tourists: “Are you happy?” I’m sure most of us reading this would be like, “Hell, no, we ain’t happy!” But just consider this: Imagine that you’re in a world where your opinion to whatever heinous crime has been unleashed on you and every other woman is being ignored and these crimes even encouraged. Imagine that you are policed on everything, even what you say. To survive, to save your life, what would you say? Being in this society would be like being held at gunpoint or held captive. You’ll say whatever you have to in order to stay alive. “What else can we say?”

The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

Chapter 6

Offred often describes Ofglen as pious and deliberates on whether it’s sincere or for show. In her inner monologue, she talks of her wings which she calls “blinkers.” Handmaids wear the wings to “keep them from seeing, and also from being seen.” This is Gilead’s approach to eliminating sexual harassment of Handmaids while they do their chores. The wings are also symbolic of the tightly defined space the Handmaids are allowed to roam. Their vision is limited, as is their understanding of the outside world.

As they walk, Offred reminisces on the surroundings, the buildings and landmarks that used to be. This is a theme that will repeat throughout the book, seemingly average things that “used-to-be.” “When we think of the past, it’s the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” This is true and shows Offred’s tendency to cling onto the past to rationalize the present. She mentions that old American past-times, like football, are still played, for men at least. Offred mourns her limited avenues, not being able to view the river, walk on the bridges, or use the subway because there’s no official reason to do so. Even sight-seeing and hobbies have stripped away from the women in Gilead.

Offred muses that the centuries-old church is still untouched by Gilead. From the description of paintings depicting “women in long somber dresses, their hair covered by white caps,” we can guess that these were paintings of Puritan women, which was the main inspiration for the concept of Handmaids by Margaret Atwood. “They haven’t fiddled with the gravestones, or the church either. It’s only the more recent history that offends [Gilead].” Namely, we can presume, this “recent history” has to do with the progressive, egalitarian businesses, schools, and landmarks.

Offred observes Ofglen bowing her head as if she’s praying. She’s suspicious of her partner’s every quirk, as she’s been conditioned to do so. If you’re constantly being watched, it’s easy to be constantly paranoid and untrusting. She wonders if Ofglen lost someone, but backtracks because she thinks Ofglen is acting the part of the dutiful Handmaid in order to survive. “But that it what I must look like to her, as well. How can it be otherwise?”

One of the more disturbing practices in Gilead is hanging the bodies from the Salvagings on The Wall from hooks. In this chapter, there are six bodies hanging with filthy, bloody bags over their heads. She makes macabre comparisons of the bloody bags to faceless dolls, “like scarecrows, which in a way is what they are, since they are meant to scare.” She notes one bag with blood seeping through it that makes the shape of a mouth on the outside of the bag. The bodies are wearing white coats, meant to represent their living occupation as doctors or scientists. They have placards depicting human fetuses, declaring them as proponents and possibly practitioners of abortion.

Offred deliberates on how each of the accused were caught. She guesses that medical records had something to do with it or informants. There’s also a tidbit of how untrusting Gilead is of women, that there has to be two women to give corroborating evidence of a crime to be considered valid. It paints a picture of how desperate times were pre-Gilead, that people would give up patient records and names of medical professionals to save themselves. However, “informants are not always pardoned.”

Citizens in Gilead have been indoctrinated to regard these hanging bodies as war criminals, even if abortion was legal when they committed their “crime;” “their crimes are retroactive.” Offred has also been indoctrinated into the belief: “No woman in her right mind, these days, would seek to prevent a birth, should she be so lucky to conceive.” But her humanity is still intact, as she doesn’t regard the hanging bodies with hatred as she’s been taught to. She sees the bodies as “time travelers, anachronisms. They’ve come here from the past.” Such a statement is ironic, because you’d expect there to be less progress in human rights the further you go back in time; but, since Gilead is literally going back to the days of Puritans and male dominance, it’s like the past should be the future.

Offred compares the red smile to the tulips in Serena Joy’s garden. She tends to compare the macabre with the mundane in her narrative, a clue into this limited, backwards society becoming routine. I’m reminded of prisoners in the Holocaust camps saying that the horrific happenings became routine after a while, that even moving dead bodies was a chore like any other. The chapter ends with such a poignant remark of such a phenomenon: “Ordinary… is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”

Chapter 7

Offred’s only free time to herself is at night. These sections usually involve her remembering her past before Gilead, how she keeps herself grounded and sane. By reminding herself of her past, she’s not fading away into this new identity as the captive. During these sections, I will refer to her as the Narrator, because she wasn’t Offred in these memories before.

The Narrator describes how she uses nighttime to “step sideways out of my own time. Thought this is time, nor am I out of it.” It’s as if she’s in a car deciding where to go within her memories, her only sense of freedom is in her mind. She chooses a memory from college when she was studying and hanging out with her best friend, Moira. Moira wears strange clothes and accessories to “be eccentric,” has a talent for “borrowing” things without repercussion, and owns up to her quirky antics. It’s notable that Moira’s writing a paper about date rape, which the Narrator makes a joke about.

Next, her memory shifts to when she was a child in the park with her mother. Her mother had promised her they’d go to the park to feed the ducks, but she was really there to be with her friends at a book burning. From first glance, you might think that her mother was a prudish religious woman bent on burning porn magazines from this memory. We’ll revisit this later. She remembers throwing a magazine showing a naked woman into the fire, recalling how the flames burned the woman, turning her into ash before her eyes. A none too subtle metaphor and foreshadowing of the fate of women much later.

She then flashes to a memory of just after her daughter was taken from her and she was captured, presumably by Gilead for trying to flee. The Narrator muses that she must have been drugged, because days were going by in flashes and she was being constantly moved in her unconscious state. They tell her that her daughter has been placed in a “fit family,” meaning that the Narrator is established to be “unfit” by Gilead for some reason. They show her a photo of her daughter, but the Narrator accuses them as killing her. In a way, Gilead has. They’ve killed who she was as the Narrator’s daughter, she was now someone else, holding a new parent’s hand.

The Narrator hopes that this is a story, not her real life. She desperately wants this to be a story, so there will be an ending, a happy ending where she could continue her life from before. So she tells this story in her mind as a defense mechanism, something to hope for in this hopeless situation. It appears like she’s telling her story to you, the reader, which she is in a fourth-wall kind of way. But her hope fades often and without regress: “I’ll pretend you can hear me. But it’s no good, because I know you can’t.”

Chapter 8

It’s back to Offred’s narrative where she’s out with Ofglen again by The Wall. She opens the chapter innocuously, remembering back when the summer weather would hold and they could wear sundresses to go get ice cream. But then in the same paragraph, she’s explaining about new bodies hanging on The Wall. Here we learn of the other demographics that Gilead considers enemies, with a priest (Catholics) and two Guardians that were caught committing “gender treachery” (homosexuality). She remarks that the priest had been put in the black cassock for the trial, since they stopped wearing those when the sect wars began.

Gilead condemns any sects that disagree with their prescribed Christian doctrine. Though, it is particularly interesting that none of the Gilead officials or doctrine mentions Jesus Christ, the so-called Son of God for whom the religion is based on. This was purposeful to show that Gilead’s doctrine was not sincerely followed by its leaders, that it’s more of a pecking order of power elites. After all, haven’t we heard of cult-leaders in real life that lived lavishly and contemptuously by their own religious teachings? Take David Koresh, the self-acclaimed prophet of the Branch Davidians, which would ultimately lead to the infamous Waco fiasco. He was accused of child abuse and statutory rape, allegedly having sex with girls as young as thirteen. There are some in Gilead that do believe in the doctrine, even some Commanders I’m sure, but we can assume the majority of them want the money, power, and dominion over their Wives and state-sanctioned concubines.

Offred resents Ofglen’s actions, which she compares to being robotic. Ofglen remarks that it’s a beautiful May day, which triggers Offred’s memory of the word mayday when she learned it from Luke. He says that the origin of the word mayday was from the French, m’aidez, or help me. As Ofglen and Offred are walking, a funeral procession of black-veiled women. The Econowives wear striped dresses of blue, red, and green to represent that they do all the duties as the poor women of Gilead. The bereaved mother holds a black jar to hold or represent the baby that died before it could be born. Offred mentions the term Unbaby, which could mean abnormal babies that couldn’t survive out of the womb. Offred and Ofglen make a show of solidarity to the women, but they scowl and spit at the Handmaids. Handmaids are regarded as whores by other castes.

Offred returns to the house and sees Nick polishing his car. She makes note of the tulips, ripe and upturned like chalices, which could symbolism for Offred’s role as a Handmaid. Nick makes small talk with Offred, which she only nods to. She recalls rhetoric from Aunt Lydia, how God made men to desire sex, but didn’t make women to and it was up to women to make the boundaries. Kind of a weird thing to say when a society regards women as having no boundaries, no right to even refuse.

Offred sees Serena Joy lazing in her chair in the garden. She then thinks that her name is stupid, the chosen moniker that she used to have when she was a TV evangelist and gospel singer. Offred compares the name to the brand names of hair-straightening chemical. Offred remarks that Serena Joy’s real name was Pam, though if you read the epilogue, it’s suspected that all of the names were changed anyway. Offred then remembers when Serena Joy was making speeches about women’s pre-ordained destiny by God to be domestic servants. Offred remembers when someone tried to shoot Serena Joy and missed and her secretary was killed; she also recalls a story in which someone planted a bomb in Serena Joy’s car, but the public thought she had planted it herself as a publicity stunt. Offred remembers turning down for bed with Luke long ago while these events were happening, watching it on the news. Luke found her antics to be funny; the Narrator found them to be “a little frightening.”

The best paragraph in this chapter, maybe even the book, is the following: “She doesn’t make speeches anymore. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn’t seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she’s been taken at her word.” So, women these days in our reality wanting to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remember: You’re a woman, too. It’s a clear pattern that occurs on Fox News and CNN programs when some female political pundits make big claims without realizing they aren’t exempt from their own hypocrisy. Or evangelical women that are female preachers with enough money to feed all the migrant children at the border but not enough sense to realize their message is misogynistic. Sorry, let me kick my soapbox back into the closet.

Offred tries not to stare as she walks past Serena Joy into the house. She considers her (Serena Joy’s) face to be sinking in upon itself, “those towns built on underground rivers, where houses and whole streets disappear overnight, into sudden quagmires, or coal towns collapsing into the mines beneath them.” Such a description is what happened to society, even to those that supported it. In a flash, freedoms were replaced with borders, equality became immaterial, and a meaningful life became a purposeful life. In this society, any other aspiration besides having a family is frowned upon and even punished.

The dividing line between Wives and Handmaids is, at its core, jealousy and contempt. Wives hate the Handmaids because they can bear children and they cannot. Wives hate having to share their husbands with the Handmaids. Handmaids hate the Wives because they are facilitators of the state-sanctioned rape “Ceremony” and of the fact that the Wives will essentially kidnap their children upon their birth. Aunt Lydia’s advice is, as ever, dry and disingenuous… the handmaids should feel sorry for the barren women they serve and forgive their transactions, “for they not what they do.”

Offred’s contempt for Aunt Lydia is shown through her mockery of her gestures and hyperbolic prose, “the gaze upwards, through the round steel-rimmed glasses, towards the back of the classroom, as if the green-painted plaster ceiling were opening and God on a cloud of Pink Pearl face powder were coming down through the wires and sprinkler plumbing.” If you couldn’t guess by that, Offred thinks of Aunt Lydia as a drama queen.

Offred comes back to the present and into the kitchen, where it smells of freshly made bread. The smell makes her remember when she was a mother and made bread herself. She regards the smell as “treacherous;” possibly because it would make her cry. She hands her parcels over to Rita and Rita singles out the chicken, cleaning it of the giblets. She remarks that it’s scrawny, but “it would have to do.” It’s not hard to compare Rita’s comments about the chicken and her opinion of Offred.

Offred gets another attack of memory while regarding the dish towel by the sink. “Dishtowels are the same as they always were. Sometimes these flashes of normality come at me from the side, like ambushes. The ordinary, the usual, a reminder.” Rita tells Offred that she should speak up because she belongs to an elite military family. Rita regards Offred with contempt because she’s “common.” This is another side effect of Gilead’s caste system, the disparaging divide between them. This society pits woman against woman in order to quell rebellion. Cora and Rita talk about Offred’s bath like she’s just another chore to do around the house. In Offred’s position, she is a mere commodity, much like the chicken Rita’s preparing to cook.

While Offred goes upstairs to return to her room, the Commander is in the hallway. Offred wonders why he’s in the hallway and it frightens her. She compares this strange occurrence to warnings from encroaching battle frontlines and warnings from animals to scare away predators. She sees him as a threat and wonders if his appearance in the hallway was just that. Then the final line of the chapter ends with “I called it mine,” meaning that she claimed ownership of the room even though she’d be trying not to. It’s a sign that she’s assimilating against her will, that she’s molding into the structure of Gilead.

The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

Chapter Nine

Offred acknowledges the room as hers, which is a possible sign that her indoctrination is winning over her desire to rebel. She characterizes the room as different parts of a house based off the function the room is currently serving. For example, when she is waiting, it is a waiting room. When she’s sleeping, it’s a bedroom. She suspects that someone has lived in the room before her, due to the empty facet in the ceiling where a light fixture would hang.

She remembers hotel rooms, how she would examine them carelessly because they were mundane aspects of her normal life, before the regime. She and Luke would pay for hotel rooms to avoid confrontation from Luke’s first wife. She characterizes herself as imaginary for Luke in those moments, for she was the mistress, hidden away from the public eye. She remembered her clothes and the perfume she wore each time they met in the room. “Why did we ever say just? Thought at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.” Back in those days, casual sex was still allowed (or at least, it wasn’t subject to governmental interference). Though she describes her affair with Luke as more than sex, she was still guilty about being the “other woman”. She admits to missing those rooms, even with their gauche paintings. She reminisces over the freedom she had to order room service.

There’s one bit of symbolism in this memory that you might skate over. She mentions that were Bibles in the drawers of hotel rooms, “Though probably no one read them very much.” If you could see hotel rooms as the place were many illicit activities took place, ignoring the Bibles in the drawers, hidden away. This could be dramatic irony to display how much society was progressing and leaving behind the “traditional” roles touted by conservatives in those days.

Offred now explores her room in the Gilead house slowly and carefully. She’s had to find entertainment in the minute details because the broader forms of entertainment are now banned. She also wants to find clues of previous inhabitants, of people who’ve owned the furniture before her. She notes that there are stains on the mattress under the covers, which would disgust most people, but she embraces it as “old love.” She lies back and desperately misses her husband, wanting to feel him next to her. She describes her memories as “attacks of the past” because the only real respite she has is her memories. Quite possibly, her mental anguish is causing her to dissociate, preferring to regress back to a time when things made sense to her and weren’t so debilitating to her well-being. She wavers back and forth in between suicidal ideation, as indicated by her monologue shifting between the shatterproof window and the removed chandelier and the memory of her husband.

She examines the cupboard one day, noting that the brass hooks for clothing were still there. Notice that she’s now equating objects to not their practical use, but for methods of committing suicide. She sees a scratched message on the wall, in Latin: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” (Latin for "don't let the bastards keep you down"). She doesn’t know what it means, but it brings her hope and alights within her a spark of rebellion. Those words mean that she’s not alone, meaning that in a sense that she was also a handmaid, but also an Offred within that same house. She turns her into a friend, imagining Moira from her past. She tries asking Rita as non-conspicuously as she could. Rita indirectly reveals that there’s been one since the narrator.

It’s interesting to note that Offred is merely guessing at the previous Offred’s appearance, yet she seems to convince Rita, though this might be merely confirmation bias. Rita says that the previous Offred “didn’t work out” and she refuses to elaborate. The last phrase of the chapter is poignant, however: “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” Yet, it’s in the nature of Gilead to propose that just because they’re limiting Handmaids and women to means of education, doesn’t mean that they’ve eradicated all possibilities of obtaining news and delivering messages.

Chapter Ten

Offred admits to singing to herself in her head, outlawed songs. The totalitarian policies of Gilead go so far as to outlaw songs belonging to other sects. Even benign lyrics containing the word “free” are considered “dangerous”. Music after all can inspire people to rebel and incite revolutions. She also sings an Elvis song, remembering it from a cassette tape her mother owned. This is a possible clue of when the takeover happens in this timeline, maybe in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It’s been deliberated that Gilead happened because in this timeline, the conservative backlash against second-wave feminism becomes a nation-wide phenomenon, comparative to how the Nazi Party grew and grew until one-third of the population of Germany were supporters of the regime.

She remarks on how music, like everything else, has been taken away from households. She comments on how she hears Rita humming sometimes and the recordings of Serena Joy singing gospel songs. It’s how she hangs onto her past, like Offred with her memories. She comments on how the seasons are changing, or at least the weather patterns. It’s revealed that the Handmaids have summer dresses, presumably made of thinner fabric, but still obscuring Handmaids head to toe. Offred notes that they still sweat in them, subtly showing that the regime cares more about conservative dress than practicality.

She recalls Aunt Lydia’s ravings about how women would lie out in the sun and put on oils, comparing them to the practice of basting meats. She equates such spectacles as to why sexual assault would happen so often. This still an abundantly controversial opinion of the religious right that women’s clothing choices mean that they were “asking for it”, even though women in head to toe burkas in Saudi Arabia are being raped. Sure enough, according to Women’s Stats, Saudi Arabia is considered to be the most prevalent countries in which sexual abuse and rape is committed and also unreported because it is illegal to do so. The hypocrisy of Aunt Lydia’s sob story about decency is also greatly ironic, considering Gilead’s practice of forcibly impregnating women through a state-sanctioned rape ceremony, which we will get to later on in this chunk of analysis.

Aunt Lydia often starts crying through her speeches about she’s trying to give the Handmaid’s “the best chance [they] can have.” Whether that means survival or getting them pregnant is left ambiguous. Offred is bored by her melodrama, equating her overbite to the mice her cat would bring home. This paragraph can be confusing, because the narrator doesn’t use quotation marks when having flashbacks. This could be representative of how Gilead’s teachings are bleeding into her memories, corrupting them, which can happen in indoctrination and brainwashing. The phrase “If only she wouldn’t eat half of them first” is meant to describe the cat, but it can indirectly describe Aunt Lydia as well, because the whole relationship of the Aunts and Handmaids is a cat and mouse game.

She switches to a memory of Moira and how she once hosted an “underwhore” party which would be like Tupperware parties, but with lingerie. This shows that in times before Gilead, it used to be a sex-positive society, perhaps too much. Moira describes something called a Pornomart, which can be presumed to be widely available pornography stores, not as illicitly hidden backrooms in video stores. The narrator muses over those days, not believing that life used to be like that. She’s gotten use to the rigidly sexless façade Gilead promotes on the surface.

The next two paragraphs are iconic quotations from the novel. The first is “We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” Think of politics today and how we tend to push headlines into the background of our daily lives. We become complacent, thinking other people are going to fight for us. I challenge any readers of this to ask a conservative person if they know about The Handmaid’s Tale and what it’s about. Explain how Gilead happened, how fundamentalist Christians overturned the government and made it a tyrannical theocracy. I guarantee you, you’ll get some connotation of “That can’t happen here.” Christians today are defensive about their beliefs, whether progressive or conservative, so tread lightly and don’t be rude, that’s not what I’m asking you to do. This isn’t meant to serve an agenda, it’s meant to highlight the possible future of what would happen to America if extremists took over. However, it also highlights how it might happen, what might be a catalyst to such an event. In this novel, it’s an infertility plague caused by severe climate change and environmental disasters, two things that are not so fictional in our world today. Gilead is a reactionary movement spurned by desperation and the historical cycle of religious backlash, so elements of its regime do not make logical sense if you read too much into it, but that’s just it, it’s not a sensible society, it’s one born out of desperation and possibly even opportunism.

The next quotation of note is the next few lines: “Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” It’s taken nearly a hundred years for feminists to achieve equality and it’s still a process. Racism in America has been an issue since its inception and there are still white nationalists today craving ethnostates. Today, we’re dealing with the inhumane treatment of migrants and America’s very own President calling to massacre them just because they want to cross the border. People think that certain policies and instated laws are going to change society immediately, but it depends on the reaction and how the government deals with the protests that’s going to ultimately change things for the better… Or worse. “We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.” Meaning, it’s not happening to me, why do I have to care? That may seem selfish, but you have to admit that we think like that sometimes.

Offred examines a pillow with the word “FAITH” embroidered on it, which is illegal because women aren’t allowed to read in Gilead. She also notices the Commander coming out of the house to get in the car. Offred imagines throwing something at him or spitting out the window. She already shows animosity toward him because she is literally his sex slave. The urge to throw something out of the window triggers a memory of her and Moira throwing water bombs at boys who were trying to climb up and steal their underwear. This was back then when women could refuse the advances of men, even splashing them with water bombs to stop them stealing their things. Now Offred can’t throw things at the Commander to keep him out, because she’d be punished for doing so. She acknowledges that she “ought to feel hatred for this man”, which is certainly a reasonable attitude to have. Her feelings are complicated. Quite possibly, she’s experiencing Stockholm Syndrome or trying to humanize him in order to make her predicament better.

Chapter Eleven

She begins the chapter by recounting a doctor’s appointment. Every aspect of Gilead has been changed including medicine and doctor/patient relationships. She notes that the doctor is a specialist, which could mean an OB/GYN. Such a profession used to be dominated by women, but now women who seek higher education are criminalized and women are not allowed to work for pay. The nurses are male and monthly exams are required. When Offred is called back, she notices symbols on the folding divider that the Handmaid’s have to hide their face while being examined. The folding screen is red cloth with a gold eye and a snake-twined sword underneath. The red obviously represents the Handmaid, the gold eye representing Gilead’s ever-watchful surveillance, and the snake-twined sword can be considered a warning. The snake could represent the serpent in the Garden of Eden of the Biblical myth which is widely believed to be the purveyor of the first act of sin. Again, the sword can be taken as a threat, like it’s saying the “wage of sin is death”. She says the snake and sword are “bits of broken symbolism from the time before”. She could mean the traditional medical symbol called the caduccus that means “healing”, so by saying this is broken symbolism means that Gilead’s medical professionals are not healers. Gilead could have also adapted the symbol and subverted it to mean something else more relevant to their doctrine.

It’s ironic that some classes of men are not allowed to look at a Handmaid’s face while they are to obscure their faces with a divider and leave their breasts and genitals uncovered for the examination. Doctor’s visits have become as impersonal as car inspections because Handmaids are not valued for being people, they have been reduced to breeding slaves. Offred undresses, fills a bottle for a urine sample, and climbs on the table, pulling the divider down. There is no rapport between doctor and patient, when the doctor enters, he immediately performs a pelvic exam without informing her of him doing so or even his name, which would be massively unethical in previous times. The doctor then gets creepier by offering his “services”. Offred is shocked, thinking he might be with the resistance, but he’s actually propositioning her. He starts touching her in her genitals without the glove, offering to try to impregnate her. Offred finds his offer sincere but he’s also opportunistic. Sex for pleasure is a crime in Gilead, so quite possibly sexual solicitation happens even more than it used to, which is ironic.

He reveals another twisted irony: Most of the Commanders are sterile. You know, the only ones who get to have Handmaids? This a huge part of why Gilead is ineffective, because it’s corrupt and hypocritical at its base. That’s a large part of why it fails as explained in the Epilogue. On the surface, Gilead is delivering propaganda of a godly nation that is striving to bring up the Caucasian birth rates (remember in the novel, that Gilead is also white supremacist which we’ll touch on later), but it’s really a smokescreen for bureaucrat misogynists to have a Biblical reason for concubines. Unlike what’s happening today. (At least, not the concubine part. I would hope, anyway.)

She remarks more on the fact that the doctor has said a forbidden word: sterile. Part of the lie is that Gilead doesn’t allow for men to be called sterile: “There are only women who are fruitful, and women who are barren, that’s the law.” Yes, Gilead, saying what you want to be true will make it true. But this is unfortunately the case for the women in Gilead, being blamed for the fertility crisis. To say a man is sterile is emasculating to some so they made it a law to make it illegal. Yeah, that’ll work. That’s how science works, right?

Jokes aside, Offred delivers a wham line after the doctor asks her if she wants a baby, “It’s true and I don’t ask why, because I know. Give me children or else I die. There’s more than one meaning to it.” Meaning that if Handmaids don’t give their Households children in due time, they’ll be killed. She lingers on the fact that the doctor calls her “honey”, which she wonders if he called his wife that and then figures it’s just a generic term. Calling women names like “darling”, “sugar”, and “honey” might be endearing to some, but it’s harassment in some connotations, like a doctor to a patient. He seems genuine to Offred in his offer, but she’s paranoid that it’s a trap. He points out that her time is running out to conceive. Offred is refusing out of the fear of both being caught and the idea of freedom. She’s become comfortable going along with Gilead’s rules but only because rebellion would mean far worse for her than the short-lived freedom. She’s become conditioned like a rat to stay where it’s safe and the thought of freedom scares her. “Why am I frightened? I’ve crossed no boundaries, I’ve given no trust, taken no risk, all is safe. It’s the choice that terrifies me. A way out, salvation.” In some respects, Gilead has successfully brainwashed her.

The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

CHAPTER 12

Offred prepares to take a bath, which is required on nights of the Ceremony. Again, with the suicidal musings over the lack of razors, though they’re almost casual, like a fleeting thought. She describes the suicide attempts of some Handmaids, whether by exsanguinating or drowning, as “bugs” Gilead had to iron out, like it was a glitch in a computer terminal. She recalls Aunt Lydia stating that “in a bathtub, you are vulnerable” and Offred wonders what she would be vulnerable to in the bath. But a darker perspective can be taken from Cora having to supervise the bath. Quite possibly she has to watch to prevent Offred from killing herself and to ward off a certain bitter Wife from coming into the bathroom to drown her. Odds are, it’s happened before in Gilead.

She ruminates over baths, a small luxury she can take in her oppressed circumstances. She undresses, comparing Moira and Aunt Lydia in their speaking style. Moira was more brazen, saying things like “pantyhose gives you crotch rot” while Aunt Lydia shied away from crass terms and prefers the term “unhygienic.” Even the vocabulary of everyday life has changed. Talking about the female body and its many foibles, such as yeast infections and periods, has become discouraged. Such isn’t that far from the truth in conservative circles today, where men and some women act disgusted from outward talk about periods. Yet, the same conservatives want to ban abortion, but this is about analysis, not ranting. Offred reveals that Handmaids must not cut their hair, which is explained by Aunt Lydia’s allusion to Saint Paul, one of the Apostles of Jesus in the New Testament. Aunt Lydia’s “joke” pertains to Acts 18:18 when Saint Paul sails for Syria and cuts his hair as a part of the Nazarite Vows.

Offred is uncomfortable being naked, remembering when she wore bathing suits at the beach. Gilead’s modesty culture has been ingrained in her already, though she doesn’t feel shame about her naked body, she doesn’t want to see the parts of her that classify her to be in this position. Imagine being imprisoned and forced into sexual slavery for being a woman, for being a mother, for being a second wife. That is what happened to Offred.

She gets into the bath and suddenly has another memory “attack” because the soap smell reminds her of bathing her daughter. She remembers her very young when she’s in the bath. The fact that she has memories of her daughter at different ages, she reasons that she wasn’t a ghost because “if she were a ghost she would be the same age always.”

She lapses into another memory of the time a woman stole her out of a shopping cart in a grocery store. She describes a normal family shopping trip and how Luke would explain how men needed more meat than women. Luke goes through lengths to make sure the things he said were not out of sexism, but he uses a phrase that many in Gilead use as well, “studies have been done.” While he might have been unintentionally sexist, he means well and does respect his wife. He liked to say stereotypical sexist things to the narrator’s mother, who was a second-wave feminist and misandrist.

She recounts how the woman who stole her daughter had been given the child by the Lord and the narrator ruminates of how she thought was it was just one incident. Evidently, child kidnappings became more frequent leading up to the rise of Gilead. The memory of her daughter fades and she guesses that her daughter is a ghost, because Offred doesn’t remember her past the age of five when she was taken. She thinks of pictures she had of their family, how they were kept in boxes and drawers. In a way, it’s a metaphor for how her memories help her through each day. When she lays in her bed, the bath, or goes out into town, she’s rifling through boxes of her memories in her mind, trying to grasp onto her past.

Gilead is trying to dehumanize the Handmaids by eliminating their past. She remembers Aunt Lydia telling them that the Handmaids must “cultivate poverty of spirit,” also “blessed are the meek.” Offred takes note that she never finishes the Bible verse with “for they will inherit the Earth.” This is an example of how Gilead cherry-picks verses out of the Bible to suit their purpose. Handmaids aren’t allow to read, so they can’t read the verses to check on their accuracy. Also, Gilead doesn’t want Handmaids to inherit the Earth, so leaving off the rest of the verse is purposeful. By the “meek,” Gilead means the Commanders.

Offred hopes her daughter exists, not for her benefit, but of her daughter having a future. She wonders if her daughter remembers her. She reveals that she’s been in this predicament for three years, since her daughter was taken at 5-years-old and Offred reckons she’d been 8 now. She despairs, thinking that it might be better to think of her as dead. And as depressing as it is, sometimes it’s more of a comfort to hope someone is dead rather than suffering. Aunt Lydia describes it as “bashing your head against the wall” which is just like her melodramatic self.

Offred washes off, hyperbolizing about being completely without bacteria “like the surface of the moon.” She can’t wash later, after the Ceremony, or the day after, so she’s washing herself clean enough to last two days. She sees the tattoo on her ankle, her branding that reminds her that she’s a part of the system. In the Nazi concentration camps, prisoners were tattooed with alphanumerical codes to keep up with how many were being processed through the camps. “I am a national resource.” She means that her viable ovaries are the national resource.

Offred recalls a film about women being held down, presumably having their heads shaved. I’m not quite sure what film she means, though it could be her confusing films with events that actually happened. For instance, after the liberation of France in 1944, women caught having relationships with German soldiers had their heads shaved for punishment. Nazi-occupied Germany also imposed this punishment on women caught having relationships with non-Aryans.

Offred appreciates Cora for respecting her privacy, even though she has none. Cora is the nicer Martha, demonstrating that not all of Gilead’s servants are ruthless and condemning as Serena Joy and Rita. Offred thanks her, still retaining her manners. Cora gives Offred her dinner and Offred observes the food. Rita shows her disdain toward the Handmaid by how she prepares the dinner. She overcooks the chicken and sometimes leaves it rare. Offred recalls Aunt Lydia’s spiel about vitamins and minerals, how Offred is to be a “worthy vessel.” This is a society that has presumably done away with mass producing foods and switched over to organic farming. This is explored more thoroughly in the Hulu adaptation, with mentions of carbon-emissions reduced drastically, solar-power grids, and elimination of plastics.

Offred has been emotionally manipulated into thinking she has a better life than most, that she owes to thanks to God. This is a common way of brainwashing, comparisons to those classes that don’t have as many privileges as the group does. This is done in fundamentalist circles in real life. For instance, I went to a fundamentalist Christian academy that continually impressed upon us that public state schools were leading children astray, they were too diverse, and they had godless students and teachers, and corrupting curriculums. It’s also a threat, telling Handmaids that they better appreciate what they have and toe the line, or they would become Unwomen.

She eats the food, though she’s nauseated, because every aspect about her life, including her diet, is closely monitored. She debates asking Cora not to report her if she doesn’t eat all the food, but soldiers on. Her thoughts drift to what the Commander and his Wife are doing while eating dinner downstairs in their luxurious dining room. Offred supposes that the Wife would also be nervous or upset, and she, too, would be too nauseated to eat, though she can get away with it. The readers surmises that the Commander and his Wife’s relationship is strained, understandably so since the Wife has been secluded to the house, not allowed to work, read, or write. Most of the Wives probably didn’t think that the rules for lesser classes would apply to them as well. Again, this is a social commentary on how women who strive to take away basic human rights for women end up hurting themselves as well.

Offred makes a strange show of saving a pat of butter by slipping it into her spare shoe. This might seem an odd thing to do overall, but it will make sense later. The next few lines are of particular importance: “I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.” The last sentence means she has to present herself as ready-made, open. She can’t exhibit herself as closed off and hostile, she has to be a “worthy vessel.”

PART V – “NAP”

CHAPTER 13

Offred muses over her boredom, the massive amounts of time in which she can’t occupy herself with hobbies. Unlike Wives, Handmaids can’t partake in tactile crafts because they aren’t respected as people, only vessels to bear children. Offred thinks of the paintings she’s seen in art galleries of harems, which are designated parts of a house for concubines or multiple wives to live. She proposes that these male artists were fascinated by bored women, “But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.”

She compares her bath routine to how a show animal is prepared. She likens herself to a pig, which is not far off from Gilead’s supposition of Handmaids in this society. The Narrator goes off on a tangent about pig balls, then the psychological experiments done on pigeons. The final group of pigeons she describes, the pigeons that wouldn’t give up hope for a random gift of corn, is a metaphor for the human condition, specifically how beneficial and harmful hopefulness can be. Offred jokes that she wants a pig ball. This excerpt of the novel was used in the TV adaptation in Season 2, Episode 4, “Other Women” when she’s recaptured by Gilead’s forces after her short-lived escape and held prisoner in the basement of a Rachel and Leah Center. Rather than Offred’s monologue being used as an expression of boredom, it’s out of survival, a distraction from the hopelessness she feels now that’s she back under Gilead’s oppression.

She does exercises on a mat for strengthening her back and abdominal muscles. She remembers doing such exercises back in the Red Center while listening to Les Sylphides, a popular ballet dance and song. The narrative transitions into a flashback of the Red Center, of when the Narrator and the Handmaids napped in between sessions. Comparatively, the Red Center operates like a kindergarten but for adult women. The Narrator supposes it was the Aunts getting them used to “blank time.” She remarks that the Handmaids needed the sleep, as though they were being unknowingly drugged.

The Narrator recalls when Moira was first brought into the Red Center, but the two couldn’t show any sign of knowing one another. “Friendships were suspicious, we knew it, we avoided each other during the mealtime lineups in the cafeteria and in the halls between classes.” They finally do get a chance to talk and make plans to meet each other in the bathroom. The Narrator notes that she felt safer that Moira was there, even though they were pretty much in the same situation, no matter what alliances they kept.

A particularly horrifying scene is described. The Aunts have the Handmaids do something called Testifying, in which the Handmaids are to shame one of their own for an action they did that offended Gilead’s morals. The Narrator remembers Janine, a brown-nosing Handmaid she doesn’t like, in the docket for the shaming ritual. Her “crime?” Being impregnated from a gang-rape when she was 14 and having to get an abortion. The Handmaids and Aunts then condemn her as though the rape was her fault and that she led her rapists on. This scene is not made any less terrifying and rage-inducing than its adaptation’s depiction. Ann Dowd’s portrayal of Aunt Lydia is masterful in how much she can make us hate this character. More depressing still is Janine’s acceptance of her “guilt” and the Handmaids’ tribalistic condemnation of her. “We meant it, which is the bad part. I used to think well of myself. I didn’t then.” This is evidence of the Handmaids’ indoctrination which is only exasperated in groups because not only do you have these female oppressors, you have peer pressure from the other captive women.

There’s another scene that shows how ruthless the Aunts are. A Handmaid named Dolores wets herself because the Aunt in charge wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom when she asked. She’s taken away and it’s implied she was punished, but the audience doesn’t know how, which somehow makes it even worse. The Narrator manages to get permission to go the bathroom. The Narrator notes how the bathrooms used to be for boys and she makes a morbid observation of the urinals as “babies’ coffins.” She muses over how men seem to nonchalantly be naked in front of other men. “What is it for? What purpose of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here.” She applies this logic to women, how they don’t seem have to prove to each other that they’re women. (I would argue this as not exactly being true, but that’s another rant.) Now, that the Narrator lives in a society where their gender and past “indiscretions” determine how they dress and what limited power they hold within this androcentric theocracy. There’s a hole in the wall of a toilet stall, a hole that has crude past connotations, but serves as a means for Handmaids to talk with one another privately. The Narrator talks with Moira and the flashback ends.

She centers herself in reality, describing it as sinking down into a swamp. “Treacherous ground, my own territory.” She doesn’t feel safe where she is in the Commander’s home, because she really isn’t safe. She’s being confined in this house as a breeding slave and only given a few chances to get pregnant before she’s sent away as disposable. “I become the earth I set my ear against, for rumors of the future.” Meaning that her future is contingent on her success in getting pregnant. “Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishings of tissue, the droolings of the flesh, these are signs, these are the things I need to know about.” Pertaining to her menstrual cycle, specifically cramps, swollen tissues such as breasts, and the sloughing off of uterine layer that defines the blood seen during a menstrual period. She speaks of being terrified of her periods, because their presence means that she has failed to become pregnant once more and she’s only given a few chances.

She mourns the use of her body, how she used to have autonomy of how she used it. Through several metaphors and similes, she compares her body as something cosmological that marks time. “Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen. It transmits, pauses, continues on and passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like a famine.” The moon cycle has been a symbol of femininity, occultism, menstruation, and fertility for many ages. She describes herself as being empty, meaning not pregnant, which is her only salvation in this regime. She lapses back into her old life, only this time it’s not a flashback as much as it is a cleaving onto her old life. She “sees” Luke in her vision, not giving eye contact, rather he’s staring down at a cat. She calls out to him, but he’s not listening, symbolizing how the Narrator believes him to be dead and unreachable.

This vision turns into a flashback of the Narrator running through a forest with her daughter, presumably trying to escape from Gilead forces. The Narrator was considered an adulteress because she was having an affair with a married man, so the newfound Gilead regime tracked her down and took her daughter. She’s desperate in her efforts and her daughter begins crying. She crouches down to hide and she tries to hush her daughter, but she’s too young to understand the desperation of the moment. “She’s too young, it’s too late, we come apart, my arms are held, and the edges go dark and nothing is left but a little window…” This represents how she and her daughter are separated, both physically and emotionally. She wakes up in tears and this marks the end of the chapter.

VI – HOUSEHOLD

CHAPTER 14

Back in the present, she goes downstairs, into the sitting room. She describes the room as money being frozen, indicating that it is an old house owned by many people throughout the decades. She views a painting in the room displaying two women in dark dresses “like the ones in the old church” which a clue that implies this is a painting of Puritan women. Margaret Atwood took inspiration for her book from Puritan culture, namely the dress style, theocratic laws, and oppression of women.

Serena Joy’s presence is always accompanied by Lily of the Valley perfume. Lilies of the Valley are associated with Christian lore, particularly a tale of Mary, mother of Jesus, crying upon the ground at the Crucifixion and such Lilies grew from where her tears fell. The Wives’ blue dresses symbolize Mary, the Marthas’ green represents Martha from the Bible, and the Handmaids’ red alludes to Mary Magdelene. So, where does that leave Jesus? Could the Commanders really be so delusional to think they are Christlike?

She kneels in her designated place, awaiting Serena Joy and the Commander to begin the Ceremony. Each Ceremony begins with a reading of the Genesis chapters featured in the foreword of the novel. All of the household has to gather on these nights of the Ceremony, to which Rita resents. She thinks of Offred as a waste of time, but it is obliged like the rest of the household to attend. Nick the Guardian also has to be present and he prods the back of Offred’s shoes with the toe of his boot, an attempt at flirting, but in this context sounds like he’s taking advantage of the situation. Offred ruefully regards Serena’s dress of flowers, implying that she’s withered, meaning barren. Offred says in her monologue that flower petals are the genital organs of plants, ironic when you consider the repressed culture of Gilead.

Serena Joy smokes, which seems counter-intuitive to Gilead regime. Even second-hand smoke can harm an unborn baby and harm people within their general proximity. Alcoholic beverages are also allowed, counter to evangelical culture which sees smoking and alcohol as sinful vices. Whereas the oppressed women have had every vice, good or bad, taken from them and outlawed, the elite still get to drink, smoke, and do other heretical things because of their influence. This is an impression of how the power dynamics of Gilead works – the higher your status, the more things can be swept under the rug.

Serena turns on the television, which shows only Gilead sanctioned channels. Serena flips through the channels and pauses on a preacher, whom Offred thinks he and the rest of the preachers look like businessman, which in a sense, they are. The Narrator debates whether the news is even true, a sign that the media has been severely censored. A civil war is still being waged between Gilead and other sects, such as the Baptists. The full job title of the Angels is “Angels of the Apocalypse” and possibly the “Angels of Light” refer to their airforce. Only victories are shown on the news, never defeats, another clue of the propaganda Gilead is spreading. An anchor describes a group of Quakers being arrested who were smuggling Handmaids to Canada. The Republic of Gilead outlawed any sect of Christianity and other religions than their own brand of doctrine

In the novel, Gilead is not only severely misogynistic, they are also white supremacists. Black people are referred to as the “Children of Ham” and are relocated to National Homeland One, a name possibly alluding to Airstrip One in George Orwell’s 1984. Offred once again dissociates when Serena Joy turns off the television. She describes her true name like a magical talisman, something to keep her anchored to her true self. She describes her daughter as dead, though she might mean in the sense like the Aunts were suggesting. The sentimentality of remembering her daughter’s dolls has her near tears.

The Narrator describes the moments that led up to her capture and separation from her daughter. She was terrified that they would be caught at any time. “That is how I feel: white, flat, thin. I feel transparent. Surely they will be able to see through me.” She’s worried she won’t be able to lie convincingly enough. Every single aspect even before the Gilead takeover was monitored, including happiness because happiness could mean that people were escaping.

The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Ceremony continues. Blink and you’ll miss it, but there’s a clever bit of subtle dramatic metaphor in how the scene is set up. The Commander must knock on the sitting room door to enter, the sitting room being described as “Serena Joy’s territory” in which “he’s supposed to ask permission to enter it.” The Commander enters the room without her permission, foreshadowing what exactly this Ceremony entails. Offred muses over this “protocol,” wondering if it’s because of a domestic spat over dinner.

Offred compares the Commander to several elderly male archetypes, an attempt to humanize him in her mind. She describes him like a man who’s gone to seed, similar to his barren wife with severe arthritis. Offred offers the assumption that the Commander thinks of his household as possessions, not individual people, indicated by the line “…as if we are something he inherited, like a Victorian pump organ, and he hasn’t figured out what to do with us. What we are worth.” This displays how the society of Gilead has been determined to objectify not just women, but anyone who the elite view as unworthy. Fertile women are counted as resources, Wives and Marthas as servants, and Guardians and Angels are the protectors.

The Commander has the only key to the box containing a Bible. Women are not permitted to read or write in this society because the men view them as intellectually inferior. Also, by limiting the people who can read the Bible, they can push forward their own warped interpretations of scripture in order to benefit their own ideals and corrupt practices.

Offred supposes her own peculiar theory of the Commander’s predicament of being watched by women all the time: “…his tentacle, his delicate stalked slug’s eye, which extrudes, expands, winces, and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again, bulging a little at the tip…” It’s not hard to pick up which part of the male anatomy this describes. She might not be outright saying it, but the insinuation is deliberate. “To achieve vision in this way, this journey into a darkness that is composed of women, a woman, who can see in darkness while he himself strains blindly forward.” Possibly, this symbolizes the true intellect of an oppressed woman, who understands blatantly why and how she’s being oppressed while the oppressor remains ignorant of his own tyrannical nature, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The Commander begins to read and Offred briefly notes each Biblical allusion that has codified into law by Gilead. The Biblical quotations listed at the foreword of the novel, the main verse that Gilead’s Handmaid system is built upon: “And so Rachel said unto Jacob, ‘Give me children, or else I die.’ Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld thee from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid, Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.”

This Biblical verse reminds the Narrator of her Red Center days, when they had the Bible verses read to them. She mentions that many of the verses are wrong, illuminating that Gilead warps the scripture to their own advantage in order to teach their own propaganda. She remembers a time in which her and Moira meet in the restroom to talk through the stalls. Moira pledges to stop taking her vitamins so she can escape Aunt Lydia’s preaching during her time at the hospital. The Narrator doesn’t want to be alone, pleading with Moira not to do this. Moira deliberates on the Guardians and how she could escape by exchanging sexual favors with them. This desperation is typical of people having to live constantly in survival mode, willing to do things they wouldn’t in normal circumstances for little liberties or to keep their captors from hurting them.

Offred comes out of her reverie. This switching back and forth from current happenings to memories is intentional because Offred is dissociating, another psychological effect that happens during personal traumas. The Commander finishes reading and Serena Joy is crying. Not only is she crying because she desperately wants a child, she will also have to participate in the rape ritual while Offred lies in her lap, which she sees as a crime of infidelity rather than rape. Gilead propagates the belief that rape is the woman’s fault because she “lead them on” by dressing promiscuously and living ungodly lives. Serena Joy also doesn’t value Offred as a person, merely a vessel to contain “her” future child.

While the Commander leads group prayer, the Narrator remembers the outcome of Moira’s plan. She remembers Aunts dragging Moira in, as Moira was having trouble walking, and to the Science Lab. For her rebellion, she had her feet whipped by steel cables. We get the chilling line by Aunt Lydia: “Remember…for our purposes, your feet and your hands are not essential.”

Offred prays, asking God if this is what he wanted. The Commander then ends the prayer, bringing Offred back to the present.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Offred describes the Ceremony very bluntly. “My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body.” She deliberates on what else this action could be called, besides very obviously being raped. She implies that it isn’t rape, because this is the life she chose. Though I would personally argue that if the choices were either dying slowly in the radioactive Colony work camps or being a sex slave to an elite family, that’s not really a choice.

Serena Joy is gripping her wrists, which signifies them being “as one flesh.” Offred’s description of the Commander’s rutting implies that all pleasure, joy, and reciprocal satisfaction has been eliminated, sexual intercourse restricted to only procreation. This type of joyless sex has become mundane for the Commander and Offred tries to distance herself from her body during the rape by focusing on her surroundings and memories of better times. “This is not recreation, even for the Commander. This is serious business. The Commander, too, is doing his duty.”

Finally, the Commander finishes, redresses, and leaves the room. Serena Joy immediately dismisses Offred. Surprisingly, Offred feels the slightest bit of empathy for her. In a way, Serena Joy is being violated, too. She’s being forced to participate in the systematic rape of another woman, though she won’t consciously admit it. By becoming one flesh with Offred, she’s also being raped. “Which of us it is worse for, her or me?” Seems like a silly question. Of course, Offred has it worse. But consider Serena Joy’s lot in life. She sacrificed her career, her marriage, and her personal freedoms just for this to be the outcome. You might say she deserves it, being a perpetrator of misogyny and rape, but she was fooled into believing she would have more liberties as a Wife.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Offred returns to her room and retrieves the butter she stored away earlier. Handmaids use butter as makeshift lotion because they aren’t allowed any beauty products, a decree put forward by the Wives. Commander’s Wives hate having to share their husbands so they make sure the Handmaids don’t get any advantages over them. “As long as we do this, butter our skin to keep it soft, we can believe that we will some day get out, that we will be touched again, in love or desire. We have ceremonies of our own, private ones.”

Offred lies back on her bed, appreciating the view of the moon outside her bedroom window. She laments her husband, mourning the loss of both him and being valued as more than a portable womb. She gets the urge to steal something, to exercise any form of free will. She sneaks downstairs and steals a single withering daffodil. This could be interpreted as Offred taking something from Serena Joy sense she (Serena) had taken all her freedoms. Offred then realizes that she’s not alone. It’s Nick and after a brief conversation, he kisses her.

Offred tries to assuage her guilt for wanting sex with Nick. “Luke, you’d know, you’d understand. It’s you here, in another body. Bullshit.” Her loneliness has her desperate for any kind of companionship and also any possible agency over her own body. By entertaining the thought of having sex with Nick, she’s taking control of her own life, if just for a couple hours. But thinking of her husband and the consequences of if they were caught stops her.

Nick explains why he was searching for Offred. The Commander wants to see Offred in his office the following night. She deliberates on why he would want this: “Hasn’t he had enough of me?” This pronouncement grounds her, reminds her of where she is and what she has to lose. She pulls away from Nick and opens the parlor door for fresh air. Notably, she doesn’t try to escape because she knows it would be pointless.

The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

This is another Night chapter, which are the ones that are more introspective and abstract than the rest of the narrative. Offred recovers from the Ceremony, describing herself as "the sound of glass" and the word "shatter". This could possibly be a metaphor for how fragile she feels in this regime, how she's being used and dehumanized. She wants so desperately to grasp ahold of some small hope of autonomy that all women have lost in Gilead.

She has a flashback to being pregnant with her daughter. She and Luke are lying down to rest during a thunderstorm. She laments the lack of physical affection, calling it a "lack of love". She compares the people she once loved to effigies of saints, illuminated by candles used for prayer. She wants someone to hold. She contemplates masturbating, but regards her sex as "white, hard, and granular" and a "plateful of dried rice". Her body was once her own, thriving with her sexuality, but now self-pleasure is seen as a sin. She compares her body as a "room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in a dust across the floor." This could be a dig at the Commander about his alleged sterility, with the weeds symbolizing something unwanted as weeds are in a garden.

You might notice that for a pronatalist regime, Gilead is certainly not pacifist. The Narrator gives a comparison of the human body rather crudely: "The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more than a jellyfish, drying on sand." She and other Handmaids have been brainwashed into the belief that human life is disposable unless it benefits the regime, which is an oddly counterintuitive attitude for such a pro-life movement. In reality, Gilead's goals are to curb the fertility crisis under their own terms, to increase their power and to ensure their ethnostate prevails. They value boys over girls because they are more potential soldiers to add to the frontlines. They only value girls as means to produce more white babies for the regime and, as we'll learn in the sequel, The Testaments, to provide young child brides for high-ranking personnel to abuse and produce more white babies.

The Narrator experiences cognitive dissonance, believing that Luke has either been killed and left in a field to rot, captured by the regime and held as prisoner, or escaped by the hand of some rebels. She invents an outcome for each scenario, believing in all of them simultaneously because that is how she copes with not knowing. She thinks of the words "In Hope" inscribed on a gravestone, wondering why that would be written for a dead person. It could be a hope that the deceased soul went to Heaven or the people who loved them will see them once again in the afterlife. The Narrator wonders if Luke is still alive and if he still hopes like her that one another survived.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Narrator dreams of being back in her old home and that her daughter runs up to greet her with a hug. She cries because she realizes it's only a dream. This dream fades into another one where she's back in her childhood home, ill and being tended to by her mother. She's remembering both being a mother and having a mother, two lives that have been stripped away from her to be replaced with this oppressed reality. When Offred awakes, she knows she's truly awake but also considers that her oppressors might be drugging her as they did in the Red Center. She quickly rationalizes this notion, realizing that she is fully lucid and not living in a delusion. She posits the following philosophy: "Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes."

Many Handmaids do lose some of their mental faculties due to the traumas of living under the regime, like Janine. Offred's lapses in sanity tend to be the dissociative periods like the abstract Night chapters when she fades into memories of her past life and metaphorical vignettes. The moments between her and her oppressors like the Ceremony and the Commander's advances trigger these moments as well, whether it's to rationalize their actions or escape her body during the institutionalized rape.

Offred considers the embroidered cushion she was given, the one with the word Faith stitched all over it. She feels a thrill in reading, a forbidden action for women in Gilead. She wonders if the cushion is part of a set and if the pillows with Hope and Charity are missing. This is referring to the Galatians: 522-23 verse, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." This is possibly a satirical jab at how certain sects of Christianity value only certain fruits, but purposefully ignore the others. Since Offred only has the Faith cushion, this expresses a statement that Gilead only values faith. The missing Hope and Charity cushions could be a metaphor for how Gilead promotes the image of hope and charity, but in fact, does not give either to the women they enslave. The regime also cherry-picks verses from the Bible, recontextualizing the Scriptures to support their goals. This is why they don't allow women to read in their regime, especially the Bible, because they would ultimately challenge their authority and misleading interpretations of the Bible.

Gilead only appropriates the tenants of Christianity, yet there is no mention of Jesus Christ or the Crucifixion that saved the sins of humanity as a whole. This is intentional, for two reasons. One, Gilead only cares about power, control, and keeping their sex slaves subservient, blaming women for their sinfulness. They don't want to offer true salvation and absolution - they want to use the Old Testament as a tool to establish an androcentric, Caucasian country where men are gods and women are their incubators for the next generation of soldiers and broodmares. Two, the author purposefully leaves Jesus out of their belief system to allegorize the Christian right in the real world who claim to hold pro-life, traditionalist family values, but ignore Jesus' message about forgiveness, tolerance, acceptance, and his warnings about judgmental attitudes, arrogance, and exploitation of the Gospel for political and financial gain.

Offred receives a boiled egg for breakfast and becomes fascinated by the texture and how it seems to glow in the sunlight beam. Eggs are a popular symbol of fertility. She considers that God would look like an egg - white, glowing, and once having the potential for life inside it. "The sun goes and the egg fades." This could be a metaphor for ovulation, how an egg only has a short window of time to be fertilized before dying and being rejected through menstruation. "If I have an egg, what more could I want?" This is a possibly referring to the belief that women should be grateful to be able to bear children and that they shouldn't complain about their freedoms being taken away. "In reduced circumstances, the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects." This is a form of dissociation as well, as living in forced isolation causes the mind to desperately invent meaning in their life. I personally have experienced this when I went to a fundamentalist Christian academy which isolated us in little cubicles for 8 hours a day, none of us allowed to talk to one another. I'd play with my pens and pencils like they were toys and write stories about having friends and boyfriends. The mind gets so mind-numbingly bored doing the same thing over and over again, day after day. It got so bad that I thought about suicide everyday. So, yes, I relate a lot to Offred's plight. Maybe not the assault, but the isolation, emotional, spiritual, and religious abuse, not to mention the tiresome indoctrination.

There is something to break the monotony of Offred's miserable life and those are Birth Days. No, these aren't celebrations of people's longevity, these are parties thrown for the Wives of Handmaids who go into labor (the Handmaid, not the Wife). The Handmaids have specialized transportation called Birthmobiles, red vans with red curtained off windows and carpeted floors with seats in the back which sit six Handmaids at a time. All the Handmaids and Wives are required to go to the house of the birthing Handmaid and Wife. During the ride over, Offred describes the circumstances of fertility as it is now. Keep in mind that Offred learned this from Gilead, so the details could be the brainwashed doctrine. We learn about these things through an unreliable narrator, which is to be expected from a severely oppressed woman who has no way to know things for certain. She learns by the grapevine, both by the Marthas' and Handmaids' gossip.

The fertility crisis was allegedly caused by combination of destructive human activity like climate change, factory-farming, overuse of plant pesticides, pollution of the air and water. There were also exploding power plants caused by earthquakes in the west, which is rumored to be a large source of radiation that sterilized populations near the San Andreas Fault. A rampant strain of antibiotic-resistant syphilis also rendered many sterile or caused miscarriages. Though the incoming Gilead regime used their platform to popularize the alternative explanation of women's liberties causing the crisis. They blamed feminism, birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and consensual sterilization. Once the takeover began, the reasons that women were turned into Handmaids increased, criminalizing divorce and punishing abortions retroactively, both the patients and the doctors who performed them (unless they were fertile). LGBTQ people were rounded up and were either turned into Handmaids, hung, or sent off to the radioactive Colonies to die in workcamps.

Offred posits that the chances of getting pregnant are 1 in 4. She says that the air (supposedly, according to Gilead doctrine) got so polluted that the body became too toxic to carry babies to term and scavengers would die from eating the corpses. This is probably just a scare tactic, though there is real-life scientific basis that water pollution, specifically microplastics, might be reducing human fertility. However, the fertility problems were revealed to be originating in men due to low-sperm-counts. Gilead's doctrine, though, blames women for being "stubbornly closed" and not being "worthy vessels", even outlawing the assumption of men being sterile as to protect the men's egos. Keep in mind that the establishment of Handmaids is more so a show of prestige, manliness, and a false perception of virility than an actual means of saving the human race. More often than not, as we'll find out later in the narrative, Wives employ the help of other men to impregnate their Handmaids.

Offred's been brainwashed to think of her body as a hazard: "A cradle of life, made of bones; and within, hazards, warped proteins, bad crystals jagged as glass." This is suggesting the falsehood that women are inherently fragile and must be protected by men (whom, ironically, are the perpetrators they need to be protected from). She recalled Aunt Lydia's exhaustive lectures about how women "scorned God's gifts" by refusing to have children and getting their tubes tied. Aunt Lydia compares the Handmaids to military forces, fighting against the threat of extinction and immorality. Offred introduces us to the term Unbaby, which is a stillborn or a baby too disabled or malformed to be considered good enough for Gilead's supply of domestic infants. They may consider certain birth defects and developmental conditions like cerebral palsy and autism to be undesired, like Nazis during their occupation and enforcement of racial hygiene laws. Handmaids have a specific term for stillborn babies - shredders. Because their deaths are seen as a failure on part of the Handmaid and the Unbabies are ultimately disposed of.

Offred remembers her indoctrination at the Red Center, being talk about the declining birth rate. Aunt Lydia blames the nihilist attitudes of women - in reality, women that just didn't want children or couldn't afford to raise them - who supposedly refused to have children because there was no point breeding on a dying planet. She calls them lazy sluts. Offred recalls looking down at the letters etched into the old school desks, initials of people declaring their love of someone, carved into the wood, comparing them to prehistoric cave art. "This carving, done with a pencil dug many times into the worn varnish of the desk, has the pathos of all vanished civilizations. It's like a handprint on stone. Whoever made that was once alive."

Offred thinks of how annoyingly pious and condescending Aunt Lydia is, wanting to strangle her. She puts the thought immediately out of her mind, such thoughts being dangerous even inside her head. Aunt Lydia compares the value of women to pearls, referring to a Biblical verse from Matthew 13:45-46: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it." This is objectification, identifying women as commodities rather than people. Offred acknowledges that pearls are "congealed oyster spit". Such items are seen as luxuries, to be seen and worn as jewelry. Handmaids are often symbols of opulence for high-ranking Commanders, because they show status and power.

During these Birth Days, the Handmaids will all file into the room where the pregnant Handmaid will soon give birth. They are there to support their fellow Handmaid and assist with the labor. The Wives are downstairs doing their own similar ritual, pretending that the Wife of the birthing Handmaid is actually pregnant herself. The Wives see the Handmaids as portable wombs and they pretend that they are giving birth to the baby, which is equal parts exasperating and dehumanizing to the Handmaids. They, after all, are not the ones having their bodies invaded monthly and then ripped apart to give birth. They are as much perpetrators in the Handmaids' rape and forced impregnation as their Commander husbands.

Offred remembers watching a film as part of her indoctrination of how pregnant women gave birth back in the days of hospitals, epidurals, and C-sections. Gilead considers these advances in maternity care to be sinful and reestablished the "old-fashioned way" of childbirth. Not only do they believe that drugs are dangerous for the baby, but they believe that women are supposed to suffer to bring children into the world. It's a popular Christian belief that a woman should take her suffering with grace, that it shows good character.

Offred in the novel is not as friendly toward Janine as she is in the Hulu adaptation. She sees Janine as whiny and impudent, which is a part of her brainwashing as a Handmaid. She had to shame Janine as a part of her Handmaid training, which ultimately broke her and shattered her mental state. Offred thinks of the Wives talking about Janine's submissiveness, discussing their Handmaids like disobedient dogs. This infantilization could be satirical dig of pompous, self-righteous church women who perpetuate the misogynistic culture and look down on younger women whom they regard as disrespectful whores. We've heard of toxic masculinity, but there is a culture of toxic femininity as well and not just promoted by men. Female misogynists push forward ideologies of "lady-like" demeanor, like wearing women wearing sensible, feminine, modest clothing; being submissive, attentive, and unintimidating toward their husbands or men in general; showing demure habits like crossing their legs while sitting, curtsying, and not using foul language. Serena Joy is a character inspired by the ultra-conservative Phyllis Schlafly, a woman who worked to dismantle the Equal Rights Amendment, stating that a woman's place is in the home despite still working as an attorney herself. Serena Joy made that dream a reality and is now bitter because she, too, has had her rights stripped away like all the women of Gilead.

Next time, we'll examine chapters 20-23, which will be the continuation of VII - Birth Day. I did only two chapters because there were a lot of themes and motifs to discuss in Chapter Nineteen. Thanks for reading! Hope you'll join me next time to continue my analysis of The Handmaid's Tale.

The Handmaid's Tale belongs to Margaret Atwood. I do not intend any copyright infringement, merely an analysis of the work.

CHAPTER 20

Offred and the Handmaids file into the house where Ofwarren is to give birth. Offred notices the large amount of food placed out for the celebration. It should be noted that in the sequel, The Testaments, food wastage is considered heinous because of the ongoing war slowing supply lines. This extravagance of food denotes the Wife's and Commander's status, especially the coffee and wine. Handmaids are not permitted caffeine or alcohol and have strict diets because of their role as breeding slaves. The inclusion of wine is also interesting because many modern day evangelical beliefs claim alcohol and drunkenness to be sinful. This is a symbol of privilege, a brief glance into the moral hypocrisy of the elite families that supposedly represent the utmost godliness.

While the Handmaid's are helping Ofwarren give birth, the Wives are having a ridiculous parody of the ritual, the household's Wife pretending to be in labor while the other Wives comfort her. The pregnant Handmaid is to be thought of as an extension of the Wife's body. Whereas all the women are overseeing the birth, the Commanders are not present. Offred notes that the Commander of the household is probably awaiting his promotion. In Gilead, Commanders are given promotions based on the children they provide to the regime. The absence of the Commanders is also a social commentary of how men in domineering patriarchal marriages in the real world see the birth and caring for children as a wife's role rather than an egalitarian effort.

Ofwarren is giving birth in the Commander's and Wife's bedroom, notably the same bed where they performed the rape ritual to get Ofwarren pregnant. This is also an expression of Gilead's doctrine, their striving to re-establish traditional values. They reject modern medicine, going back to the days of mothers giving birth in their beds with only midwives attending, and only a doctor if necessary. The Handmaids are not permitted epidurals or any form of pain relief, because Gilead believes that a woman's suffering is necessary to bring forth life.

Offred muses that she almost likes Janine as she relates to her suffering. "After all, she's one of us; what did she ever want but to lead her life as agreeably as possible?" This form of sisterhood is similar among Handmaids because they are suffering in solidarity with the evils of Gilead. The Aunts and other Handmaids are attending to Janine as she endures the contractions. Offred notes that there are twenty-five to thirty Handmaids, which makes one wonder just how big one district of Gilead is. Possibly, this is an area only consisting of the elite families, the most affluent Commanders who have proven themselves in war and in virility. Offred notes that not all Commanders have Handmaids, and that some Wives are still fruitful.

Offred recalls her days from the Red Center, where they were taught lessons from the Bible, or at least, what the Aunts claimed was from the Bible. Indeed, the line "From each, according to her ability; to each, according to his needs" is a bastardized Karl Marx quote, not from St. Paul as the Aunts say. Offred remembers lessons from Aunt Lydia stating that they are a transitional generation. Usually, the term "transition generation" is used to describe people born in the 1990s. Our parents grew up in families where their fathers were the bread-winner, mothers were the homemakers, boys went to war, and girls got married young and had families of their own. We are considered transitional because, most likely, our generation grew up with parents who both worked, divided the house chores among themselves, and boys and girls went to school and then to college instead of war. In Gilead, the Handmaids are not actually the transitional generation - they are the progenitors of the stolen children who will be the generation. Handmaids are considered as commodities, means to an end, vessels to be used until they can't anymore. They likely won't be mentioned in any Gilead Household again after the children are born and forcefully surrendered.

Aunt Lydia's further explanation of Handmaids is also telling, "For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts."

Offred offers her own understanding of the situation, "Because they will have no memories, of any other way."

Aunt Lydia actually says, "Because they won't want things they can't have."

Anybody versed in certain revolutions that happened as a result of people "wanting what they couldn't have" can see the flaw in this logic. For instance, the Romanian Revolution of 1989 was the culmination of a two-decades long snowballing catastrophe sparked by economic turmoil and humans rights violations including the heinous Decree 770 enacted by Nicolae Ceaușescu which outlawed contraception and abortions. Notably, the revolution was most likely perpetrated by the very children the Ceaușescu Regime forced into the world.

Offred recalls attending classes at the Red Center. The women who are forced to go through the Red Center are grown adults, yet the practices of the Aunts treat them like children in daycare. Communal lunches, afternoon naps, and Aunt infantilization of the Handmaids like unruly children are no doubt meant to break their spirit. Offred remembers high school documentaries of third-world countries still using primitive technology to do basic, back-breaking labor that modern technology in affluent countries had simplified years ago.

In contrast to these documentaries, Aunt Lydia showed hardcore pornography. You'd think that an extremist Christian nation would be against the teachings and showings of such things, but they did it to project that these were the common perceptions of women before the Gilead takeover. They taught this in order to show that Gilead shows a far better respectability toward women than who they consider godless heathens, but really, both perceptions are bad. Yes, Gilead might not be subjecting the women to such torturous lengths as cutting them open, but they were still treating women as objects rather than people. Gilead believes that a woman has to have value to exist within their hierarchy and that means that they must either be fruitful, be submissive, and/or be respectful. Even the highest status of Wife is afforded little value in comparison to her Commander husband or potential sons. Boys and men have more value to the regime than girls do.

Offred sees her mother in one of the videos Aunt Lydia claims to be an "Unwoman documentary". An Unwoman is any woman that Gilead insists is undesirable or undeserving of the name "woman". These include (but are not limited to): feminists, college-educated women, infertile lesbians, sex workers, doctors, adherents to other than Gilead religion, and (at least in the novel) women of color. Offred's mother was a radical second-wave feminist and we switch to Offred's mother's monologue, which is likely a projection of Offred's memories. She had a baby despite her and her friends being against any notion that a woman's role was to have children. She recalls several fallings-out with her friends because they kept informing her of the risks of having children after 35 and how hard it was being a single parent...which ironically, seems like things a Gilead-supporter would do. Offred's mother is very headstrong and loves to defy expectations. She's also rather outspoken and sometimes intrusive, ranting at length about her beliefs and the state of feminism. She doesn't like men, stating that they're a "woman's strategy for making other women", which arguably is just as bad as a man claiming women existed to make them sons.

The similarities between Offred's mother's militant feminism and Gilead's anti-feminist rhetoric were implemented on purpose to implement the 1980's real-world alliance between the militant feminists' and the Religious Right's war against pornography and prostitution. Earlier in the novel, Offred recalls an instance of her mother's friends burning pornographic magazines, similar to how Gilead burned books and other media they deemed sinful. It's unsettlingly common for opposing political parties to come together to fight against one issue, then for the totalitarian party to annihilate the other when they are of no further use. This happens because of populism in which political leaders use specific political issues to gain traction, like issues of climate change, inflation, and, in Gilead's case, falling birth rates.

Offred remembers Luke teasing her with stereotypical sexist things and how her mother would playfully and drunkenly rebuke him. She starts into a spiel about how young people don't appreciate things, but it's not the conservative baby-boomer points we're all familiar with. It's how feminists have paved the way for them just to live normal lives. She notes how Luke wouldn't be able to do "feminine" activities like cook or he'd be perceived as gay. Offred notably calls her mother "Mother", as a grown child with resentment might call their mother. Her mother would express how lonely it was for her to be a part of such a movement, even though she had friends. Quite possibly, she couldn't be seen in public due to motions to try to stop the feminist movements was happening. Or maybe she sought a relationship like a romantic partner but it went against her ideals.

Offred lists her grievances against her mother, how she didn't want to vindicate her life for her. She remembers yelling, "I am not your justification for existence!" which is a phrase that definitely comes back to bite her. Even though she feels this way, she expresses melancholy and misses her mother, wanting hopelessly for things to be back to normal.

CHAPTER 21

Offred notes the smell of the room, of flesh, blood, and tears. She compares it to places where animals give birth, where life begins. She mentions the word "matrix". The dictionary definition of matrix is "an environment or material in which something develops; a surrounding medium or structure." In a way, the Handmaids are all matrices for not just the potential for life but the potential for change.

The Handmaids are all a part of the birthing ritual, chanting instructions to help Janine get through her labor. Offred notes that the soft chanting "envelopes her like a membrane" and it's very apt because the process of birthing seems to include all of the Handmaids in sync, like parts of a cell. Offred manages to consult a fellow Handmaid and ask about Moira and the Handmaid actually offers her real name, which is risky considering they aren't supposed to be using their real names now. Nevertheless, Offred considers telling her her name, but Aunt Elizabeth is aware of their missing voices in the chant.

The Handmaids all experience sympathy pains, aches in their breasts, backs, and stomachs, all areas associated with labor pains. Janine beings to go into transition and has to go to the toilet. Offred muses over how its Janine's second baby and how she should know that she's going through transition. "But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind, even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind." It's worth considering that Handmaid who have had children before the Gilead takeover most likely gave birth in hospitals with pain relief.

During the ritual, a Martha shows up to hand the Handmaids grape juice, most likely Kool-Aid or some Gileadean brand powdered drink mix. Offred notes that someone has spiked it with wine and the use of grape-flavored drink mix is particularly significant within this type of setting because it brings the Jonestown Massacre to mind, where over 900 people under the direction of Jim Jones willingly and forcefully drank grape Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide. All the women of Gilead have "drunk the Kool-Aid", whether they wanted to or not.

Janine is ready to deliver the baby and Aunt Elizabeth signals to tell the Wives. The Handmaids all gather around her, feeling the imminent birth like "a bugle, a call to arms, like a wall falling." It's interesting that these terms are used to describe waiting for a birth, because Handmaids are trained to think of themselves as shock troops, the ones fighting the infertility war. This goes to show how much the Handmaids are brainwashed, even the Narrator, because for all her derision of the Aunts' teachings, she's still following their lessons.

The Commander's Wife (of Janine's household) is brought in to sit above Ofwarren on the birthing stool while the latter sits below. The Wife pretends to give birth while Janine actually gives birth, Janine serving as the surrogate womb. Janine is described as glowing "like a moon in cloud", the moon cycle being a longstanding theme of pregnancy and fertility.

The baby turns out to be a girl, which Offred laments, knowing that it's automatically doomed to a forcefully submissive lifestyle. The Handmaids, nevertheless, are happy because they're remembering their own experiences after giving birth. The Narrator remembers her husband's elation at becoming a father, so overcome with happiness that he couldn't sleep. Though, unlike the experiences of holding their own babies, Janine is immediately robbed of this experience as the baby is given to the Household's Wife. All of the Wives surround the bed where the Wife is cradling Janine's baby, Offred noticing that they all look envious. Motherhood to the Wives is now seen as a marking of status and prestige, so it's not just about the Wives wanting to desperately be mothers, it's about their craving for whatever power they can muster in this oppressive society. "The Commander's Wife looks down at the baby as if it's a bouquet of flowers; something she's won, a tribute". These children will be seen as nothing more than status symbols to some Wives, a brief glimpse into the neglectful lives these children will suffer.

The Wife names the baby Angela, for obvious reasons. The Handmaids block this scene from Janine so she doesn't have to witness the injustice of the Wife stealing her daughter. Her only involvement in the child's life will be to breastfeed her and then she'll be shipped off to another Household. The Handmaids celebrate the birth because they are so rare as it is. Offred notes that Janine's ultimate reward for giving birth to a viable baby is to never be declared Unwoman or be sent to Colonies. Considering her future fate of being delivered to another house to repeat the whole miserable rape ritual and possibly have another baby stolen, this doesn't seem like too much of a reward.

The adrenaline high from the birth wears off, their bodies still feeling the pains of sympathetic labor, but having no baby to show for it. "Each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby. What confronts us, now the excitement's over, is our own failure." A Handmaid's ability to conceive is seen as a show of her favor with God, at how worthy and fruitful she is. To fail month after month is seen as not only a failure on part of the Handmaids but a failure of faith. This is the reason Handmaids who have not conceived in three postings are deemed Unwomen and sent to the Colonies.

At the end of the chapter, the Narrator calls on her mother, saying that there's a women's culture, though it's nothing like what she meant. The women's culture Handmaids experience is a forced comradery strengthened through coping mechanisms, solidarity in suffering, and Stockholm Syndrome. The sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, has an early Sons of Jacob Commander explain how they strived to divide women's and men's roles into their own spheres. The women's sphere would still be ultimately controlled by men, but high-ranking women such as Aunts would create the foundation for the Handmaid system, proper feminine education for young girls, and organizing a genealogical archive to track births of children and plan marriages. So, while it might seem like a women's culture, it is nonetheless inspired by the misogynistic, toxic mores of Gileadean men.