The Handmaid’s Tale

By

Margaret Atwood
Manahil Khattak

Key Facts about The Handmaid’s Tale

 Full Title: The Handmaid’s Tale

 When Written: Early 1980s
 Where Written: West Berlin
 When Published: 1985
 Literary Period: Feminist
 Genre: Speculative Fiction / Science Fiction / Dystopia
 Setting: Cambridge, Massachusetts under the dystopian government of the Republic
of Gilead, which has replaced the United States.
 Climax: The Eyes, or maybe the Mayday Resistance, come to pick up Offred
 Antagonist: Though the Commander, Serena Joy, and Aunt Lydia seem to be
Offred’s enemies, the real antagonist is the Republic of Gilead itself.
 Point of View: First person limited

Brief Biography of Margaret Atwood

Atwood is the second of three children. Her father was an entomologist (insect researcher),
and she grew up playing in the Canadian woods. A writer since childhood, she received a
bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a Master’s at Radcliffe College, the
former women’s college affiliated with Harvard. Atwood studied Victorian novels, which she
has said influenced her belief that novels should be about society as a whole, not just about
the characters’ specific lives. She has taught writing and English at many universities in
Canada and the US, and has published dozens of books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction.
Critics tend to acclaim her books, and she’s won major prizes. The Handmaid’s Tale is her
most famous book, and its title and themes are often invoked even in contemporary
discussions about women’s rights and theocracies.

Historical Context of The Handmaid’s Tale

Atwood has written that her research on 17th-century American Puritans, who created a rigid
and inhumane theocracy based on a few choice selections from the Bible, influenced Gilead.
But the novel also responds to the modern political scene in America. The religious right,
with its moralizing tendencies, was gaining power in America as backlash to the left-wing
Free Love and feminist movements. In the 1970’s, Jerry Falwell and other Christian leaders
urged the Republican party to bring prayer back to schools, diminish abortion rights, and
defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, which was meant to support women. The Handmaid’s
Tale shows how religion can be used as an excuse to reduce women’s rights, a political
tendency which continues to occur all over the world.
The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret
Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in
a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has
overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and
one of the "Handmaids": women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the
"Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.

The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female
agency and individuality, suppression of reproductive rights, and the various means by which
women resist and try to gain individuality and independence. The title echoes the component
parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories
(such as "The Merchant's Tale" and "The Parson's Tale"). It also alludes to the tradition of
fairy tales where the central character tells her story. The book has been adapted into a 1990
film, a 2000 opera, a 2017 television series, and other media. A sequel novel, The
Testaments, was published in 2019.

What is a Handmaid?
In the Republic of Gilead, many married couples are unable to have children. The women in
these couples are blamed for the couple’s infertility and labeled ―barren.‖ It is forbidden to
suggest that a man might be sterile. High-ranking infertile couples can be assigned a
Handmaid: a single woman of proven fertility who is duty-bound to have sex with the
husband of a ―barren‖ wife in order to produce children. Sex between husband and Handmaid
is only permitted during the ―Ceremony,‖ a monthly ritual which involves the ―barren‖ wife
as well.

Who are the Eyes?

The Eyes of the Lord—or just the Eyes—are the secret police of the Gileadean regime. They
spy on ordinary citizens, and when they detect signs of rebellion or dissent they abduct the
culprits, torture them and hand them over to be killed by hanging or Particicution. Eyes, real
and symbolic, are a recurring motif in The Handmaid’s Tale. They serve to remind us of the
feminist idea that in male-dominated societies, the way men look at women can be a form of
control and even violence.

Character analysis of Offred

The novel’s protagonist and first-person narrator, Handmaid of the Commander and Serena
Joy, former wife of Luke, and lover of Nick. We never learn her real name (Offred means
―Of Fred,‖ her Commander), and we know little about her physical appearance. She has
brown hair, stands about five foot seven, and is 33 years old. Before Gilead, she had
a daughter with Luke at about age 25. Moira was her best friend from college, and she had a
rocky relationship with her radical, outrageous mother. Though Offred is rebellious, even
violent, in her thoughts, and full of passionate memories, she seems stolid and devout to
outsiders, doing her best to obey Gilead’s laws. Readers may be quick to judge Offred for her
passivity, but her keen observations and honest emotions, even after the terror and
brainwashing that she’s encountered, demonstrate the limitations of Gilead’s power over its
subjects. Offred is the narrator and the protagonist of the novel, and we are told the entire
story from her point of view, experiencing events and memories as vividly as she does. She
tells the story as it happens, and shows us the travels of her mind through asides, flashbacks,
and digressions. Offred is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. She possesses enough faults to
make her human, but not so many that she becomes an unsympathetic figure. She also
possesses a dark sense of humor—a graveyard wit that makes her descriptions of the bleak
horrors of Gilead bearable, even enjoyable. Like most of the women in Gilead, she is an
ordinary woman placed in an extraordinary situation.

Offred is not the crusading hero a reader might expect. After her failed attempt to escape with
her husband and daughter, she submits to her role in the regime rather than endure further
torture or exile. Atwood contrasts her with her feminist activist mother, whose causes Offred
often felt uncomfortable with. Offred tells us herself that her relationship with Luke began as
an illicit affair while he was married to someone else. Although Offred is friends with
Ofglen, a member of the resistance, and feels a thrill at the possibility of someone bringing
down Gilead, she fears joining it herself. In her affair with Nick, too, Offred becomes
absorbed by a physicality and autonomy that Gilead has denied her, and she turns away from
participating in Ofglen's plans. When the possibility of escape finally comes at the end, it
comes through Nick, rather than a plan Offred puts in place herself. Offred's inertia shows
how an oppressive regime like Gilead can destroy most people's ability to resist it.

The Commander Character Analysis

The Commander poses an ethical problem for Offred, and consequently for us. First, he is
Offred’s Commander and the immediate agent of her oppression. As a founder of Gilead, he
also bears responsibility for the entire totalitarian society. In person, he is far more
sympathetic and friendly toward Offred than most other people, and Offred’s evenings with
the Commander in his study offer her a small respite from the wasteland of her life. At times,
his unhappiness and need for companionship make him seem as much a prisoner of Gilead’s
strictures as anyone else. Offred finds herself feeling some amount of sympathy for this man.
However, both Offred and the reader recognize that if the Commander is a prisoner, the
prison is one that he constructed and that the prison he's created for women is far worse. As
the novel progresses, we come to realize that his visits with Offred are selfish rather than
charitable. They satisfy his need for companionship, but he doesn’t seem to care that they put
Offred at terrible risk. We know that the Commander is aware of this risk, since the previous
Handmaid hanged herself when her visits to the Commander were discovered. The
Commander’s moral blindness, which is apparent in his attempts to explain the virtues of
Gilead, is highlighted by his and Offred’s visit to Jezebel’s. The club, where the elite men of
Gilead are allowed to have recreational and extramarital sex, reveals the rank hypocrisy that
runs through Gileadean society. Offred’s relationship with the Commander is best
represented by a situation she remembers from a documentary on the Holocaust. In the film,
the mistress of a brutal death camp guard defended the man she loved, claiming that he was
not a monster. ―How easy it is to invent a humanity,‖ Offred thinks. In other words, anyone
can seem human, and even likable, given the right set of circumstances. But even if the
Commander is likable and can be kind or considerate, his responsibility for the creation of
Gilead and his callousness to the hell he created for women means that he, like the Nazi
guard, is a monster.
Serena Joy Character Analysis
Though the Commander's wife, Serena Joy, had been an advocate for "traditional values" and
the establishment of the Gileadean state, she is bitter at the outcome. She is confined to her
home and forced to take in a Handmaid to try to conceive a child with her husband. Serena’s
obvious unhappiness means that she teeters on the edge of inspiring the reader's sympathy,
but she forfeits that sympathy by taking out her anger on Offred. Serena Joy seems to possess
no compassion at all for Offred. She can see the difficulty of her own life, but not that of
another woman. The climactic moment in Serena’s interaction with Offred comes when
Serena arranges for Offred to sleep with Nick. Serena is willing to break the rules to help
Offred get pregnant, which may seem generous, but Serena benefits from Offred’s pregnancy
because it will be her baby after it's born. Furthermore, Serena’s offer to show Offred a
picture of her lost daughter if she sleeps with Nick reveals that Serena has always known
where Offred's daughter was. Not only has she cruelly concealed this knowledge, but she
exploits Offred’s loss of a child to try to obtain a child of her own. Serena’s lack of sympathy
makes her the perfect tool for Gilead’s social order, which relies on the willingness of women
to oppress other women. She is a cruel, selfish woman, and Atwood implies that such women
are the glue that binds Gilead.

Moira Character Analysis

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

Luke Character Analysis

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

Aunt Lydia Character Analysis

Offred often remembers—and quotes—one of the Aunts responsible for Offred’s ―re-
education‖ at the Red Center. Aunt Lydia is one of the least likable faces of the Gileadean
regime. Armed with a cattle prod, she is responsible for some of the most misogynistic
statements in the novel, and also some of the most extreme distortions of religious ideas. For
example, when she warns Offred and the other Handmaids to be careful of Wives, Aunt
Lydia says: ―Forgive them, for they know not what they do‖—quoting Jesus on the cross. She
then adds, ―You must realize that they are defeated women,‖ because they have been unable
to bear children (Chapter 8). By making a woman an especially hateful representative of the
Gileadean government, the novel suggests that women are complicit in sustaining the male-
dominated regime. The ―Historical Notes‖ section states this idea outright: ―when power is
scarce, a little of it is tempting.‖ However, the ―Notes‖ section also offers a more sympathetic
explanation for the motives of the Aunts. By joining the Aunts, women ―escape redundancy,
and consequent shipment to the infamous colonies.”
Nick Character Analysis
Nick is a Guardian assigned to the Commander’s home, although he lives in a private studio
in the carriage house as opposed to the main house, which gives him a relative degree of
privacy and independence compared to Offred and the Marthas. Nick’s main roles in the
household are chauffeuring the Commander and helping to tend to Serena Joy’s garden. He
appears to be somewhat low status, considering he has not been given a wife, but his relaxed,
confident behavior strikes Offred as out of place for a man in a servile position.
Consequently, Offred is both intrigued by and suspicious of Nick. On the one hand, Nick’s
flirtatious interactions with Offred suggest that he might not be a true believer, and that he
could be exhibiting subtle rebellious behaviors in Offred’s company to show her that he has
not been brainwashed by Gilead. However, on the other hand, Offred is terrified that Nick’s
nonchalance stems from the fact that he is secretly an Eye, and that he may deliberately be
testing Offred by initiating forbidden encounters to sniff out insurgents. Like Ofglen, Nick’s
character exhibits how successful Gilead has been in creating a state of terror, in which it is
exceedingly difficult for citizens to parse whether their companions are trustworthy.

Nick and Offred have a brief romantic encounter even before Serena Joy meddles in their
relationship, which thrills the lonely and touch-starved Offred. However, after Serena Joy
gives her initial permission for Nick and Offred to secretly have sexual intercourse in the
hopes of impregnating Offred, the two begin a genuine affair. Nick seems to share an
unspoken understanding of and sympathy for Offred’s need for sex and physical affection,
but he also makes it clear that they are not to form a romantic bond. Nick’s hesitancy to
cultivate any sort of emotional intimacy with Offred suggests that, despite the leniency he
enjoys as a male in Gilead’s patriarchal order, he’s afraid of taking too many risks. He’s
already risking his life and his good standing with the Commander by carrying out an illicit
affair with Offred – falling in love with her would make him vulnerable to Gilead’s tactics of
using the attachment between partners and family members to control people’s behaviors via
threatening, torturing, or killing their loved ones should they fail to comply with the regime.
Despite this, Nick does appear to care for Offred to a meaningful extent, considering that he
procures an escape method for her after Serena Joy discovers her forbidden nighttime
escapades with the Commander. Nick’s assistance in Offred’s escape no doubt puts him at
great personal risk. Although, there’s also the possibility that Nick is an Eye, and that he isn’t
helping her at all, but rather luring her into even greater danger. The novel’s epilogue reveals
that Offred at least made it to the Canadian border, which would imply that Nick did in fact
aid in her escape from Gilead. This information suggests that Nick may have secretly been a
rebel, and that he was exceedingly intelligent and patient, managing to ingratiate himself with
a powerful family and work against Gilead from the inside without ever bringing suspicion
on himself.

Ofglen Character Analysis

Ofglen is another Handmaid, belonging, as her name suggests, to a Commander named Glen.
In Gilead, Handmaids are forbidden from traveling alone, and, as such, the administration
pairs Handmaids together so that they may accompany each other on daily errands.
Additionally, the pairing of Handmaids also results in a citizen-administered surveillance
system, in which both women must adhere to Gilead’s rules or potentially face being reported
on by their fellow Handmaid. This system prevents insurgent and radicalizing discourse
between Gilead’s disenfranchised women. When Offred first meets Ofglen, she is unsure of
the other woman’s allegiance. Both women are cautious with their conversation, and when
they stop at the wall to view the bodies of executed rebels, Offred is uncertain if Ofglen is
crying for the dead or celebrating the punishment of the treasonous. Eventually, through
small hints and exchanges, however, Ofglen reveals to Offred that she is part of an
underground rebel group inside Gilead, denoted by the word ―Mayday.‖

After Ofglen reveals herself to Offred, her character changes immensely. She shows herself
to be a sharp mind and devoted rebel and pushes Offred to join the cause. It’s unclear how
Ofglen obtains her information, but she shares several useful and enlightening tidbits, such as
that Offred’s Commander is a particularly powerful figure in Gilead’s hierarchy, and that the
man offered up to the Handmaids at the Salvaging is not a violent rapist deserving of death at
the hands of a mob but rather a member of the resistance. Ofglen hopes that Offred will use
her proximity to the Commander to spy for the resistance, but becomes increasingly
disappointed at Offred’s refusal. Ofglen’s determination and rebellious nature stand in some
contrast to Offred’s more submissive and cautious personality. While Offred hates Gilead,
and often has the urge to rebel, her main instinct is to survive, which means she hesitates to
take risks. On the other hand, Ofglen’s instinct is to fight, and she is clear-eyed and practical
when it comes to the personal sacrifices she may have to make. Indeed, near the end of the
novel, Offred learns that Ofglen, having been found out by the Eyes, has hanged herself to
avoid being tortured and forced to reveal rebel information. Her death marks a horrifying and
depressing transition for Offred, who, despite her reticence to join the cause, found a taste of
hope and rebellion through Ofglen’s ties to the resistance. Without Ofglen, Offred’s
connection to this hope is greatly reduced.

Janine Character Analysis

Janine is one of the women that Offred lives with at the Rachel and Leah Center, where they
receive their Handmaid training in the early days of Gilead. Offred dislikes Janine, who has a
weak personality that makes her the target of bullying from the Aunts and Handmaids alike.
While Offred and her peers would likely never have blamed a woman for being raped before
the creation of Gilead, Janine is subjected to vicious verbal attacks and shaming after she
admits she was sexually assaulted years earlier. Prompted by Aunt Lydia, the women
participate in shaming Janine through a religious context, chanting that her impious dress and
actions caused the rape to occur. However, while some of the women may indeed be truly
radicalized by Gilead, Offred’s bullying of Janine is not rooted in religious bigotry but rather
in her need to simply take out her rage and pain on another human being. To show these
emotions in any other context would be dangerous, so she shows them in a way that is
acceptable to Gilead’s regime. Of course, Janine’s treatment is unfair – she is a victim of the
regime, and she is further victimized when she becomes a scapegoat who absorbs the misery
of her female peers.

To avoid shaming, Janine quickly admits that her rape was her fault, prompting praise from
Aunt Lydia. This reaction teaches Janine that she can survive the Rachel and Leah Center by
becoming an exemplary student and capitulating to anyone who shows authority over her.
However, she exhibits a few worrying behaviors, including dissociative episodes where she
believes she’s still working as a waitress in the former world. Years later, Offred recognizes
Janine as Ofwarren, and remains frustrated and annoyed by Janine’s continued simpering
obedience to the regime. However, Janine’s pregnancy has heightened her status in the
community and given hope to the other Handmaids. When the baby is born, Janine seems to
have won herself a safe, permanent place in the hierarchy of Gilead. Her hopes are soon
crushed when the baby dies weeks later, and Janine is reassigned to a new family, expected to
begin another pregnancy despite the physical and emotional toll she has just endured. Toward
the end of the novel, Offred interacts with Janine at the Salvaging, and finds her in another
dissociative state. Janine’s mental imbalance will likely see her sent to the Colonies to
perform labor with the other Unwomen until she dies.

Janine serves as a mirror to Offred and the other Handmaids. They hate her because she
reflects what they’ve all had to become to survive in Gilead: meek, submissive, terrified,
performative, and self-hating. There is little evidence to show us that Offred is significantly
braver, more assertive, or more rebellious than Janine, which makes her disgust of Janine’s
weakness baffling. Just as the reader may sometimes be frustrated with Offred’s passiveness
and submission, so too is Offred frustrated with these same traits in Janine, unwilling to
admit that she is no better.

Cora Character Analysis

Cora is one of the Marthas, working as a house maid for the Commander and Serena Joy. A
meek and quiet person, she interacts mainly with Rita, the house cook, who is also a Martha.
Rita is bristly and looks down on Handmaids, and Cora generally submits to Rita’s
preferences by avoiding Offred. However, Cora is an undoubtedly kind person who values
peace and compromise, and over the course of the novel, she becomes increasingly
sympathetic to Offred. However, the two never become friends – the hierarchical structures
of Gilead discourage mingling between classes, and for their own survival, Marthas and
Handmaids often stick to communicating only with their own. Cora is traumatized by the
previous Handmaid’s suicide and is horrified when she finds Offred asleep in the wardrobe
one morning, thinking that Offred has met the same fate. For Cora, Offred’s presence in the
household represents hope. Just like Offred, Cora has had her autonomy, family, and
intellectual life stripped from her. As a low-status, infertile woman, her only use in Gilead is
as a domestic laborer. Like many of the women in Gilead, Cora sees children as the only
remaining way to find happiness. The only brightness in her difficult, constrained life is the
possibility of a child in the home, which she would have a hand in raising. As such, she is
often kindest to Offred when her chances of pregnancy are at their highest.

Offred's Mother Character Analysis

Offred’s mother is an assertive woman, a single mother, and a committed radical feminist.
Her life revolves around contributing to feminist activism. One of Offred’s childhood
memories of her mother is being invited to participate in a book burning, in which Offred’s
mother and a group of adult women throw magazines featuring degrading pornographic
images of women onto a bonfire. As Offred matures into a young woman, her mother
remains consistent with her activism and principles. She tells Offred that she isn’t interested
in having a long-term romantic relationship with a man, as she has been repeatedly
unsatisfied by male partners in the past. Her disappointment in men includes Offred’s father,
who, although charming and attractive, was immature and woefully unprepared to take on the
responsibilities of fatherhood. Although Offred and her mother have a good relationship, her
mother does make occasional wry complaints about Offred’s lack of interest in feminism.
Offred’s mother and Moira, Offred’s dynamic and confident best friend, seem to have more
in common with each other than they do with the apolitical Offred.

Offred’s mother symbolizes the type of woman Offred failed to be in her previous life and
continues to fail to be in her new role in Gilead. Offred’s mother would never have fallen for
a married man, and, unlike Offred, she would have acted on her suspicions that Luke enjoyed
Offred’s newfound reliance on him rather than letting it go for the sake of survival.
Furthermore, Offred’s mother would have immediately joined the resistance. While Offred is
given the chance to spy on her Commander for the rebels, she refuses to do so in order to
protect her relationship with Nick, who she hopes to continue seeing in secret. Offred’s
mother, on the other hand, would never have chosen a man over the possibility of freedom
and would have fought for her own liberation, even at risk of losing her life.

Offred's Daughter Character Analysis

Offred’s daughter is around five years old when Gilead launches its takeover of the United
States. She appears only in Offred’s memories, and she symbolizes the most important things
that were lost in the creation of Gilead and the destruction of the former world. Although
Offred and Luke try to smuggle their family into Canada, they are caught, and Offred’s
daughter is confiscated. The details of her fate are never fully revealed, but the novel
confirms that Offred’s daughter was given to a high-status family to raise as their own. At
eight years old, she would have been brought up for several years in the faith, and likely
would have lost most, if not all, memories of her true mother.

Offred’s daughter fulfills two symbolic roles in Offred’s life. On the one hand, she is a
symbol of hope: the possibility that she is still alive and being raised in Gilead gives Offred
the strength to survive. If she lives, she might one day be reunited with her daughter – this is
the only hope that Offred has, since she knows that Luke is likely dead or in the Colonies,
never to be seen again. On the other hand, Offred’s daughter is also a symbol of slavery and
loss. If she is still alive, she has been brainwashed by Gilead to consider herself inferior, and
to believe her only purpose in life is being a submissive wife and ready womb. Additionally,
Offred’s daughter is also an eternal threat held over Offred’s head. As mentioned in the
lecture at the end of the novel, Gilead exerted control even over escaped refugees by hurting
loved ones who are still trapped in Gilead. Escapees who shared the dark truth of their
experience in Gilead were sent body parts of their family members, and, as such, future
escapees avoided publicly criticizing Gilead. If Offred did manage to escape Gilead at the
end of the novel, it’s possible that her daughter bore the punishment for her mother’s
transgressions.
THEMES

Women’s Bodies As Political Instruments

Because Gilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by dramatically decreased
birthrates, the state’s entire structure, with its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy,
is built around a single goal: control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on
by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women
cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become
subversive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands or the state. Despite all of
Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated
as subhuman. They are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries
and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before
Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of
flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to
deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the next
generation.

Language As A Tool Of Power

Gilead creates an official vocabulary that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs
of the new society’s elite. Having made it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a
system of titles. Whereas men are defined by their military rank, women are defined solely by
their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. Stripping them of permanent individual
names strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated
as subhuman, denoted by the terms ―Unwomen‖ and ―Unbabies.‖ Black people and Jewish
people are defined by biblical terms (―Children of Ham‖ and ―Sons of Jacob,‖ respectively)
that set them apart from the rest of society, making their persecution easier. There are
prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall
under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as
―Prayvaganzas,‖ ―Salvagings,‖ and ―Particicutions.‖ Dystopian novels about the dangers of
totalitarian society frequently explore the connection between a state’s repression of its
subjects and its perversion of language (―Newspeak‖ in George Orwell’s 1984 is the most
famous example), and The Handmaid’s Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its
control over women’s bodies by maintaining control over names.
The Causes Of Complacency
In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure oppression willingly as long as
they receive some slight amount of power or freedom. Offred remembers her mother saying
that it is ―truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few
compensations.‖ Offred’s complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the
truth of this insight. Her situation restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former
life allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her
former existence. The physical affection and companionship become compensation that make
the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes
when Ofglen asks her to gather information about the Commander. Women in general
support Gilead’s existence by willingly participating in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian
state. While a woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises
authority within her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred. She
jealously guards what little power she has and wields it eagerly. In a similar way, the women
known as Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean state. They
indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and
generally serve the same function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule.
Atwood’s message is bleak. At the same time as she condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts,
and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those did stop complying,
they would likely fail to make a difference. In Gilead, the tiny rebellions or resistances do not
necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck rather than resistance.

Complicity

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

Seeing
The Handmaid’s Tale draws on the feminist idea that in a male-dominated society, the way
men look at women is a form of control and even violence. Offred’s ―white wings‖ (Chapter
2) severely limit her own ability to see. Meanwhile, she constantly feels observed—and
threatened—by eyes. She sees the patch of plaster in her bedroom ceiling as a ―blind plaster
eye‖ and the convex mirror on the stairs as a ―fisheye‖ (Chapter 17). The secret police of the
Gileadean regime are known as the ―Eyes,‖ and their emblem, a winged eye, is painted
everywhere. Offred thinks of these eyes as male, even comparing eyes to penises and penises
to eyes, for instance when she describes the Commander’s penis as a ―stalked slug’s eye‖
(Chapter 15). However, while the novel endorses a feminist concept of the way men look at
women, it also warns that feminist concepts alone don’t offer protection from male
domination. The only character who outright states the idea that the way men look at women
can be a form of violence is Aunt Lydia. ―'To be seen—to be seen—is to be'—her voice
trembled—'penetrated.'‖ (Ch. 5). Aunt Lydia’s quote suggests that even feminist concepts can
be co-opted and used to oppress women.
Reproduction
The Handmaid’s Tale argues that legally controlling women’s reproductive freedom is
morally and politically wrong. The suffering of Offred and the other Handmaids is directly
caused by the Gileadean state’s desire to own and control women’s fertility. Certain details
link Gilead’s goal of controlling women’s reproductive function with the political goals of
the 20th century U.S. religious right. For instance, Gilead executes doctors known to have
performed abortions. At the same time, one of the causes of the sharply declining birthrate in
Gilead is the number of women who have chosen to become infertile. The Handmaid’s
Tale argues that women’s reproductive function can be a form of wealth, a ―national
resource‖ (Chapter 12), in order to warn us that figures in power will always be tempted to
control women’s bodies.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and
inform the text’s major themes.

Rape And Sexual Violence

Sexual violence, particularly against women, pervades The Handmaid’s Tale. The prevalence
of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment
of the new order. The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in
Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official
penalty for rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a
supposed rapist (actually a member of the resistance). Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress
sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it, as we see at Jezebel’s, the club that provides
the Commanders with a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite. Most important,
sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which
compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders.

Religious Terms Used For Political Purposes

Gilead is a theocracy—a government in which there is no separation between state and
religion—and its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical
references. Domestic servants are called ―Marthas‖ in reference to a domestic character in the
New Testament; the local police are ―Guardians of the Faith‖; soldiers are ―Angels‖; and the
Commanders are officially ―Commanders of the Faithful.‖ All the stores have biblical names:
Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names
like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people,
ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an
ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible
itself. Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan ―God is a
National Resource‖ predominates.

Similarities Between Reactionary And Feminist Ideologies

Although The Handmaid’s Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary
attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities
between the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offred’s mother. Both groups
claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves willing to restrict
free speech in order to accomplish this goal. Offred recalls a scene in which her mother and
other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of Gilead, these feminists ban some
expressions of sexuality. Gilead also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and
―sisterhood‖ to its own advantage. These points of similarity imply the existence of a dark
side of feminist rhetoric. Despite Atwood’s gentle criticism of the feminist left, her real target
is the religious right.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
Cambridge, Massachusetts

The center of Gilead’s power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, but a number
of clues mark it as the town of Cambridge. Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and
Massachusetts as a whole were centers for America’s first religious and intolerant society—
the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this history with
the ancient Puritan church that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the novel, which Gilead has
turned into a museum. The choice of Cambridge as a setting symbolizes the direct link
between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt harshly with
religious, sexual, or political deviation.

Harvard University
Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s
secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college,
and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library.
Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created: a place that was
founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial
of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand.

The Handmaids’ Red Habits

The red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the
caste’s primary function. Red suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At
the same time, however, red is also a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back to the
scarlet letter worn by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of Puritan
ideology. While the Handmaids’ reproductive role supposedly finds its justification in the
Bible, in some sense they commit adultery by having sex with their Commanders, who are
married men. The wives, who often call the Handmaids sluts, feel the pain of this sanctioned
adultery. The Handmaids’ red garments, then, also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of the
Handmaids’ position in Gilead.

A Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a document on which old writing has been scratched out, often leaving traces,
and new writing put in its place; it can also be a document consisting of many layers of
writing simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center as a palimpsest,
but the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead. The old world has been erased and replaced,
but only partially, by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead days continue to infuse the
new world.

The Eyes
The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye,
symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy,
the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same.

The Handmaid's Tale Antagonist

The novel’s antagonist is the oppressive regime of the Republic of Gilead. The Gileadean
state denies Offred’s personhood, treating her instead as a ―national resource‖ (Chapter 12).
The novel draws on the tools used by real, historical totalitarian regimes to deny personhood
to their citizens. Gileadean law determines what Offred must do, who she must sleep with,
where she must live, who she can talk to, even what she must wear. However, the novel also
suggests that these tools are used in contemporary life in the United States, albeit in a milder
form, to deny women full personhood. Offred remembers being restricted in the past—that is,
in the late 20th century—by fear of sexual assault and the obligation to wear women’s
clothes. In this sense, the novel’s true antagonist is the political domination of women by men
in general. The Handmaid’s Tale suggests that gender norms in our own society are not as far
removed from Gileadean totalitarianism as we might like to think. On the contrary, the novel
argues that contemporary gender norms are a mild form of Gilead’s totalitarianism.
The Handmaid's Tale Setting
The Handmaid’s Tale imagines that some time in the near future of our own world, a political
group called the Sons of Jacob has overthrown the U.S. government and created a new
country, the Republic of Gilead. Gileadean law is loosely based on an extremist reading of
the Old Testament, and it is extremely oppressive. Black Americans have been forcibly
removed from their homes and relocated to ―Homelands.‖ Women are not allowed to work,
possess property of their own, or read. Sex outside marriage is strictly forbidden. Due to
environmental deterioration and other factors, many Gileadeans are unable to reproduce.
Officially, Gileadean women are blamed for this, and labeled ―barren.‖ It is illegal even to
suggest that men can be infertile. In order to address the declining birthrate, the Gileadean
government offers a choice to women of proven fertility who have committed crimes, such as
sex outside marriage. These women can either go to the Colonies—effectively a death
sentence—or they can choose to become ―Handmaids.‖ Handmaids are required to have sex
with the husband of a ―barren‖ wife, and to give any resulting children to the couple.
Most of the action of the novel takes place in the home of the Commander, a high-ranking
official of the Gileadean regime. To Offred, the Commander’s home is virtually a prison,
where she feels watched all the time. She describes a patch of plaster in the ceiling of her
bedroom as a ―blind plaster eye‖ and the mirror on the stairs as a ―fisheye‖ (Chapter 17).
Beyond the walls of the house, however, the garden serves as a constant reminder of the
powerful forces which the Commander and his government have tried to suppress: ―There is
something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things bursting
upwards‖ (Chapter 25). The Commander’s house is in the vicinity of what was once Harvard
University, and the novel uses this recognizable setting to emphasize how quickly and easily
the U.S. has been overrun by totalitarian forces. The old buildings are all still in use: the
former university library is now the home of the Gileadean secret police.

The Handmaid's Tale Genre

The Handmaid’s Tale is primarily an example of speculative fiction because it imagines an

alternate world not far removed from our own. In the novel, Atwood satirizes the various
trends she observed in the 1980s: poor treatment of women, disease and infertility, and the
corruption of religion. By imagining a near-future not far removed from our own world, The
Handmaid’s Tale explores the possible consequences of existing trends. For instance, the
novel depicts what would happen if contemporary society’s increasingly permissive attitude
to sex and sexuality provoked a severe backlash, favoring political factions who believe in
the repression and control of women’s sexuality. The Handmaid’s Tale suggests that the rise
of the religious right, together with a declining birth-rate, could produce a totalitarian regime
in the United States.

Manahil Khattak.
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