The handmaid's tale door Margaret Atwood

SECTION I NIGHT
CHAPTER 1A women's prison? Narrator whispers in the dark, in a dormitory patrolled by Aunts and guarded by Angels
The narrator is one of a group of young women who are being held in a makeshift prison camp in what was once a college gymnasium, controlled by two women gaolers ironically named Aunts, with heavy guard outside. The narrator nostalgically recalls the games and the dances that used to be held here between the 1960s and 1980s. It sounds very like an American campus, which indeed it turns out to be. This is, or was, Harvard University, which has undergone a striking transformation in this dystopian novel. 'Night' recurs as a section heading seven times. It always signals 'time out', when Offred's life is not under glaring public scrutiny and when she can thus escape into her private world of memory and desire. This is a woman's fictive autobiography, but we do not know who the narrator is, where she is, or why she is there. This short introductory chapter manages to evoke not only regimental discipline with the lines of army cots and the Aunts on patrol but also the young women's ability to find ways of resisting the system of control. When the Aunts are not looking, they reach out to touch each other's hands and whisper their names in the dark. The chapter ends with a list of those first names secretly exchanged, and, of course, this raises the question, which one is the narrator's? During the story all but one name is assigned to someone. Could the narrator's name be the missing one, 'June'? In this first-person narrative the narrator is not addressed by any name until Chapter 24. She is then called by her Gileadean name 'Offred', so for clarity this name will be used throughout the chapter summaries. SECTION II SHOPPING
CHAPTER 2Location shift: a Victorian house, a single room, Offred's red costume and her marginal position in the Commander's household. She gets ready to go shopping

The narrator Offred describes the daily domestic routines of the Handmaids, and begins to piece together her present situation, building up her account through short scenes and fragments of memory. There is a narrative shift of location here, and Offred is alone in a single bedroom in an old-fashioned house, where she is virtually kept a prisoner. Her actions seem to follow a prescribed pattern and her old-fashioned red dress and white headgear signal her membership of a group. But who is she and what is she doing 'for the general good', this 'Sister, dipped in blood'? As she goes downstairs to the kitchen Offred describes the layout of the house, which belongs to a mysterious Commander and his Wife, and there are female servants (Marthas) though Offred is obviously isolated from them and excluded from kitchen gossip. Her role seems to be connected with having babies. Other enigmas are introduced here, like the sinister Colonies for the Unwomen and Offred's reference to a man named Luke whom sheremembers with obvious affection. Having been assigned to do the household shopping, Offred receives tokens instead of money from the housekeeper and sets out. CHAPTER 3Off-red's arrival at the Commander's house as his Handmaid and her first meeting with his Wife. Off-red realises who the Wife used to be
The narrative begins to fill in missing details with a flashback to Offred's first meeting with the Commander's Wife when she arrived at the house under charge of a Guardian five weeks earlier. As she walks by herself through the luxuriant garden and hoping not to meet the Wife now, Offred remembers the hostile reception when she had been delivered at her new 'posting'. There is a strong contrast drawn between the two women, one young and dressed in red, and the other elderly and dressed in pale blue. The older woman is powerful and antagonistic, and the younger one is constantly reminded of her subservient position and of the dangers threatening her if she does not obey the rules. There is a strange revelation at the end, for Offred remembers that this Wife was formerly a child television personality on a gospel music show in her own childhood and was called Serena Joy. She also realises that this woman too is trapped like herself in a patriarchal system which rigidly controls all women. This chapter reveals without explicitly stating it that Offred's role in the household is to be a surrogate mother, a Handmaid, bearing a child for the Commander and his ageing Wife. This is clearly not a voluntary agreement but the result of a Gileadean government order. CHAPTER 4 Offred meets Nick and Ofglen. The two women pass the check-point and Offred makes her first small gesture of defiance
Offred continues on her way, past the chauffeur Nick, who is polishing the Commander's expensive black car, to the meeting with Ofglen, her shopping companion, who is dressed in an identical red costume. The two women have to produce passes to go through the checkpoint out to the public way. Looking at the sex-starved young soldiers at the barrier, Offred reflects that Gilead is deeply misogynistic, working through law to censor and if possible prohibit sexual urges in men as well as in women. She makes the point that such repression actually encourages a widespread obsession with sex, and she gives her first small gesture of defiance by teasing the guards, flaunting her forbidden sexuality as she walks away down the road. This chapter switches back into the present. Nick dearly does not toe the Party line, and when he winks at Offred, she senses that here is somebody who is as dissident as herself. By contrast, 0f9len seems totally devoid of personality, but on reflection, Offred decides that this may be out of fear rather than conviction, for the Handmaids are meant to spy on each other. We realis)c that this is a city under siege or at war. Their bizarre walk to the shops presents the odd mixture of familiar and unfamiliar which characterises Gileadean society, where ordinary domesticity and military regimentation exist side by, side. CHAPTER 5Shopping in Gilead. Off-red suffers from double vision. Two significant encounters
As the Handmaids walk to the shops we learn this is a former university town, now the capital of Gilead. Offred recognises it an because she lived here before with Luke, her former husband. We share Offired's condition of double vision where the present shops with their biblical names like 'Lilies of the Field' and 'All Flesh' and the queues for rationed goods and the Econowives all insistently remind her of how life used to be so different in 'the time before'when she was a free woman. She remembers Luke and their young child, and in her loneliness she yearns for them and her old friend Moira. There are two significant encounters here: one where the pregnant Handmaid Ofwarren (formerly Janine, whom Offred recognises from the Rachel and Leah Centre described in Chapter 1) sails into the shop, arousing the envy of the other Handmaids, and the other when Offred and Ofglen meet a group of Japanese tourists. With a shock she realises that their westernised clothes now look as exotic to her as hers do to them. Here the important thematic motif of the double is introduced: Offred and Ofglen are doubles. CHAPTER 6The Handmaids are out walking. They visit the Wall; again Off-red responds with resistance to Gilead's value system
The walk back confirms the sinister transformation of the former university campus as the Handmaids pass the old landmarks and pause to stare at the hooded dead bodies of dissidents (doctors. executed for once performing abortions) which are hanging on the Wall. Looking at the blood-stained head bag on one of the bodies with its 'red smile', Offred determines to try to stay sane under this tyranny by refusing to believe in the distorted versions of reality which Gilead is trying to impose. Notice how the author powerfully builds up the sinister, repressive atmosphere during the walk back. Offred's insistence on distinguishing between the significance of the colour red when it is blood and when it is the colour of flowers, along with her continuing belief in the importance of individuals despite the system, are courageous efforts to avoid confusion which win empower her subversive attitude throughout the novel. SECTION III NIGHT
CHAPTER 7Off-red's secret escape routes as she 'steps sideways' into private spaces of memory
As Offred lies alone on her bed claiming that time is her own, she slips away from her real life into the past, remembering the three most influential female figures in her life in three distinctly separated scenes. There is her adolescent memory of her rebellious college friend Moira, then an earlier childhood memory of going with her mother, an early feminist activist, to a pornographic book burning which must have been in the early 1970s. Most painful of all is her agonised memory of her lost child who was taken away from her by force under the new regime. Offred explains that her storytelling is a survival tool. Even when she is telling the story in her head it is like a letter, a gesture toward communication with others, just as it is her only way to go on believing in a world outside the confines of Gilead. These 'Night' episodes are the dearest evidence that this tale is a woman's narrative of resistance and survival within a system of rigid behavioural controls. At the end of this section, we see Offred as a self-conscious narrator as she draws attention to her storytelling and the reasons why she needs to do it. SECTION IV WAITING ROOM
CHAPTER 8Daily life has its small surprises: Ofglen uses the word 'Mayday' and Off-red's new Commander breaks the rules
Daily life seems to go on as usual; only the weather changes as summer comes in. Yet Offred is alert to minor deviations from conformity. One day when they are looking at bodies on the Wall, Ofglen uses the word 'Mayday (which used to be a distress signal in the Second World War) and Offred wonders what its significance might be in Gilead. Is there a resistance movement here that she does not know about? The second oddity occurs when Offred goes upstairs after shopping and sees her new Commander peering into her room. As she passes him, he tries to look at her face. Both these acts are strictly out of order, and she is puzzled as to what they might mean. Offred's experience is set in a social context. She notices evidence of misery and oppression all around her: in the daily executions of dissidents, the Econowives and the baby's funeral, and closer to home Serena Joy sitting alone in her garden, a victim as Offred satirically remarks of the very ideology which she had formerly helped to promote. Going to the doctor for a compulsory monthly check-up win be the main event in this section (see Chapter 11), but Waiting Room' also includes other examples of 'waiting' and other examples of 'rooms'. This section underlines Gilead's objectification of women as passive sexual commodities, though 'room' also hints at the private feminine space which Offred is beginning to claim as her own inside the regime. CHAPTER 9Off-red claims a room of her own. She discovers her unknown predecessor's secret message written in the cupboard
Back in her room, which she has begun to value as her own private space, Offred thinks back to secret, adulterous assignations with Luke before they were married. Offred sits thinking of her unknown predecessor in this room, who left a secret message scrawled on the wall inside the closet. Though she does not know what it means, Offred keeps repeating it to herself because she is cheered by it and no longer feels so isolated. However, when she tries to find out what happened to the Handmaid before her, nobody in the house will tell her. This is another version of her recurrent motif of doubles in the narrative. CHAPTER 10In her room Off-red thinks back nostalgically to her college days, and watches out of the window

To relieve her loneliness and boredom, Offred sings snatches of hymns and old pop songs to herself (something which is now forbidden by the regime) and looks back with nostalgia to her student days of social and sexual freedom with Moira. She also remembers contemporary reports in the newspapers describing male violence against women, and begins to reassess her old attitude of social irresponsibility, wondering if such an attitude on the part of many women like herself contributed to the present loss of individual freedom in Gilead. As she turns to look out of the window, she sees Nick and the Commander getting into the car. In an upsurge of irritation she wishes she could throw a water bomb down from her window, as she and Moira used to do in their college days. Now her only recourse is to 'faith' as the other two Christian graces of 'hope' and 'charity' (or 'love') appear to be entirely absent from Gilead. Offred hints at her complicated feelings for the Commander. Offred suffers from double vision, obsessed by the contrast between her present life and her lost freedom in late twentieth-century American permissive society
CHAPTER 11Off-red visits the doctor for her monthly check-up: female bodies and women's biological function
At her medical check-up, Offred feels like a dismembered body with only her torso on display and her face hidden behind a paper screen, and the doctor himself is only partially visible, with just the upper part of his face showing above his mask. This objectivity cracks when the doctor offers to make her pregnant, but Offred rejects this offer as being too risky. She also fears that the doctor might be a sexual exploiter and that he may be trying to coerce her into a male power game in which she would be nothing more than a collaborator and ultimately a victim. The Handmaid's visit to the doctor is the focus of this section, with its emphasis on Gilead's essentialist definition of woman as 'twolegged wombs', but because Offred is present only as a female body to be medically checked for reproductive fitness, the chapter is deliberately kept short. CHAPTER 12Off-red takes a bath
Back at the house, Offred prepares for the first sexual encounter with her new Commander by taking a bath. Of course, as she reflects, this is prescribed as a hygienic measure, but it is also a form of ritual purification in a society where sex is associated with sin and uncleanness. Lying in the bath, Offred is overwhelmed by a sense of longing for her lost daughter and recalls an instant when a woman tried to steal her in a supermarket. She is, however, recalled to the present by Cora and the sight of a tattoo on her ankle. As she sits in her room waiting to be summoned, she thinks about keeping her composure, for she knows that her present social identity as Handmaid is one imposed on her, denying all her rights of choice as an individual, reducing her to passivity. Offred is caught in the space between past and present. Offred's final words, What I must present is a made thing, not something born', echo those of the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949): 'One is not born, but rather becomes a woman'. SECTION V NAP
CHAPTER 13Still waiting, Offred slips away from the present into private spaces of her own body, into memory, and into dream and nightmare
Offred remembers one compulsory rest period at the Rachel and Leah Centre when her friend Moira was brought in by the Aunts, and relishesthe memory of Moira's spirited resistance against the brain-washing sessions in which Janine proved herself the most abject female victim. Offred also thinks about her body, though not in the way prescribed by Gilead. Instead, she meditates intensely on her own bodily sensations. Sinking from meditation into sleep, Offred has two of her recurring nightmares, first her dread that Luke is dead, and then her replay of their failed escape attempt across the border to Canada. There were gunshots, Luke disappeared, and her child was dragged away from her in the snow. In this state of anxiety Offred is awakened by a bell and has to leave her room to join the Commander's household downstairs. This chapter has a very complex construction, characterised by the time shifts between present and past, and between waking and dream. The one thing Offred has in her imprisoned condition is a lot of free time, and in this waiting time she escapes her role as passive breeding animal by thinking and remembering. When Offred is thinking about her own body ' it is as though she is exploring her inner space like a dark continent within her. This passage is an excellent example of ecriturefeminine where writing about her body provides the site of Offred's resistance to Gileadean ideology. SECTION VI HOUSEHOLD
CHAPTER 14The Commander's household assembles for family prayers. Offred's resistance: her own name, her first contact with Nick, her memory of her family's failed escape attempt
The household assembles for family prayers in the sitting room. First Offred, then Cora, Rita and Nick come in, followed by the Wife, Serena Joy. The room is presided over by the Wife in her traditional space, though Offred's response to this charade of old-fashioned Puritan values is to emphasise its capitalist underpinnings, and mentally to compare the ageing childless Wife with the withered flowers in the vase on the table. Everyone watches the news on television and although it is only state propaganda we learn that Gilead is a war zone and there are religious and political prisoners and mass deportations following Gilead's racist policies. Offred's form of private resistance is to think about her real name, for she holds on to that mark of her lost identity as a kind of charm in the hope that one day she will have the chance to use it again in a different future. She also recalls more of the traumatic details of her family’s failed escape attempt. In this section we see Gilead's version of patriarchal authority in practice in the home. The Commander's house appears to be the embodiment of traditional family values, though Offred's account exposes this as a charade of sexual coercion, enslavement and political expediency. As Offred explains, 'household' means a house and its male head: 'The house is what he holds'; but there is also her ironic reference to the 'hold' of a ship (probably a slave ship). CHAPTER 15 The Commander enters. Family prayers, and Offred's secret dissent from Gileadean orthodoxy
Finally the Commander comes in and Offred sees him clearly for the first time as he takes the key to unlock the Bible, for he is the only person allowed to read it. She assesses his appearance and his power, though she has her own irreverent techniques for resisting them and putting them into perspective. As the Commander drones on, reading the prescribed texts from Genesis about procreation, Offred thinks back to Moira's first attempt to escape from the Red Centre and how that time she failed and was tortured. At family prayers, Offred refuses to pray and instead she silently repeats the secret message written in her closet, linking her unknown predecessor and Moira as talismans of female resistance to Gilead's sexual tyranny. Offred here tries to visualise what it must be like to be a man with women at his disposal. Even though this is a description of family prayers, the author is building up the emotional tension, with the Wife's crying being treated 'like a fart in church'. CHAPTER 16The impregnation ceremony, which involves Off-red, the Commander and his Wife

The monthly impregnation ceremony (The Ceremony') is described by Offred with deliberate detachment. Offred and Serena Joy are both there on the same bed, as Wives have to be witnesses to this sexual act. Offred and the Wife are holding hands while the Commander has sex with the lower part of Offred's body. As the Wife, with loathing in her voice, summarily dismisses Offred from the room as soon as the Commander is finished, Offred is prompted to wonder which of the two of them suffers more. The Ceremony is a parodic version of Genesis 30:1-3. Her detailed physical description and her ironic comments on the Commander's performance make it plain that this is a prime example of the patriarchal oppression of women, where. violation of one woman has been legitimised with another woman's complicity demanded. CHAPTER 17Off-red's first acts of rebellion: she steals a flower and she embraces Nick in the sitting room in the dark
Back in her room after the Ceremony, Offred feels restless as she gazes out at the moon and thinks of Luke, so she decides to transgress the arbitrarily imposed rules of the household by stealing something. She goes down to the sitting room in the dark where she takes a withered daffodil from the vase, intending to press it and leave it as part of a chain of Handmaids' secret messages. It is on this occasion that she unexpectedly meets Nick, who has come to give her a message from the Commander. In the dark room there is a strong sense of sexual attraction between them, all the more exciting because it is forbidden and dangerous. They embrace unexpectedly and passionately, and it is all Offred can do to drav herself away in order to stagger back quietly to her own room. In this crucial chapter Offred commits her first real act of rebellion. SECTION VII NIGHT
CHAPTER 18Off-red lies alone in bed, tormented by conflicting hopes and fears for her missing husband, Luke. The importance of hope for survival
Back in her room and thoroughly roused, Offred remembers lying in bed with Luke before their daughter was born and contrasts this memory with her present solitary state. She tries to imagine what might have happened to Luke: is he dead, or alive in prison, or did he actually manage to escape? Kept in total ignorance, all Offred can do is to hope; that is the greatest power of resistance which she has. Note the intensity of the image in the first paragraph: 'this sound of glass'. The author has built up a feeling of tremendous tension. SECTION VIII BIRTH DAY
CHAPTER 19The Handmaids go out in the Birthmobile to attend the birth of Ofwarren's baby
The chapter opens with Offred's dreams of being somewhere else with her daughter or her mother, and her desolate awakening in her room as usual. However, her calm is shattered by the unexpected sound of the siren of the Birthmobile, which announces that the time has come for one of the Handmaids' compulsory outings: they have to go to participate in the birth of other Handmaids' babies, and on this occasion it is Janine's. In the red truck on the way to the birth, Offred gives a frightening potted history of late twentieth-century environmental pollution and natural disasters, showing why the birth rate has plummeted, and indeed why Gilead could have come about. Guarded by soldiers with machine guns, Offred and the other Handmaids file into the home of Ofwarren's Commander and his Wife; Gilead dictates that all births should take place at home by natural childbirth methods, in the presence of women only. As Offred notes with some scepticism, Gilead's emphasis on natural childbirth embraces also the idea that the pains of childbirth are women's just punishment for Eve's Original Sin. The system also generates envy and hostility between women, keeping them divided and therefore powerless. This section is devoted to the most significant event in the Gileadean domestic calendar, the birth of a child. Offred's account of Ofivarren's Ganine's) baby is a grotesquely comic mixture of birthday-party celebration and a description of natural childbirth. However, the celebrations are undermined by female rivalries, and in the rest of this section by the attempts of men and women to evade sexual coercion by the state. CHAPTER 20Surrounded by other Handmaids and Wives, Off-red remembers her own mother and gives a brief history of the North American feminist movement
Inside the house of Ofwarren's Commander, Offred's mind slips away from the grotesque natural childbirth performance, as she remembers the Red Centre;s brainwashing programmes with their films about late twentieth-century cultural history and the position of women. In one of the films Offred with a shock recognises her own mother at one of the feminist rallies about pornography and abortion in the 1970s, and she thinks back to her mother's staunch feminist stance as a single parent, wishing that she could have those days of comparative freedom back again. In their combination of pornography and feminist protest, the films present an interesting, if biased, survey of sexual politics of the 1970s and 1980s. CHAPTER 21In this natural childbirth scene, Off-red muses on Gileadean transformations of the feminist phrase, 'a women's culture' Back in the present at the birth, Offred notices the heat and the female smells around her of sweat and blood and she chats with another Handmaid to try to find news of Moira. The baby is born, and attention immediately switches to the Wife who will rear the child, for Janine's duty as a surrogate mother is now done. Thinking back to her own mother, Offred realises how the feminist phrase 'a women's culture' has been appropriated by conservative ideology in ways her mother's generation would never have dreamed of It is an example of the Orwellian abuses of language which characterise the official rhetoric of Gilead. CHAPTER 22Back in her room after the birth, Off-red remembers the story of Moira's first heroic escape attempt from the Red Centre
Returning home exhausted in the late afternoon, Offred tries to raise her spirits by remembering Moira's greatest act of rebellion, when she escaped from the Red Centre by tying up one of the Aunts in the basement and putting on her clothes. As an act of defiance, Moira's escape is wildly exciting to the others, but it is also frightening. Offred clearly recognises the dangers of an absolute system of control where people quickly get used to seeing themselves as victims and begin to lose the taste of freedom. CHAPTER 23Off-red's first secret meeting with the Commander, where they play a forbidden game of Scrabble
Offred has her first secret meeting with the Commander in his study, and it represents a radical departure from the formality of their prescribed relationship. Well aware that it is illegal and dangerous, yet unable to refuse, she is surprised to find that when she walks into the forbidden room she walks back into what used to be normal life. The Commander's request is a strange one in the circumstances: all he wants is that Offred should play Scrabble with him, which she does. In the game she spells out words which refer to her own situation as a Handmaid, revelling in the forbidden privilege of playing games with words. She finds herself feeling sorry for the Commander who, she realises, is just as isolated as she is herself. There is a strong element of narrative surprise in this chapter, which begins with another of Offred's comments on her storytelling andwhy it is that no story can ever recapture the whole truth of human experience. She also makes a significant comment about different kinds of power, clearly distinguishing between tyranny and the power of love and forgiveness. SECTION IX NIGHT

CHAPTER 24Off-red's situation changes, at least psychologically. She is still trapped, but now she begins to laugh at its absurdity
Returning to her room, Offred thinks about her changed relationship with the Commander. With a newly awakened sense of her individuality, her mood is much lighter, and this short chapter ends with Offred's outburst of hysterical laughter. However, her situation is too precarious for her to feel carefree. She realises that she may be tempted into friendship with the Commander and remembers a television documentary about a Nazi war criminal's mistress who refused to believe that the man she loved was a monster. Of course Offred knows that she cannot laugh out loud at the absurdity of her situation, so she goes into the one hidden place in her room, into the closet where the secret message is scrawled, and there she laughs her defiance. The chapter ends with the word 'opening'. The word 'opening' is the signal of the end of Offred's traumatised condition and her opening out to life again. SECTION X SOUL SCROLLS
CHAPTER 25Breakthrough in high summer: Offred's rhapsody of the flesh in Serena joy's garden and her secret meetings with the Commander at night
This chapter opens dramatically with 'a scream and a crash', for Offred has fallen asleep in the closet and Cora, the servant bringing her breakfast, thinks that Offred has killed herself like her predecessor. Offred, however, is more alive than at any point so far in the novel. High summer has come and she walks in the garden, dazzled by its beauty and giddy with desire in the midst of a pagan earthly paradise which celebrates the fecundity of nature. Inside she is beginning to enjoy her illicit evenings in the Commander's study, where they play endless Scrabble games and he allows her to read his collection of out-of-date women's magazines (such as Vogue and Ms) while he sits watching her. Their activities would seem ordinary enough, but in Gilead they represent a breaking of taboos and a transgression of its prescribed pattern of male-female relations. She and the Commander establish something close to an intimate relationship on very traditional lines of the eternal triangle of husband, wife and mistress. This is a pattern that is both confirmed and questioned when Offred asks him to get her some hand lotion, which he does. She then realises that she has nowhere to keep it, so she has to use it in the Commander's study, and he watches her Putting on the lotion with all the hungry pleasure of a voyeur. The recurrent imagery of flowers and gardens is very obvious here, where connections are made between femininity and the natural world in opposition to the polluted world of Gilead. As the relationship with the Commander develops, Offred realises that the freedoms it brings are small, and that it is intrisically circumscribed. CHAPTER 26The Ceremony again: shifts in Off-red's attitude from detachment to emotional involvement
In this chapter Offred becomes aware of the dangers of her friendship with the Commander when the time comes around for the monthly Ceremony. She is now emotionally involved, and this inevitably complicates her relationship both with him and his Wife, for she now also takes the role of his mistress, not merely that of his Handmaid. Through the Commander Offred is beginning to experience feelings of self-worth again. CHAPTER 27Offred and Ofg1en's mutual confessions of dissent; Off-red discovers an underground resistance in Gilead
Another new perspective opens up for Offred as she goes on her shopping expedition with Ofglen. Having passed the church and the Wall and the former university library, now the headquarters of the secret police, they go to stand outside 'Soul Scrolls', the computerised prayer factory. Here as they stare at each other's reflections in the shatterproof windows, Ofglen asks a surprising question which amounts to treason in Gilead, 'Do you think God listens to these machines? 'When Offred answers 'No', they both confess that they are unbelievers, and Offred discovers that Ofglen is a member of the underground Mayday resistance group. This revelation gives Offred a surge of new hope and a sense of life and hope returning as they walk back in the sunshine. The chapter ends, however, with a sharp reminder of the power of the regime they are up against, for as they walk along they see a man being brutally beaten up by the secret police in the street and nobody dares to take any notice. Offred realises the limits of her courage when she admits to herself that she is glad she is not the victim. This chapter contains a dire warning about exhausting the world's natural resources - no sea fish exist any longer. CHAPTER 28How it all began. Gilead's right wing take-over of American congressional government; women stripped of their economic, political and legal rights
Offred thinks about her relationship with the Commander, and, trying to see it as Moira might have done, she realises that there are parallels to her early relation with Luke, for that too was an eternal triangle situation: she was his mistress before she was his wife. She moves from thinking about their married life to remembering her job as a librarian and how she lost it. She then recalls how the Gileadean regime came to power by a violent coup d'6tat and proceeded to implement its policies by stripping citizens of their political and legal rights. Its social policies were specifically directed against women, and married women were forcibly removed from the labour market and returned to the home in Gilead~s effort to bolster the family structure for the moral good of society. What Offred remembers most clearly is her own state of shock, resentment at the loss of her economic freedom and her irrational anger against Luke for still having a job when hers has been taken away from her. In a switch back to the present, Offred sees Nick's signal that she is to meet the Commander again and wonders what Nick thinks of the arrangement. Most of this chapter is a flashback
Note Margaret Atwood's use of the word'job'to convey a number of separate ideas. CHAPTER 29Offred in the Commander's office: she begins to find out
In the Commander's study Offired now feels at ease playing Scrabble and reading voraciously, and on this visit she dares to ask him the meaning of the message in her closet. When he explains that it is a schoolboy Latin joke, she realises that her predecessor must have learnt it from the Commander too and that probably her predecessor's relationship with him had been similar to her own. When he asks Offred if she would like something as a kind of payment for her time spent with him, she reveals herdesire for some factual knowledge beyond the censored newscasts when she says that above all she would like to know what is going on in Gilead. At the end of this chapter, after Offred finds out that her predecessor committed suicide when her relationship with the Commander was discovered, Offred realises that she can now play on the Commander's feelings of guilt. SECTION XI NIGHT
CHAPTER 30Off-red's musings on a summer night: she longs for love, and she pours out her desperation in her version of the Lord's Prayer

It is night again, and Offred, while gazing out of her window, happens to see Nick. Remembering their encounter in the dark sitting room, she feels the same sexual excitement and sense of frustration when a look of romantic longing is exchanged between them. Her mind flicks back from Nick to Luke and their failed escape attempt, and she realises that Luke and her daughter are beginning to seem like fading ghosts. The chapter ends with Offred's saying the Lord's Prayer. Offred says the Lord's Prayer in her own ironic version, deliberately confusing the literal and symbolic meanings of the words as she tries to formulate her own position. Though she tries to cling to the key Christian concepts of forgiveness and hope in the fallen world of Gilead, she is tempted to commit suicide like her predecessor. Finally she gives way to a cry of despair at her own isolation and imprisonment and her fading hopes of release. SECTION XII JEZEBEL's
CHAPTER 31Evidence of women's secret alliances in Gilead: Ofg1en's underground resistance movement and the secret pact between Serena Joy and Offred
Life goes on much as usual for Offred as she moves discreetly between her room and her shopping expeditions with Ofglen. Yet beneath the rules there are signs of women's resistance - not only Ofglen's secret network, but also Serena Joy's surprising offer. One day she calls Offred to her in the garden and actually suggests that she arrange for Offred to sleep with Nick in order to conceive a child without the Commander's knowledge. Offred knows she is being used, but she also recognises that Wife and Handmaid have become conspirators working in secret together to subvert Gilead's rules. To seal the bargain, Serena gives Offred an illegal cigarette and offers to let her see at last a photograph of her lost daughter. This section will contain Offred's account of her night out with the Commander at Jezebel's, a high-class brothel in Gilead. The section will also include many other examples of women's exploitation by, and resistance to, the regime. CHAPTER 32A quiet interlude: Off-red considers her relationship with the Commander on the one hand, and with her hanged predecessor on the other
In her room, Offred does not smoke the cigarette but hoards it and the match as a secret trophy, and sits thinking about her relationship with the Commander. However, she has no doubt about her own powerlessness. She also considers his justification for Gilead's sexual laws as a puritanical response to late twentieth-century North American permissive society as well as his admission that all revolutions have their cost. When she lies down on her bed she feels more afraid than ever as she stares up at the blank space where the light fitting used to be, for she now knows why that space is blank: it was from that fitting that her predecessor hanged herself Identifying with her, Offred has a strong sense of being stifled or already dead. Notice how the author creates an atmosphere of claustrophobia, not only through stiffing heat, but through the fact that Offred dare not voice her thoughts. CHAPTER 33The women's Prayvaganza: in the midst of the mass marriage celebration Offred sees Janine, one of the casualties of the system
Offred is taken on another of the Handmaids' compulsory outings, this time to a Prayvaganza, which is a Hollywood-style extravaganza and prayer meeting to celebrate a mass wedding. This regimented affair is one of the few entertainments for women, and Offred describes it as being like a circus or a theatrical performance. Amid this public rejoicing, Offred is told by Ofglen that Janine's baby girl was destroyed because it was deformed ('a shredder'), and she remembers Janine almost having a nervous breakdown at the Red Centre, from which Moira saved her before trying to escape. The author shows Janine as one of the casualties of the new system. Janine feels guilty at having a deformed baby, for in her world it is better to feel guilt than for life to have no meaning at all. CHAPTER 34Prayvaganza celebrations are accompanied by irreverent comments from the Handmaids
The Prayvaganza focuses on Gilead's New Right ideology as spelt out to Offred by the Commander, according to which traditional male domination over women is justified as God's law and Nature's norm. In Gilead woman is defined by her biological destiny, and romantic love is dismissed as a brief ripple in the history of the human race. The arranged mass marriages between soldiers and daughters of Gileadean officials provide the occasion for laying down the law on woman's subjection and silence, which is endorsed by quotations from the Bible. But the irreverent comments by Offred and Ofglen suggest a general scepticism towards this doctrine. Ofglen reveals that Offred's secret visits to the Commander are known about and tries to recruit Offred into the resistance movement as a Spy
The author shows here that in an authoritarian society, subversive humour is essential for those who wish to remain sane. CHAPTER 35Offred is alone in her room once again and fined with nostalgia for the outmoded habit of falling in love; Serena brings the borrowed photograph of Off-red's daughter
Back in her room again, Offred fills her blank time by thinking of the one element that the Prayvaganza left out of the marriage service: love. She has a long nostalgic digression on 'falling in love' which she is old enough to remember having done herself. Her reverie is interrupted by Serena Joy, who appears with the photograph of Offred's daughter. For Offred, however, this is a new source of grief, since she thinks that she will have been forgotten by her daughter, just as she will be forgotten when the history of Gilead is written. In Offred's reveries about falling in love, she is continually seeing the present through her memories of the past and judging it according to former values. CHAPTER 36Off-red's surprise outing with the Commander
The Commander breaks all the rules by inviting Offred to dress up and go out with him one evening. It is a bizarre enterprise as well as a dangerous one, but Offred accepts, partly because she cannot refuse and partly because she craves some excitement. The Commander produces an old purple satin costume with feathers and sequins plus high-heeled shoes, and he even supplies the make-up and a mirror and a blue cloak which he has borrowed secretly from his Wife. This is an irony not lost upon Offred, who sees herself now as Serena's double. It is Nick who has to drive them on this clandestine outing, but Offred cannot tell whether he approves or disapproves of what she is doing. As they drive down a back alley and hurry through a dark entrance, Offred is left in no doubt of the Commander's attitude, for he ties a label on her wrist and steers her in as if she were an object which he has won or perhaps just rented for the evening. Offred's treat does not appear to bring her new status. Though dressed, at the outset, as a Wife, she is soon asked to play the role of (an evening rental'. CHAPTER 37Jezebel's: Male client6le and the women who work there. Off-red meets Moira again

The place to which the Commander takes Offred is familiar to her because it turns out to be the hotel where she had formerly come with Luke during their affair, but the scenario is oddly unfamiliar, for it is like a film, not real life. Forbidden under Gilead's Puritanical rules, the place is nevertheless run by the state as a brothel for officers and foreign trade delegations, and what it represents are pornographic male fantasies about women. There are women dressed up in Bunny Girl costumes or like devils and femmes fatales; everything is entirely focused on male fantasy and desire. These women are here because they refused to be assimilated as Handmaids, and their only alternative to being sent to the Colonies was to join the staff at the brothel. They are 'professionals' (both in the sense of professional career women and in the sense of prostitutes) but officially they do not exist. Offred suddenly sees Moira, in an outfit even more grotesque than her own. By their old secret signal they agree to meet in the women's washroom, and Offred excuses herself from the Commander, leaving him sipping his drink in the lounge. ‘Jezebel’s’ is an episode which is both comic and bleak. There is a paradox here: it may appear that the Commander is taking Offred out to give her a feeling of freedom, but he takes her to a place where women are at their most debased. However, Offred does get a glimpse of freedom, symbolised by Moira. CHAPTER 38Jezebel's: Moira tells Off-red about her failed escape attempt and how she came to be working in the brothel; Offred reflects on Moira's unfinished story
In the washroom, presided over by an Aunt disguised as a Madame, Offred and Moira manage to tell each other what has happened to them since Moira's escape from the Red Centre. Of course it is Moira who suggests that the Commander brought Offred to Jezebel's' as part of a male power fantasy, and there is plenty of evidence for this feminist analysis. Offred embeds the story of Moira's escape attempt inside her own narrative, partly to celebrate Moira's heroism and that of all the people who helped her get as far as the Canadian border, but partly as an elegy to Moira whom Offred will never see again after tonight. The sad truth is that Moira has not managed to escape from Gilead any more than Offred's unknown predecessor; the most that Offred can do if she survives is to tell their stories of resistance. CHAPTER 39Jezebel's: In a bedroom the Commander arranges a private sexual encounter with Offred; it is a dismal failure
The Commander takes Offred upstairs for what he assumes win be a pleasurable sexual encounter for them both, but it is doomed to failure. A private relationship between Offred and the Commander is not possible, there are too many memories of Luke in the hotel, and Offred also remembers Moira's account of her mother being sent to the Colonies by the Gileadean regime. Consequently she does not want to see him as a naked human being and would prefer the grotesque arrangement with Serena Joy present as well. In bed she feels she has to pretend to enjoy it, both for the Commander's sake and for her own safety, but the encounter is a dismal failure. No private relationship between Offred and the Commander is possible, for the personal has become inescapably political. Offred cannot forget that the Commander represents the tyrannical power which is responsible for her losses and that she is his slave. SECTION XIII NIGHT
CHAPTER 40Off-red's first sexual encounter with Nick: she falls in love with him
Although she knows she is still being used, this time by the Commander's Wife, Offred's encounter with Nick is entirely different and her account of their first love-making is curiously reticent about what really happened. In this precarious situation there is for Offred a further problem of her infidelity to Luke and her ignorance about his fate, all of which is part of the dilemma of human love explored by Offred in her narrative as she tries to maintain her integrity in the face of uncertainty, deprivation and desire. The plot takes a new turn. By contrast to the last chapter,, this one describes Offred's romantic love affair with Nick. She tries to tell it in three different ways, but she admits that none of them is true because no language can adequately describe the complex experience of falling in love. SECTION XIV SALVAGING
CHAPTER 41Dismembered bodies and flowers: Off-red's risky love affair with Nick defies Gileadean tyranny
Offred continues her love affair with Nick. She is totally compromised not only in relation to her memories of Luke, but in her official relation with the Commander and her unofficial relation with Ofglen's resistance movement. She is also in danger of being shot by mistake in the dark. Yet to her, being in love again is like a refuge in the wilderness, and she abandons herself to this crucial human emotion which Gilead cannot wipe out. For the first time she actually wants to stay in Gilead, as long as she can be with Nick. Perhaps to underline the precariousness of her illicit love affair with Nick, Offred embeds it in this most gruesome section of the novel, in which she describes a public execution and an outbreak of mob violence. Offred begins by speculating once more on the function of her narrative, which works both as an eye-witness account and as a substitute for dialogue. Addressing her imaginary reader, she warns that this next part of her story does her no credit, but she is determined to try to tell the truth as she feels that her reader deserves it. The love scenes with Nick are both ambiguous and tender. CHAPTER 42The Salvaging: two Handmaids and one Wife are publicly hanged
The Salvaging is another compulsory outing, this time to witness the execution of two Handmaids and one Wife. Again it is a showbiz event, set outside on the lawn in front of what was once the university library, and it reminds Offred of a graduation ceremony until the proceedings begin. It is not, however, even a show trial, for the women are hanged for unspecified crimes. It is a frightening display of fanaticism presided over by Aunt Lydia in which all Handmaids are forced to become collaborators, for they all have to put their hands on the hanging rope to signify their assent to these killings. The chilling violence of the Salvaging reminds us of the precariousness of Offred's illicit affair with Nick. CHAPTER 43The Particicution: a man accused of rape is torn to pieces by the mob of outraged Handmaids
The Salvaging reaches a horrendous climax in the public slaughter of a man supposed to have been convicted of rape. This 'Particicution' is a dreadful spectacle of female violence, for it is the Handmaids who are encouraged to kill and dismember him. It is conducted by Aunt Lydia who blows a whistle as in a football game. Everyone is overcome by a wave of hysteria and revenge, though Offred notices that the man tries to smile and to deny the charge. Ofglen rushes forward and kicks the man to knock him out, and the chapter ends with Ofglen telling Offred that the man was not a rapist but a member of the resistance movement. Then Janine appears with a smear of blood across her cheek as she drifts away into madness. Offred's own reaction makes her extremely uncomfortable, for the man's terrible death has acted on her like a stimulant, enhancing her own sense of physical survival. Among other things, the author is showing us the brutalising effects of crowd hysteria. CHAPTER 44Off-red's normal fife is shattered by the disappearance of Ofglen and the news that she has hanged herself

Later that same afternoon when Offred goes shopping, thinking that things have returned to what is normal in Gilead, she is astonished to find that she has a different partner and her friend Ofglen has been replaced by someone else (who is now 'Ofglen'). Again Offred feels the threat of risk but cannot contain her curiosity about her friend. She is even more astonished to be told that the former Ofglen hanged herself after the Salvaging because she saw the black truck coming for her. The author has created a feeling of extreme tension here, where not knowing is more frightening than knowing. CHAPTER 45Off-red suffers her worst crisis of despair
The knowledge that Ofglen committed suicide before she could be made to confess and endanger her friends in the resistance brings Offred to herworst crisis of despair. She finds that she is prepared to accept survival at any price and feels for the first time that she has been defeated and overpowered by Gilead. This is also the moment when Serena Joy confronts her with a more personal betrayal, holding out the cloak and the purple costume as evidence of her evening out with the Commander. She also tells Offred that what she did was what her predecessor had done, and that she will meet the same fate. Offred can do nothing except go up to her room alone. Offred's decision to stop fighting brings with it a feeling of relief, only to be snatched away by the Wife's revelation. The plot now gathers pace; it seems to be moving towards a d6nouement. SECTION XV NIGHT
CHAPTER 46Offred's last crisis, a surprising twist in the plot, and she makes her exit
Offred sits in her room in a state of torpid indifference while she considers a variety of possible escapes, but does nothing. This is her worst moment of total despair when she feels as trapped as her predecessor, whose defiance ended in suicide. In fact Offred confirms the thematic motif of the double when she says, 'There were always two of us'. Then comes a break in the text and an astonishing intervention, for suddenly Offred hears the siren of the black van and a group of Eyes led by Nick push open her door. Offred fears that Nick has betrayed her and she is immediately on the defensive, ready to accuse him. However, he whispers that this is Mayday come to her rescue and more significantly he calls her by her real name. This secret which Offred has told him during their lovemaking would seem to be a coded message of reassurance to Offred and to the reader. It is the only hope that she or we have to ding to. So Offred departs from the Commander's house, escorted out by the Eyes like a criminal and ridden with guilt at having let down everyone in the household, who all stand gaping at her in disbelief. Offred has no idea whether she is about to go to prison or to freedom, but she allows herself to be helped up into the van. In the midst of her uncertainty and powerlessness it is a final gesture of trust and faith, confirmed perhaps bythe final words of the novel when light succeeds darkness: 'And so I step up, into the darkness within, or else the light.' This last chapter is very dramatic, both in the sense of being similar to a play (or a melodrama as Offred calls it) with Offred as the character centre stage, and in terms of the surprise twist of the ending as she makes her exit from the novel. The coming of the van, the uncertainty of Offred's destination are echoes of life in any totalitarian regime, from Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany to apartheid South Africa. HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE HANDMAID'S TALE
Flashforward to AD 2195, where at an academic conference Off-red's tale is presented as a historical curiosity
These Notes are a supplement to the story we have just finished reading and they provide a framework for looking back at Offred's narrative from a distant point in the future when Gilead is in ruins and all the protagonists of the story are dead. It is also a view from outside the United States, for this conference paper is being given at a Symposium on Gileadean Studies in Arctic Canada by a male archivist from the University of Cambridge, England. The session is chaired by a woman professor whose name, Maryann Crescent Moon, suggests that she is a member of the Native peoples (like her colleague, Professor Running Dog) who are now evidently in charge of their own educational policies. As well as providing necessary background information, the Notes tell us how Offired's story has survived and why its structure is so fragmented. It was not written down but recorded on cassette tapes which were unearthed on the site of the ruined city of Bangor, Maine. It is a transcription of these tapes, discovered and edited by two Cambridge professors, which we have been reading. Professor Pieixoto cannot identify Offred, partly because her real name was already obscured by the Gileadean patronymic and partly becausehe spends most of his time trying to identify her Commander whose name was probably a pseudonym. He is really much more interested in pursuing an objective' view of history and in analysing Gileadean social theory in a broadly historical context. For all his scholarship he cannot get beyond generalities and fails to tell us what we most want to know, that is, what happened to Offred. This is the last 'reconstruction' of Offred's tale, and incidentally a sharply satirical attack on the methodology and manners of male academic historians. The Notes alter our perspective on Offred, for here she is no longer a living, suffering human being but an elusive anonymous voice whose story is nothing more than an anecdote in ancient history. As readers, we may well object to this distancing technique, which is as reductive of Offred's identity as Gilead's depersonalising of her as one of its Handmaids. We are likely to feel that his historical interpretation misses the point, and that, ironically, his only useful role is as a male Handmaid who has succeeded in bringing Offired's tale to light. If we see the tale as a letter, it is he who finally delivers the message, through transforming 'herstory back into 'history' in the process. However we may be thankful for his scholarly endeavours as, through them, her tale has survived, so that now at last Offred can speak for herself. The final question invites us as readers to participate in interpreting the multiple and contradictory meanings of what we have just finished reading.