What’s in it for me? Discover a complex feminist work
Every so often, a novel comes along that is so timely and incisive that it seeps into the wider cultural imagination. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is one such novel. This story of a futuristic patriarchal dystopia, Gilead, and of one woman’s struggle to break free from its oppressive, dehumanizing structures, has emerged as a modern classic.
Now a popular television series of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale has increasingly become a powerful symbol of women’s real-world oppression as well, and the red-robed Handmaids of Gilead have frequently jumped from the pages of Atwood’s novel to protest movements across the globe.
Beyond the red robes, though, lies a compelling and complex story of totalitarianism, misogyny, and resistance. In this Blink, we’ll guide you through a brief summary of all the major plot twists of this modern classic, and we’ll end each section with a brief analysis of some of the main themes.
So, with that, let’s dive in.
Gilead – a dystopia with real-world roots
Welcome to Gilead.
It wasn’t always known by that name, though. Formerly, it was the United States of America. But in the early 2000s, the US government was overthrown by a religious fundamentalist group called the Sons of Jacob. After their successful coup, the Sons of Jacob established their own theocratic dictatorship: the Republic of Gilead.
The citizens of Gilead are bound by many rules. They must dress, behave, and even speak in certain ways – rather than hello, citizens greet each other with “Blessed be the Fruit” or “Under his Eye.” Most of all, they must never venture past the Wall, a tall red brick structure that separates Gilead from the outside world.
For the most part, the citizens of Gilead follow these rules. After all, the Eyes – the secret police – are everywhere, eager to report infractions – and any infraction is met with harsh punishment. Rule-breakers could be exiled to the Colonies, tracts of territory that have been polluted with radioactive waste. Or they could be executed and their bodies hung from the top of the Wall as a warning to others.
But the citizens whose lives are most circumscribed are women. In Gilead, women are sorted into several different classes.
Wives are the most powerful class of women – they’re the spouses of high-ranking Commanders. Although they enjoy status, they have little power outside of their own households. They’re identified by wearing only teal-colored robes.
Handmaids are fertile women of childbearing age. Fertile women are a rarity in Gilead – in this world, fertility has sharply declined and the birthrate is perilously low. Handmaids are assigned to Commanders and have regular sex with them while the Commander’s wife looks on, with the objective of falling pregnant with their Commander’s child. Handmaids don’t have names. They are referred to by the prefix Of- followed by the name of their Commander. For example, Ofglen is the handmaiden of Glen; Ofwarren the handmaiden of Warren. They are only allowed out in the company of a Guardian, the male soldiers in Gilead’s army. Handmaids wear bright red robes and bonnets that hide their faces from view.
Marthas are servants who work in the homes of the Commanders. They wear gray robes.
Aunts act as supervisors to the Handmaidens – they are responsible for their behavior and religious education. They’re the only women in Gilead permitted to read or write. They wear brown robes.
Jezebels are prostitutes.
Unwomen are women who fail to cooperate with the state; as punishment, they’re sent to the Colonies.
ANALYSIS
The author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, has written that when she began the novel in the mid-1980s, she was inspired by recent and contemporary events, like World War II and the rise of the Iron Curtain. These were events, to her mind, that showed how easily the seemingly normal order of the world could be overturned – how easily ordinary people could find themselves living in totalitarian dystopias like Gilead. But, on the novel’s publication in 1985, Atwood wondered whether its premise, that the totalitarian state of Gilead had been established in place of the democratic USA, would strike readers as far-fetched – even though Gilead’s ruthlessly puritanical politics were inspired by events in American history such as the Salem witch trials.
Decades after its publication, though, many people believe that, rather than far-fetched, the novel was uncannily prescient. The 2010s and early 2020s have seen a rise in populist politics across the globe. And in the USA, where the novel is set, right-wing politicians have rolled back reproductive rights in a manner that strikes many observers as Gileadesque – most notably when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, in 2022. In the USA, and around the world, many women have dressed in red handmaid robes as a symbol of protest against the oppression of women’s rights.
The origins of a Handmaid
The story of The Handmaid’s Tale is, at its heart, the story of Offred. We first meet Offred in a repurposed school gymnasium where she and dozens of other women are asleep – or pretending to be – in cots. Guardians patrol the edges of the room, though they keep their backs turned so as not to look at the women. Moving between the beds are Aunts, with cattle prods, to stop the women from escaping, or even talking among themselves.
Later in the book, this gymnasium is revealed to be the Rachel and Leah Re-education Centre, or the Red Centre. In the aftermath of the Sons of Jacob’s coup, the few fertile women of the former USA are rounded up here and re-educated – taught to be submissive, docile Handmaidens. Here, the power-hungry Aunt Lydia gives long speeches about the role of women in Gilead. She attempts to persuade the Handmaidens that Gilead – unlike the USA where pornography and sexual violence proliferated – is a nation that protects and therefore respects women.
Before the coup, Offred – whose name we never learn – was a relatively liberated woman. She was college educated and had a job. She smoked and drank and wore what she wanted. She had an affair with a married man named Luke. Luke left his wife for Offred, and the two of them had a daughter. They were happy. Before Gilead was founded, when Luke and Offred sensed the Sons of Jacob were becoming too powerful, they bought counterfeit passports and tried to cross the increasingly hard-to-pass US border. At the border, the guard hesitates and picks up a phone as if to call someone. Desperate, Luke speeds the car across the border; the trio abandon the car and run through the woods, but they’re caught. The three are separated. Offred never learns what happened to Luke. She’s told her daughter has been placed with a family who’ll care for her better.
In Gilead, Offred is assigned as Handmaiden to a high-ranking Commander, Fred Waterford. On her arrival at the Waterford’s house, Offred immediately recognizes Fred’s wife, Serena Joy. Before the coup, she was a prominent televangelist associated with the Sons of Jacob. Despite this, Serena seems unhappy with her lot in Gilead and regards Offred with a mix of bitterness, disdain, and envy.
Offred follows a strict routine at the Commander’s house. She’s allowed to leave only to go grocery shopping with a fellow Handmaiden, Ofglen. The two are chaperoned by Guardians the entire time and only ever exchange bland pleasantries.
Monthly, when she’s at her most fertile, Offred, the Commander, and Serena all participate in the Ceremony. Prior to the Ceremony, the Commander reads from the Bible: Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. He undresses. Offred lies on the Commander’s bed, fully clothed, with her robes hiked up around her knees. Serena sits behind Offred, also fully clothed. The two women twine their arms together to show that they’re one being – that any child borne by Offred will belong to Serena. The Commander has sex with Offred while he looks into Serena’s eyes. Every time the three perform the Ceremony, Serena cries quietly.
After the Ceremony, Offred is dismissed to the small spartan room where she lives. She isn’t permitted to fully close the door of her room. Still, she indulges in a few private rituals in her own small space. She rubs butter, which she has bought on her daily shopping trip and concealed in her shoe, on her face and hands, in an attempt to care for her skin. Once, she sneaks downstairs to steal a daffodil from a flower arrangement, which she presses under her mattress. And she looks at the graffiti scratched in the wall by the previous Handmaid. It reads nolite te bastardes carborundorum – Latin for “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
ANALYSIS
Offred is a relatable protagonist but she’s far from a hero. She bridles against the regime and in moments she begins to display resistance – in small acts of rebellion like stealing a daffodil and, later, in more overt acts of courage. But her ordinariness is important; her trajectory, in particular the way she complies with the rules and regulations of life as a Handmaid, shows how easily ordinary people can find themselves subsumed into extraordinarily brutal systems of government. What’s more, by vividly portraying the systems of surveillance and punishment that underpin life in Gilead, Atwood shows how truly difficult it is for one ordinary person to resist a totalitarian state. At the Red Centre, Aunt Lydia delivers the chilling observation that, in time, even this brutal regime will come to seem normal and even acceptable to most of its citizens, saying “Ordinary … is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will.”
While Gilead is a patriarchal society, one of the novel’s themes is the complicity of other women in its misogyny and oppression. Aunt Lydia will never have the power of a male Commander – but rather than showing solidarity with her fellow subjugated women, she leaps at the chance to carve out her own limited field of authority. Serena, too, is complicit – she’s desperately unhappy at the situation she finds herself in, but she’s also unwilling to give up the status and power her situation affords.
Resistance and rebellion
Offred’s life is cramped and confined. Her freedoms are restricted. But she is, at least, safe for the time being. But that’s beginning to change. Cracks are beginning to appear in the carefully controlled world of Gilead.
To begin with, her relationship with the Commander begins to deepen into an ambiguous sort of companionship. One night, after the monthly Ceremony has been completed, Nick, the Commander’s chauffeur, appears at Offred’s door. He informs her the Commander would like to see her in his study. Together, the two play Scrabble – a truly illicit pleasure in a world where women are forbidden to read or write. These visits become regular. The two play Scrabble or the Commander supplies Offred with contraband magazines, like old copies of Vogue, to read. Sometimes they kiss, even though handmaids are expressly forbidden from kissing their Commanders. Without ever forgetting the power the Commander wields over her, Offred begins to cautiously enjoy these intimate moments.
But while the Commander grows increasingly fond of Offred, her position in the household is in jeopardy. The longer she stays there without falling pregnant, the greater the danger that she will be deemed to have failed in her task and sent back to the Red Centre. In Gilead, the law decrees that men can never be infertile – only women. At her monthly doctor’s appointment, the doctor whispers to Offred that he can “help her.” No one will know, he promises, that the baby isn’t the Commander’s. Later, Serena suggests that Offred have sex with Nick and pass any resulting pregnancy off as the Commander’s. Both Serena’s and the doctor’s behavior suggest they know that the Commander is infertile and that Offred needs to get pregnant through other means.
Offred declines to sleep with the doctor, but she does sleep with Nick after Serena promises she’ll show Offred a picture of Offred’s daughter that she was able to obtain from her new family. Offred doesn’t fall pregnant, and she’s haunted both by the picture of her now years-older daughter and the knowledge that Serena has known her daughter’s whereabouts all along, but will never reveal it to Offred. After their first sanctioned liaison, Offred and Nick continue to see each other in secret.
Meanwhile, on their daily shopping trips, Ofglen reveals through whispers and coded conversation that she’s part of an underground resistance group known as Mayday. Ofglen tells Offred that her Commander is extremely high-ranking. Mayday is working to bring down Gilead’s government – Offred can help them by passing along any information she sees or hears in the Commander’s house. Offred promises to help but, caught between the Commander, with whom she has developed complex intimacy, and her lover, Nick, Offred’s efforts to assist Mayday are half-hearted.
Offred meets Ofglen again when they both attend a particicution – a ritual where the handmaids are assembled and ordered to execute citizens who’ve sinned against Gilead. At this particicution, the victim is a Guardian who, according to Aunt Lydia, was a rapist. Offred is shocked when Ofglen strikes the first, vicious blow. But Ofglen later reveals the man wasn’t a rapist at all, but a political prisoner – a member of Mayday. She knocked him out to spare him the worst of the particicution. Offred realizes how high the stakes are for members of Mayday in Gilead – she’s partly in awe of their bravery and partly concerned about her own implication with the organization.
Offred’s fears are confirmed when she next goes to meet Ofglen on their routine shopping trip and finds a new Ofglen in her place. This new Ofglen whispers that her predecessor hanged herself when she saw the Eyes driving toward her house in their trademark black van.
That night, Offred sits in her room. She hears the van before she sees it. But before the Eyes can storm the house and capture her, Nick enters the room. Offred has always wondered about Nick – she knows little about where his allegiances lie. Now, she suspects that he’s an Eye – perhaps he’s reported her. But Nick tells her that he’s a member of Mayday and that the men in the van are not Eyes but fellow Mayday members in disguise – they’ve come to the house to rescue her.
Offred doesn’t know if Nick is lying or if the men in the van can truly be trusted. On the other hand, she has no choice but to do as she’s told and go with them. As she’s hauled into the van she wonders whether this is her story’s end – or the beginning of a new one.
ANALYSIS
The Handmaid’s Tale ends ambiguously. Like Offred, we never find out if the men in the van were Eyes, taking her to be tortured and likely killed, or resistance fighters ready to escort her over the border to safety in Canada. But Atwood finishes the novel with an epilogue in the form of a partial transcript from the proceedings of a conference held in the year 2195, nearly 200 years after the events relayed in the book. In the transcript, Professor James Pieixoto explains that the body of the novel was originally an untitled manuscript discovered on the site of the former Gilead. Pieixoto discusses Gilead in neutral, academic terms – he’s a detached anthropologist. But his measured tone displays an alarming apathy toward the fate of Offred and the plight of Gilead’s women.
It’s telling that, although Offred has been the voice of this story, its final interpretation is determined by a man. Perhaps Atwood is warning us that we need to be vigilant to the ways in which women have historically been and continue to be oppressed – that even in the most enlightened and neutral of societies, Gilead might be closer than we think.
Final summary
The rise of the Republic of Gilead is the stuff of dystopian fiction – but the way in which its ruthless totalitarian regime strips its citizens of their humanity and, in some cases, their empathy, is very much drawn from real life. This is why Offred’s story, which veers between complicity and courage, continues to resonate with contemporary audiences.