The Handmaid's Tale

A diary from Gilead

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood was published in 1985. Atwood, a Canadian poet and novelist, began it in West Berlin in 1984, behind the Iron Curtain. It won Canada's Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. A television series began in 2017, and Atwood published a sequel, The Testaments, in 2019, which shared the Booker Prize. Atwood has said she set one rule for herself: nothing would go into the book that people had not already done somewhere, at some time.

The novel is set in the Republic of Gilead, a theocracy that has replaced the United States. Most of the action takes place in the former Cambridge, Massachusetts, near what was Harvard University. The narrator is a woman in her early thirties who is called Offred. The name means "of Fred": it marks her as the property of the Commander she serves. She never gives her real name.

The book is told in short sections, moving between Offred's present in Gilead, her memories of training at the Red Center, and her life before. Many sections are headed "Night," the only time she has to herself.

The world of Gilead

Gilead is ruled by men who claim to follow the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Pollution, radiation and disease have made most people infertile. The regime blames women's freedoms and answers with a rigid order, in which every woman's role is shown by the color of her clothes.

• Wives, married to Commanders, wear blue.
• Handmaids, fertile women assigned to bear children, wear red, with white wings around their faces so they cannot see or be seen.
• Marthas, older or infertile women who cook and clean, wear green.
• Econowives, married to poorer men, wear striped dresses.
• Aunts, who train and police the Handmaids, wear brown.
• Unwomen, who do not fit, are sent to the Colonies to clean toxic waste until they die.

Men have ranks too. Commanders hold power. Guardians are soldiers and servants. Angels fight on the front lines. The Eyes are the secret police. Women may not read or write. Shop signs are pictures. Even the Bible is kept locked up.

Once a month, the Handmaid must take part in the Ceremony. The Commander reads the story of Rachel, who gave her servant Bilhah to her husband so that the servant could bear children for her. Then he has sex with the Handmaid while she lies between the Wife's legs, her hands held by the Wife. Offred describes it in flat, exact language. It is rape, made into ritual.

Offred's daily life

Offred lives in a single room in the Commander's house. The light fixture has been removed from the ceiling, and the window opens only a few inches. She has learned why: the woman who held her post before her hanged herself in this room.

Her days are empty. She walks to the shops each day with another Handmaid, Ofglen, for safety and surveillance. They speak only approved phrases, such as "Blessed be the fruit" and "May the Lord open." On the way they pass the Wall, once part of the university, where the bodies of executed doctors, priests and others hang with bags over their heads.

The household includes the Commander's wife, Serena Joy, a former gospel singer who once gave speeches on television telling women to stay home. Now she is trapped in the home she preached. She is bitter and cruel. There are two Marthas, Rita and Cora. There is Nick, the Commander's chauffeur, a Guardian who winks at Offred against all rules.

In her closet, Offred finds a phrase scratched into the wood by the previous Handmaid: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. She does not know what it means, but it gives her strength.

The Red Center

Before she was assigned to the house, Offred was trained at the Red Center, a former high school gym surrounded by barbed wire. The Aunts, led by Aunt Lydia, taught the Handmaids their new role. They used cattle prods. They called the old world of choice a world of danger, and the new one a world of safety. They said that what seemed strange now would become ordinary in time.

At the Center, women were made to confess their pasts in group sessions. One, Janine, told how she had been gang-raped as a teenager. The Aunts led the others in chanting that it was her fault. Offred also found her best friend from college, Moira, a lesbian and a rebel. Moira escaped by tying up an Aunt and walking out in her uniform. For the other women, Moira's escape was proof that resistance was possible.

The time before

Offred remembers her old life. She worked at a library, transferring books to computer discs. She had a husband, Luke, and a young daughter. Luke had been divorced when they married, and Gilead does not recognize second marriages, so their union was declared adultery.

She remembers how it happened. Gunmen killed the president and machine-gunned Congress, and the attack was blamed on Islamic fanatics. The army declared an emergency and suspended the Constitution. People stayed home and watched television. Then, one day, all women's bank accounts were frozen and their money moved to their husbands or male relatives. Their employers fired them. Offred describes how she and her colleagues simply walked out. Luke said he would take care of her, and she felt something between them change.

The family tried to escape to Canada with false passports. They were caught near the border. Luke ran into the woods with a gun. Offred does not know whether he is alive. Her daughter was taken from her and given to another family.

Offred also remembers her mother, a feminist activist who marched for women's rights in the 1970s. At the Red Center, she saw her mother in a film about Unwomen in the Colonies.

The Commander's study

The Commander sends for Offred to come to his study one night, alone. This is forbidden. She fears a trap. Instead, he wants to play Scrabble. Holding letters and making words, after years without reading, is almost too much for her.

The visits continue. He lets her read old fashion magazines. He gives her hand lotion. He wants her to kiss him as if she meant it. He explains the phrase in her closet: it is mock Latin, a schoolboy joke, meaning don't let the bastards grind you down. Offred begins to understand that the previous Handmaid also came to this study, and that the Commander, in his loneliness, wants a companion. She asks him what he thinks of the world he helped build. He says that better never means better for everyone; it always means worse for some.

On a walk, Ofglen tests Offred and reveals that she belongs to a resistance network called Mayday. She asks Offred to find out what she can from the Commander.

At a Birth Day, all the Handmaids of the district gather while Janine, now called Ofwarren, gives birth. The Wives sit in another room and act out labor with the Commander's wife. The baby is a girl and seems healthy. Weeks later it turns out to have a defect, and it is called a shredder.

Jezebel's and Nick

Serena Joy, desperate for a child and suspecting that the Commander is sterile, makes Offred an offer. She will arrange for Offred to sleep with Nick, so that she can become pregnant. In return, Serena brings her a photograph of her daughter, now older, in a white dress. Offred sees that her daughter has forgotten her.

The Commander takes Offred out one night, dressed in an old sequined costume, to Jezebel's, a secret club in a former hotel where officials meet women forced into prostitution. There she finds Moira. Moira tells how she was caught after her escape and given a choice between the Colonies and Jezebel's. She chose Jezebel's. She seems to have given up. The Commander takes Offred to a hotel room upstairs.

That same night, Serena sends Offred to Nick. Offred and Nick begin a secret affair. She goes to him again and again, not for Serena's purpose but for herself. She tells him things, including her real name. She becomes careless about Mayday and stops asking the Commander for information. She says she does not want to leave anymore.