The Handmaids Tale

Gilead's attitude toward women

-treats them not as individuals but as objects important only for the children that they can bear.

-women were not allowed to read (all the shops have pictures instead of written signs), or vote

-cut off women's bank accounts and fired them from jobs

Offred

-narrator and protagonist

-handmaid

-no family/ friends

-used to have a daughter and a husband (Luke)

-kinda likes the commander

The Commander

-Fred

-old, frail (more likely infertile)

-head of household where Offred works

-initiates an unorthodox relationship with Offred

-has scrabble meetings with her and asks her to kiss him after them

-involved in designing and establishing Gilead

Serena Joy

-commanders wife

-pre-Gilead: gospel singer and anti-feminist activist and crusader for "traditional values"

-top of female social ladder but still unhappy

-restricted in a male-dominant society

-acts cruelly towards the Handmaids

-no love between her and the commander (just a need)

-gardens (wants to watch over/raise/give life to something bc. she is infertile)

Moira

-Offred's bff from collage

-lesbian and staunch feminist

-doesn't accept fate of a Handmiad

-makes several escape attempts and finally manages to get away from the Red Center

-prostitute in a club for the commanders

-realizes a totalitarian society can even crush the most independent people

-outcast

Aunt Lydia

-works at the Red Center

-only appears in flashbacks of Offred's

-haunts Offred

Nick

-guardian

-works as a gardener and a chauffeur

-sexual chemistry with Offred (Serena joy orchestrates in an effort to get Offred pregnant)

-either a member of the Eyes of underground Mayday resistance

-takes Offred at end of book and either puts her in hands of the Eyes or the resistance

Ofglen

-Handmaid who is Offred's shopping partner

-member of Mayday

-found out at end of novel

-hangs herself rather than face torture to reveal the names of her co-conspirators

Cora

-servant in the Commander's house

-Martha

-more content in her role vs Rita

-hopes Offred can have a child so she can help raise it

-lies for Offred

Janine

-Offred knows her from the Red Center

-Handmaid name: Ofwarren

-has a baby and becomes the envy of all the other Handmaids

-turns out to be an Unbaby

-rumors her doctor is the father

-takes easy way out and endears to the Aunts and all authority figures

Luke

-pre-Gilead, Luke was married to another women, had an affair with Offred, then married Offred instead

-when Gilead comes to power, tries to escape with Offred and their daughter

-they got captured and never saw each other again

-their love is prohibited in Gilead (supposed to have a passionless state of male-female relations)

Offred's Mother

-flashbacks of her

-single parent, feminist activist

-embodies everything the Gilead want to remove

Aunt Elizabeth

-Aunt from Red Center

-Moira attacks her and steals uniform during her escape from Red Center

Rita

-Martha/domestic servant

-not content

Handmaid

Fertile women forced to bear children for elite, barren couples

Gilead

-a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America

-pollution and chemical spills led to declining fertility rates

-wants to turn the female gender into carriers of the next generation

-maintain control over language of women

-Cambridge, Massachusetts (perfect place for Gilead's power because Puritan Church's legacy)

Aunts

Class of women assigned to indoctrinate the Handmaids with the beliefs of the new society and make them accept their fates

Rachel and Leah Re-education Center

-"Red Center"

-the re‑education center where Offred and other women go for instruction before becoming Handmaids

Guardian

A low level officer of Gilead assigned to the Commander's house

The Eyes

-Gilead's secret police

-symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state

Marthas

-Infertile women who do not qualify for the high status of Wives and so work in domestic roles

-low class

Unbaby

A deformed baby

Red

-costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility

-suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth

-a traditional marker of sexual sin

-ambiguous sinfulness of the Handmaids' position in Gilead

Theocratic

-relating to or denoting a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god

-slogan: "God's a National Resource"

Dystopian

-this is a dystopian novel

-state where everything is unpleasant, negative

Tone of novel

-dark

-elegiac for the lost world before Gilead

-a sense of fear and paranoia pervades the novel (under a totalitarian government)

Totalitarian

System of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete willingness to obey the state

"Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary"

-Offred and Ofglen are standing by the Wall, looking at the bodies of people who have been hanged by Gilead.

-The sight horrifies Offred but substitutes feelings to an emotional "blankness."

-Remembers Aunt Lydia's words: suggest that Gilead succeeds not by making people believe that its ways are right, but by making people forget what a different world could be like.

-Torture and tyranny become accepted because they are "what you are used to."

"I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off."

-Reflects the connection between Offred's story, her readers, her lost family, and her inner state.

-Describing the horror of Gilead as she

experiences it from day to day

- Gilead seeks to silence women, but Offred speaks out

-Offred's creation of a story gives her, as she puts it, "control over the ending."

-She denies Gilead control over her inner life.

"I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping."

-Offred sits in the bath, naked, and contrasts the way she used to think about her body to the way she thinks about it now.

-Before, her body was an instrument, an extension of her self

-Now, herself no longer matters, and her body is only important because of its "central object," her womb, which can bear a child.

-Internalized Gilead's attitude toward women

-Women's wombs are a "national resource," the state insists, using language that dehumanizes women

The Wall

A place in town where the bodies of executed dissidents are displayed

Salvaging

A mass execution

"Something could be exchanged"

-everything missing from the Handmaid's lives

-what was/what is