Handmaid's Tale top quotes

'We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print.' (p.66)

Offred reflects on her life before the Gileadean revolution as an ordinary woman whose life was never exciting or unusual enough to leave a permanent record. Now that newspapers are forbidden artefacts associated with the crime of reading, her point emphasises the invisibility of women within the context of the theocracy. With print having failed her, she has recourse to speech to tell her story, recording her voice on to a set of old cassette tapes.

'I wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.' (p.76)

Here, Offred plays with the two meanings of this verb 'to ____________', i.e. 'to calm oneself' and 'to create a work of art'. On one level she needs to prepare herself with composure to undergo the Ceremony, during which she will participate in a surreal three-way sexual encounter with the Commander and Serena Joy. Underneath this, though, she must find a way of presenting an unreal doppelgänger fashioned purely to endure this bizarre ordeal. Thus the quotation suggests the presence of two women, the 'made thing' she has faked in order to survive the Ceremony and the real Offred who is 'something born'. In addition, these lines draw attention to the narrator's conscious awareness that she is telling a story; she speaks of herself as being like a text in some ways - or at least a palimpsest that has been deliberately overwritten. We might also see a reflection of the famous French feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir's contention that 'one is not born, but becomes, a woman'.

'We are for breeding purposes: we aren't concubines, geisha girls, courtesans ... no room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts; no special favours are to be wheedled, by them or us, there are to be no toeholds for love. We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.' (p.146)

Offred analyses the nature of her role in Commander Fred's life on the night she makes her first secret and forbidden visit to his study. She describes herself as falling outside the category of mistress or desirable 'other woman', and the nouns 'vessel' and 'chalice' stress that it would be the child inside her that mattered, not the woman who carried it. Here, three types of women whose recognised roles are highly sexualised are juxtaposed with the holy purity of the religious iconography, stressing how in Gilead sexual pleasure and motherhood have become utterly severed. Offred describes herself as virtually an incarnation of the Virgin Mary, insignificant other than for the child she could carry.

'Context is all.' (p.154)

This key phrase is, significantly, presented within its own microparagraph. Playing Scrabble with Commander Fred makes Offred realise how everything changes when mapped on to a different time, place or set of circumstances. In pre-Gileadean days, Scrabble might have seemed like a dull board game for old people; in a world where women are forbidden to read, however, it carries an unmistakable sexual charge, as illicit as if they were taking drugs.

'Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. I can't see it in the dark but I trace the tiny scratched writing with the ends of my fingers, as if it's a code in Braille. It sounds in my head now less like a prayer, more like a command; but to do what?' (p.156)

The mock-Latin motto of the former Offred - don't let the bastards grind you down - becomes a mantra for the narrator; even though for a long time she does not understand its literal meaning. She murmurs it to herself as a prayer before undergoing the ordeal of the Ceremony, well before Commander Fred finally translates it for her. Her predecessor's words transform the phrase into a talismanic chant that enables Offred to channel the spirit of her doppelgänger at key moments. As the narrator grows increasingly rebellious, the phrase transmutes from a prayer into an exhortation and reminder never to submit; for both the Offreds, as Chapter 46 makes clear, suicide is preferable to being captured and exiled by the regime.

"Nature demands variety for men ... it's part of the procreational strategy. It's Nature's plan ... Women know that instinctively. Why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each day." (p.249)

Commander Fred's comment sums up his lazy and convenient assumption - or is it mere wishful thinking? - that men naturally are meant to want more than one woman, whereas women are (presumably) designed to be faithful to one partner only. This breathtaking hypocrisy shows how, while the men of Gilead draw on biblical precedent to justify their system of arranged marriages and concubinage, they are equally happy to refer to a hazy belief in biological determinism as and when it suits them. The essential incompatibility of these two ideologies suggests the fundamentally misogynist nature of the theocracy. Moreover, his obsessive interest in female clothing and its symbolism is once again revealed.

'Fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how. Let's get this over with or you'll be here all night. Bestir yourself. Move your flesh around, breathe audibly. It's the least you can do.' (p.267)

Offred's inability to make love to Commander Fred as if she means it sums up the tragic farce of their relationship. As one of the elite Sons of Jacob who codified and systematised the rules of the theocracy, Commander Fred decided to dispense with love in favour of arranged marriage and concubinage - yet even he finds it impossible to abide by the strict regulations he helped to establish. Officially he is allowed only to have sex with Offred within the confines of the Ceremony, yet these mechanical and loveless encounters offer him 5 6 7 99 The handmaid's Tale little pleasure. The supreme irony of this episode is that, having been forced into having Ceremonial sex, Offred is incapable of responding to him in any other way; in fact she finds this incident in some ways more futile and depressing than ever. The Commander has helped to ensure that what he most wants - an honest relationship with a woman who likes him for himself - can never happen.

'I made that up. It didn't happen that way. Here is what happened.' (p.273)

Offred's admission that she is recasting the account of her first night with Nick draws attention to the importance of telling stories within The Handmaid's Tale as well as to the novel's status as a postmodern text. In positioning her as a self-confessed unreliable narrator, however, Atwood paradoxically increases the reader's belief that we can depend upon her essential truthfulness. While some details may be blurred, overall, Offred's narrative conveys an unassailable sense of authenticity.

'And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.' (p.307)

The last line of Offred's narrative captures something of the postmodern brilliance of the text, with the tale, like the Handmaid herself, left frozen in time, poised between captivity and freedom. If this were the last line of the whole text, the ending would be totally open and unfixed; as it is, Professor Pieixoto's Historical Notes suggest that she reaches the light at last.

'Are there any questions?' (p.324)

The last line of the whole text is Professor Pieixoto's closing question to the academic conference audience he has been lecturing. It summarises the Professor's belief that he has fleshed out the context as far as he can, that he has said more or less all there is to say about the worth of Offred's narrative as a historical document. Moreover, it draws attention to his rather supercilious conviction that he has decoded and critiqued 'the handmaid's tale' in a thorough and academically rigorous manner. Yet in posing a question rather than providing an answer, how can the reader be sure that Offred's story has really been 'closed'? The Professor is closing his keynote address, but many questions remain unanswered. 'Are there any questions?' invites the reader to respond with 'Yes - several. What was Offred's real name? Did she resume her relationship with Nick? Did she ever see her child again? What happened to Moira? How did the Republic fall?' Thus, in a final postmodern twist, Atwood refuses to tell us any more, and that is, of course, just as it should be. It is left open for the reader to ponder and consider the possibilities.

'Don't you remember the singles bars ... The meat market. Some of them were desperate, they starved themselves thin or pumped their breasts full of silicone, had their noses cut off. Think of the human misery' ..."In the old days" (that is, the late twentieth century), he continues: [a woman] could be left with a kid, two kids, the husband might just get fed up and take off, disappear, they'd have to go on welfare. Or if they had a job, the children in daycare or left with some brutal ignorant woman, and they'd have to pay for that themselves, out of their wretched little paycheques. Money was the only measure of worth, for everyone, they got no respect as mothers. No wonder they were giving up on the whole business. This way they're protected, they can fulfil their biological destinies in peace. With full support and encouragement. (p231)

This section of the text poses several deliberate challenges to many readers, since Commander Fred's views cannot simply be dismissed out of hand. Most of us would agree that fathers should not be able to abandon their children and clear off scot-free, that women who work should be paid a living wage that allows them to afford high-quality childcare and that mothers who choose to stay at home to raise their children should be valued and supported. According to the Commander, in subdividing the roles of Gileadean women, the Republic has resolved these issues. 'Now tell me,' he challenges Offred (and of course, by implication, the reader), 'You're an intelligent person, I like to hear what you think. What did we overlook?' (p231). From his point of view, the patriarchal structure of the theocracy has engineered these social problems out of existence. Offred's counter-argument for what they overlooked is simple: 'Love, I said' (p 231). For all its flaws, the imperfect, messy and uncertain world before Gilead - in which people constantly tripped, stumbled and fell - offered freedom. '"Those years were just an anomaly, historically speaking," the Commander said, "just a fluke."' In making the institution of marriage a way of controlling human nature to secure the future of the state, he concludes, 'All we've done is return things to Nature's norm' (p232).

'Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it,'

Atwood poses tough questions about the metamorphosis from the 'freedom to' that existed in pre-Gileadean days, to the 'freedom from' of the overt and covert misogyny of a patriarchal culture. Put simply, life in Gilead may be seen as less risky for women in some respects, but only because they have been robbed of autonomy and power. Yet when Offred is forced to watch pornographic films showing extreme 40 Themes sexual violence against women, the reader is uneasily aware that life before Gilead was no picnic for the female population either.

'The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder those things used to happen. Things, the word she used when whatever it stood for was too distasteful or filthy or horrible to pass her lips. A successful life for her was one that ... excluded things. Such things do not happen to nice women' (p65).

Especially sinister is the way in which the theocracy tries to oppress women by taking away their ownership of their own bodies. Aunt Lydia expresses her disgust at the behaviour of women in pre-Gileadean days, explicitly suggesting that their unguarded behaviour incited men to want sex, or perhaps even to go as far as to commit acts of sexual violence.

According to Aunt Lydia, Offred remembers, 'we were a society dying of too much choice' (p35).

The uniquely symbolic and resonant clothing of the Gileadean women, especially that of the Handmaids, can be linked to the debate today about the veiling of Muslim women. By wearing the hijab or niqab, women can prevent themselves being sexually objectified by complete strangers, while retaining the right to unveil at home, in private, at a time of their own choosing. But what if women had no choice but to wear the veil? What if they were forced to do so by men? In the 1970s, some feminists advocated living in single-sex communities, in which the diverse roles and responsibilities of women were chunked up to spread the load and share the pressure; the fragmentation and division of the women of Gilead in their colour-coded uniforms is one not-too-illogical extension of this concept.

I glide with Ofglen along the sidewalk; the pair of us, and in front of us another pair, and across the street another. We must look good from a distance: picturesque, like Dutch milkmaids on a wallpaper frieze, like a shelf full of period-costume ceramic salt and pepper shakers, like a flotilla of swans or anything that repeats itself with at least minimum grace and without variation. Soothing to the eye, the eyes, the Eyes, for that's who this show is for. We're off to the Prayvaganza, to demonstrate how obedient and pious we are. (p224)

The uniforms, of course, make the Handmaids appear to be exactly what they're not. Neither obedient nor pious, Ofglen works for the underground resistance movement and Offred is having a dangerous secret affair with her Commander. The image created here of an endless line of paired and seemingly identical Handmaids suggests that, like Offred and Ofglen, each pair may be harbouring its own secrets.

'He pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers, but it's no good, I lie there like a dead bird' (p267).

Atwood uses the narrator's tragi-comic costume as the objective correlative of her relationship with the Commander here, juxtaposing this scene with the feelings she expresses later, when making love to Nick. 'For this one I'd wear pink feathers, purple stars, if that were what he wanted; or anything else, even the tail of a rabbit,' she declares. 'But he does not require such trimmings' (p281). Perhaps the greatest irony here is that the Commander is fully aware of the central importance of dress within any culture; indeed he tries to explain and justify the male desire to play the field and have more than one sexual partner by referring to the female passion for clothes.

'Blessed are the meek',

pontificates Aunt Lydia, but in omitting the important second half of this Beatitude, 'for they shall inherit the earth', she totally distorts Jesus' original message that the oppressed will finally win the day. The Republic that subjugates and oppresses women has called itself Gilead after 'the mountain where Jacob promised his father-in-law, Laban, that he would protect his two daughters (Leah and Rachel)', says Atwood (Atwood 2005: 99). Yet it chooses to pass over the awkward biblical description of Gilead in the Old Testament book of Hosea: 'Gilead is a city of wicked men, stained with footprints of blood' (Hosea 6:4). The fundamentalists of the Republic are frequently engaged in sect wars - violent and bloody battles fought against Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious groups.

Pen Is Envy

a saying of Aunt Lydia's, this riff on the Freudian psychological term is designed to warn the Handmaids off the very idea of writing. Sigmund Freud's theory suggests that adolescent girls go through a period of severe psychosexual anxiety when they realise that they do not have a penis; Margaret Atwood is suggesting that what women envy is the power to express themselves in writing.

There is a Bomb in Gilead

this is Moira's irreverent rewording of the hymn 'There is a balm [consolation] in Gilead'; clearly within the context of the novel, Moira's version signals her willingness to fight the theocracy using violence if it comes to it (p230).

The University of Denay, Nunavit

Professor Pieixoto addresses a conference at a university whose very name instructs him not to undermine the essential truth of Offred's narrative - in other words, he (and, by extension the reader) is exhorted to 'deny none of it'.

'The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem; as if they had been cut and are beginning to heal there'

These come to represent the fertility of the Handmaids themselves; very early in the novel Offred notes that

'the daffodils are now fading' (p22).

Serena Joy is a keen gardener, but symbolically as the tulips in her garden open out in their gorgeous crimson lushness, this happens... The identification of the Handmaid with the fertile tulip and the Commander's Wife with the dying daffodil is made explicit later on in the novel, when Offred, feeling rebellious, sneaks down to the living room determined to steal a 'magic flower'. The one she settles on, a 'withered daffodil', is to be taken from Serena Joy's vase. 'The daffodils will soon be thrown out, they're beginning to smell. Along with Serena's stale fumes, the stench of her knitting' (p109).