Handmaid's Tale quotes

“Better never means better for everyone…

It always means worse, for some”

“Nothing changes instantaneously;…

In a gradually heating bathtub you'de be boiled to death before you knew it”

Women in literature - “We were the people who were not in the papers. We..

Lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print”

A rat in a maze is…

Free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

“We are for breeding purposes: we aren’t concubines, geisha girls…

Courtesans. To them we are two-legged wombs, that’s all; sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices”

Nolite te bastards

Carborundorum

A man is just..

A woman’s strategy for making other women

We lived as usual, by..

ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things..

We pick out. We want to believe it was all like that

The newspaper stories were like..

Dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. ….

Freedom to and freedom from.

Now we walk the same streets, in red pairs, and no man shouts..

Obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us.

The films they show to us are..

Old ones, so that they will seem less peculiar to us, and less dangerous

The crimes of others are..

A secret language among us. Through them we show ourselves what we might be capable of, after all.

They show us only victories, …

Never defeats. Who wants bad news?

We are not allowed to read. The Bible…

Is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up so the servants wouldn’t steal it.

It’s strange now, thinking about having a job. …

Job. It’s a funny word. It’s a job for a man.

Resettlement of the Children…

of Ham is continuing on schedule.

There were stories in the newspapers, about women being raped, or killed or abducted, but…

They were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men.

Gender treachery is…

A capital offence

Moira being broken by Gilead: “She said it was frightening. She could not quite believe it. She’d thought she’d rather be dead. But..

Now she was here, she’d decided to go on living.”

There were three new bodies on the Wall. One is a priest..Another is a man who has been caught..

with a Handmaid. The third was once a gay man.

They were told they were given…

A choice. Convert, or leave

Give me…

Children, or else I die.

They buy them..

They buy them before they’re born.

They said that the eyes of God were watching, and…

They took away the ones who didn’t belong.

The Republic of Gilead, said..

Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds. Gilead is within you.

There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in the ditches or the woods,…

Bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfering with the right of property.

Blessed are the..

Silent

Offered normalizing her suffering as a tool for survival “Nothing is going on here that I..

Haven’t seen before”

You can’t help how you..

Feel, but you can help how you behave.”

You never know what you’re capable of…

Until you have to

Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This….

This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after time it will.

___________ became symbolic of southern resistance to the civil rights movement in the 1960s + quote

“Elizabeth patrolled; they had Electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts.”

Who were allowed guns in THT? + context

“Guns were for the guards, specially picked out by the Angels.” Guardian Angels of NYC (Bronxe) subway in 1970s, vigilantes, vilified by public officials + media

Rationing in attempt of Gilead keeping improvisions of society up

“Like other things now, thought must be rationed.”

Offred about hurting her chances

“Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last.”

Offred about circumstances

“The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.”

Offred thinking of prison, being reminded of what Aunt Lydia says

“Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.” Shows control of the regime, and how they will frame anything to be the more desired situation

Sumptuary laws throughout history, which regulated moral economy + manufacturing systems (1200-1800) eg Elizabethan times

“Everything except the wings round my face is red: the colour of blood, which defines us.”

Martha’s “dull green” dress

Offred on seeing with the white cone things

“They are to keep us from seeing but also from being seen”

Offred, Moira, Alma, Janine, Dolores, June -

“We exchanged names from bed to bed.”

About domestic abuse + justification in Old Testament

“They can hit us, there’s Scriptural precedent.”

tensions between women added by their class status; Offred + Rita (cook)

“She puts the veil on to go outside, but nobody much cares to see the face of a Martha.”

Tension between women with their classes/pitted against eachother with classes, even though they are both subordinated; Rita + Offred

“But the frown isn’t personal: it’s the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for. She thinks I might be catching, like a disease or any form of bad luck.” - petty cooties

Like the 1984’s Inner Party members, “in the houses of the Commanders there is..

Still real coffee”

Offred recalls onetime hearing “Rita say to Cora that she..

Wouldn’t debase herself like that.” Meaning be a handmaid like Offred

Rita says that she would rather “Go to the Colonies,” than be a handmaid and rather harshly says…

“They have the choice.”

Cora (maid) says that the handmaid’s are “doing it for us all,” “or…

So they say.” “It’s not that bad. It’s not what you’d call hard work.” Shows the lack of pity people have for eachother when are subordinated and put in an patriarchally oppressive society, women turn against women

Offred on communication, what she has now and her past view of small talk

“How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it. At least it was talk. An exchange of sorts.” - Offred longs for human connection, for humanity for social necessity

Offred about wishing to have human physical connection

“I hunger to commit the act of touch.”

Women waged against eachother Marthas vs Handmaids

“The Marthas are not supposed to fraternize with us.” When she was saying how she if she could she would help Rita knead the dough

People not paying attention to sexism in language, or thinking paying attention to it too pedantic

“He liked knowing about such details. The derivations of words, curious usages. I used to tease him about being pedantic” - fraternize meaning to act like a brother, but there being no female version, only possible one would be sororize from Latin

How we know the commander is an important one

Rita saying that Offred should ask for “a chicken not a hen. Tell them who it’s for and then they won’t mess around.”

Offred on not starting a friendship with Rita

“I don’t smile. Why tempt her to friendship?”

Wives’ subsitutes for children - lack of human fulfillment for all, but also lack of role fulfillment, women seen as only able to care for things not work in other ways

“Many of the Wives have such gardens, it’s something for them to order and maintain and care for.”

Just after Moira’s escape Offred says

“This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction.”

Offred calls out to her mother if she can hear her and says

“You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists. be thankful for small mercies.”

Offered on unreliability

“It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances…”

Offred doing word play but also not feeling like she has anything of her own, has no possession other than her body

“What does she envy me?” - meaning what does Serena Joy envy of Offred

Offred and the other handmaids’ fantasies about the Angels guarding the centres

“Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some trade-ff, we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy.”

Unreliable narrator on Moira’s threat to Aunt Elizabeth when she trapped her behind the furnace

“Aunt Lydia didn’t repeat any of this part to Janine, but I expect Moira said something like it.”

Offred describing first secret meeting with the Commander

“I think about the blood coming out of him, hot as soup, sexual, over my hands. In fact I don’t think about anything of the kind. I put it in only afterwards. Maybe I should have thought about that, at the time, but I didn’t. As I said, this is a reconstruction”

Offred speaking on Aunt Lydia’s behalf in a lesson - her take on it

Aunt Lydia said that “[men] only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good…Aunt Lydia did not actually say this, but it was implicit in everything she did say”

Offred envying Serena Joy

“But I envy the Commander’s Wife her knitting. It’s good to have small goals that can be easily attained.”

One things the wives do to keep them busy + trope of ongoing war

“Knitting scarves, for the Angels at the front lines.” “They aren’t scarves for grown men but for children.”

Offred’s emotion + view on Serena Joy + knitting coming out - unreliable narrator

“Sometimes I think these scarves aren't sent to the Angels at all, but unravelled and turned back into ball of yarn, to be knitted again in their turn. Maybe it’s just something to keep the Wives busy, to give them a sense of purpose.”

Serena Joy + Offred tension + threats

“She doesn’t speak to me, unless she can’t avoid it. I am a reproach to her; and a necessity.”

What do all the wives wear?

“Powder blue robe”s

Offred talking about Serena Joy’s finger

“It was like an ironic smile, on that finger; like something mocking her.” - talking about her diamond rings, and how her hands used to probably be and still are well kept

handmaids being told that they should only talk when spoken to (although this has no quotation marks in the book)

“Aunt Lydia said it was best not to speak unless they asked you a direct question.”

Offred on black market

“Even now that there is no real money any more, there’s still a black market. There’s always a black market, there’s always something that can be exchanged.” - reassuring herself

Offred’s hope on Serena (thought of when she sees her smoking)

“She then was a woman who might bend the rules. But what did I have to trade?”

Offred wishing for friendship with Serena Joy, but they never would have been friends because patriarchy placed them against eachother

“I wanted to think I would have liked her, in another time and place, another life. But I could see already that I wouldn’t have liked her, nor she me.”

Patriarchy getting in the way of Offred and Serena Joy becoming friends, because Offred is a threat to the other (and could be vice versa)

“I was disappointed. I wanted, then, to turn her into an older sister, a motherly figure, someon who would understand and protect me.”

Serena Joy on seeing Offred

“I want to see as little of you as possible, she said. I expect you feel the same way about me.”

Handmaids’ relationships with wives are transactional

Serena Joy says “As far as I’m concerned, this like business transaction.

We find out who the wife is with which Offred is positioned

“The woman sitting in front of me is Serena Joy. Or had been once. So it was worse than I thought.”

“But remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, ….

and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest.”

“Sanity…

is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money.”

About the homemade carpets

“A return to traditional values.”

“It’s one of the things we fought for" [the…

Right to stay married despite not being able to conceive]”

About Serena Joy’s acting

“She could smile and cry at the same time”

Offred about Ofglen

“The truth is that she is my spy, as I am hers”

Religious fighting wars

“The war is going well” “Baptists…they smoked them out'“

“Such moments are..

Possibilities, tiny peepholes”

Unknown knowledge about other people’s lives

“The windows of the vans are dark-tinted, and the men in the front seats wear dark glasses: a double obscurity”

Offred enjoying her power

“I move my hips a little…I enjoy the power; power of a dog bone, passive, but there”

No sex alternative

“There are no more magazines, no more films, no more substitutes”

An example of freedom from

“Now we walk the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles”

Offred making fun of not allowing them to read the shops

“They decided even the names of shops were too much temptation for us.”

Aunt Lydia on society dying

“We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.”

On children

“All children are wanted now”

Offred on complacency

“It was true, i took too much for granted; I trusted fate, back then.”

“ ‘Quiet’ says one of the…

Guardians behind the counter and we hush like schoolgirls”

Dissphemism of shoes, specifically ones for the male gaze

“The high-heeled shoes with their straps attached to the feet like delicate instruments of torture..they seem undressed”

Aunt Lydia on branding of penetration, indoctrination of regime and rights

“To be seen -is to be..penetrated. What you must be, girls, is impenetrable. She called us girls.”

Offred making fun of regime’s account on history and their actions against history

“They haven’t fiddled with the gravestones, or the church either. It’s only the more recent history that offends them.”

Women not being allowed to be witnesses

“Evidence from a single woman is no longer admissible.”

Aunts’ views of doctors who carried out abortions in earlier times

“They are like war criminals..they have committed atrocities”