The Handmaid’s Tale Knowledge Organiser
Plot (AO1)
Key Quotations (AO1)
Links with other texts (AO4)
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has
replaced the United States of America. Because of dangerously low reproduction rates,
Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving.
Offred serves the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, a former gospel singer and
advocate for “traditional values.” Offred is not the narrator’s real name—Handmaid names
consist of the word “of” followed by the name of the Handmaid’s Commander. Every
month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she must have impersonal,
wordless sex with the Commander while Serena sits behind her, holding her hands.
Offred’s freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely restricted. She can leave
the house only on shopping trips, the door to her room cannot be completely shut, and the
Eyes, Gilead’s secret police force, watch her every public move.
“They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to”
George Orwell – 1984 (published 1949)
In Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith wrestles
with oppression in Oceania, a place
where the Part scrutinises human actions
with ever watchful Big Brother. Atwood’s
Gilead similarly maintains an impression
of constant surveillance. Defying a ban on
individuality, Winston dares to express
his thoughts in a diary and pursues a
relationship with Julia. These criminal
deeds bring Winston into the eye of the
opposition, who then must reform the
nonconformist. Orwell’s 1984 introduced
the watchwords for life without freedom:
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.
“Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last”
“There’s scriptural procedure”
“Freedom to and freedom from”
“the high-heeled shoes with their straps attached to the feet like delicate instruments of torture”
“I remember the smell of nail polish…the way it wrinkled if you out a second coat on too soon.”
“She is my spy, as I am hers”
“What I present is a made thing. No something born.”
“I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it.”
“Her fault, her fault, her fault.”
“I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than
I am”
After her capture, Offred’s marriage was voided (because Luke had been divorced), and
she was sent to the Rachel and Leah Re-education Centre, called the Red Center by its
inhabitants. At the centre, women were indoctrinated into Gilead’s ideology in preparation
for becoming Handmaids. Aunt Lydia supervised the women, giving speeches extolling
Gilead’s beliefs that women should be subservient to men and solely concerned with
bearing children. Aunt Lydia also argued that such a social order ultimately offers women
more respect and safety than the old, pre-Gilead society offered them. Moira is brought to
the Red Center, but she escapes, and Offred does not know what becomes of her.
“Arousal and orgasm are no longer thought necessary”
“the long parenthesis of nothing. Time as white sound”
“she’s there with me suddenly, without warning”
“We are two-legged wombs”
“This is a re-construction. All of it is a reconstruction.”
“fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how”
“Nature demands variety for men. It’s part of the pro-creational strategy”
“he was not a monster to her”
Once assigned to the Commander’s house, Offred’s life settles into a restrictive routine.
She takes shopping trips with Ofglen, another Handmaid, and they visit the Wall outside
what used to be Harvard University, where the bodies of rebels hang. She must visit the
doctor frequently to be checked for disease and other complications, and she must endure
the “Ceremony,” in which the Commander reads to the household from the Bible, then
goes to the bedroom, where his Wife and Offred wait for him, and has sex with Offred. The
first break from her routine occurs when she visits the doctor and he offers to have sex
with her to get her pregnant, suggesting that her Commander is probably infertile. She
refuses. The doctor makes her uneasy, but his proposition is too risky—she could be sent
away if caught. After a Ceremony, the Commander sends his gardener and chauffeur,
Nick, to ask Offred to come see him in his study the following night. She begins visiting him
regularly. They play Scrabble (which is forbidden, since women are not allowed to read),
and he lets her look at old magazines like Vogue. At the end of these secret meetings, he
asks her to kiss him.
“more than a shadow. And I for him. I am no longer merely a usable body.”
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
(published 1932)
Huxley’s ‘Brave new world’ is set 600
years in the future. Humans are grown in
factories. Their class, appearance, beliefs
and occupations are decided before birth
and they are conditioned to accept their
lot, much as members of society in Gilead
are allotted a purpose. Negative
emotions have been all but eradicated,
and citizens are kept calm through a
recreational drug readily available, Soma,
which is reminiscent of the constantly
tired, possibly drugged, handmaids at the
red centre.
“There was nothing for them anymore…I’m not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex
was too easy…you know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel.”
“I am above him, looking down”
“So I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light”
Context (AO3)
Published in 1985 – described by Atwood as ‘speculative fiction’.
Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s.
Dystopian novel – this is a feminist vision of a dystopia
American New Right – religious conservatism was on the rise in America as a result of the sexual
liberties gained in the 60s and 70s
The launch of the Guardian Angels in 1979 in New York as a volunteer organisation of unarmed crime
prevention
During one of their shopping trips, Ofglen reveals to Offred that she is a member of
“Mayday,” an underground organization dedicated to overthrowing Gilead. Meanwhile,
Offred begins to find that the Ceremony feels different and less impersonal now that she
knows the Commander. Their nighttime conversations begin to touch on the new order that
the Commander and his fellow leaders have created in Gilead. When Offred admits how
unhappy she is, the Commander remarks, “[Y]ou can’t make an omelette without breaking
eggs.”
Written shortly after the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret
Thatcher in Great Britain
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
(published 1953)
Guy Montag is a fireman who burns
books in a futuristic American city. In
Montag’s world, firemen start fires rather
than putting them out. The people in this
society do not read books, enjoy nature,
sped time by themselves, think
independently, or have meaningful
conversations, in much the same way as
the citizens of Gilead. Instead they drive
very fast, watch excessive amounts of
television on wall-size sets, and listen to
the radio on “Seashell Radio” sets
attached to their ears.
The growing power of this “religious right” heightened feminist fears that the gains women had
made in previous decades would be reversed.
Feminists consider the great triumphs of the 1970s—namely, widespread access to
contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the increasing political influence of female
voters
After some time has gone by without Offred becoming pregnant, Serena suggests that
Offred have sex with Nick secretly and pass the child off as the Commander’s. Serena
promises to bring Offred a picture of her daughter if she sleeps with Nick, and Offred
realizes that Serena has always known the whereabouts of Offred’s daughter. The same
night that Offred is to sleep with Nick, the Commander secretly takes her out to a club
called Jezebel’s, where the Commanders mingle with prostitutes. Offred sees Moira
working there. The two women meet in a bathroom, and Offred learns that Moira was
captured just before she crossed the border. She chose life in Jezebel’s over being sent to
the Colonies, where most political prisoners and dangerous people are sent. After that
night at Jezebel’s, Offred says, she never sees Moira again. The Commander takes Offred
upstairs after a few hours, and they have sex in what used to be a hotel room. She tries to
feign passion.
Historical notes refers to nuclear-plant accidents. Probably the most serious of these in America prior
to Atwood's writing of
The Handmaid's Tale
was the Three Mile Island plant incident in 1979.
Historical notes mention the banning of birth control in Romania. Under the dictatorship of President
Ceausescu, who wanted to increase his country's population, birth control and abortion were banned
after 1966.
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from
1961 to 1989 – its demolition brought sweeping reforms.
Current topical context that affects the reading of the text: Election of Trump in 2016; Brexit;
government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic; civil partnerships 2004; legalisation of same sex
marriage 2014; civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples 2019
