The Handmaid’s Tale Key Chapter Notes
Chapter 3
Flower symbolism — life, sexuality & fertility
“I go out by the back door, into the garden, which is large and tidy: a lawn in the middle, a
willow, weeping catkins; around the edges, the flower borders, in which the daffodils are now
fading and the tulips are opening their cups, spilling out colour. The tulips are red, a darker
crimson towards the stem, as if they have been cut and are beginning to heal there.”
● A possible interpretation of the garden being a symbol of control, acting as a reflection of
domestic dynamics
● Serena Joy could be seen to use her garden as a means of regaining control and displacing
her anger link to Freudian interpretations of this being an ego-defence mechanism
● Strong connotations of both fertility and violence (explicitly links to HM’s purpose)
● Similarly, flower descriptions = also tragic: ‘weeping’, ‘fading’, ‘cut’
● Back door = sign of status, connotations of shame and sexual deviancy
“Serena Joy was never her real name, not even then. Her real name was Pam” “the
Commander’s Wife”
● A possible allusion to Saint Serena of Rome (martyr)- a secret Christian plagued with dreams
predicting her own death. Falsely executed for conspiring with the Goths
● ‘Serena’ tranquil, calm ‘Joy’ great pleasure/happiness (Puritan renaming/names to propagate
submissive, feminine values like Prudence or Patience – regime’s influence)
● Serena joy’s persona is self-inflicted/chosen (shown by ‘then’) rather than enforced – perhaps
mimicking the character’s anti-feminist stances pre-Gilead. Willingly submits to the patriarchal
regime and forfeits identity.
● Chosen to symbolise her conservative beliefs and commitment to the cause?
● The name itself was created by Offred – intended maliciously and ironically?
● ‘Pam’ meaning – ‘all honey/ all sweetness’ (possible link to her sickening perfume, décor and
temperament. Also, domestic connotations of the cooking spray (link to the Aunts – perhaps
reflecting the entrapment of women in the domestic sphere?)
● ‘The Commander’s Wife’ suggests her identity and status are dependent on male
ownership/dominance (like Offred). Deindividualisation and female objectification
“She didn't step aside to let me in, she just stood there in the doorway, blocking the entrance.
She wanted me to feel that I could not come into the house unless she said so. There is push
and shove, these days, over such toeholds.”
● The theme of conflict effectively symbolic of reluctance
● Intra-gender conflict/conflict between women
● Women have so little power that they hold onto any they can
● No solidarity between women
● Repetition of the word “she” — impersonal, dehumanising
● “she said so” — sibilance — highlights Serena’s harshness
● Offred = cynically self-aware of the lack of power all characters wield and how meaningless
such displays of control and the artificial hierarchy are. Ironic anger due to complicity
,“As for my husband, she said, he's just that. My husband. I want that to be perfectly clear. Till
death do us part. It's final.”
● Theme of marriage
● Subverts traditional and dystopian stereotypes of ownership and possession within
relationships through the pronoun ‘my’. Delusional?
● Themes of intra-gender conflict, power and control, hypocrisy
● Short, blunt declarative = detached and cold tone
Chapter 7
“Date rape, I said. You're so trendy. It sounds like some kind of dessert. Date rape.”
- Simile — “like a dessert”
● Dessert = something pleasurable — shows that Offred doesn’t take date rape
seriously/doesn’t consider it to be bad, could be generalised to show that she doesn’t take
feminism/women’s rights seriously
● Mocking tone contrasts the harsh reality of the current situation - Analepsis
● Flashback/analepsis
● ‘Rape’ (with accent) = grated/destroyed themes of sex and violence
“But there were some women burning books, that's what she was really there for.”
● Theme of feminism/women’s rights - Offred’s mother prioritises her activism over her
daughter?
● Book burning — comparison to the Nazis? — shows that Atwood thinks any type of extreme
ideology is wrong?
● Allusion to the burning of pornography magazines as an act of radical feminism during the
1960-70s. (‘bondage porn’- glorification of female submission)
● Censorship and the destruction of knowledge parallels that of Gilead (and F451 and Nazi
Book Burnings) represents alternative extreme. (Link to the above idea that all extremism is
dangerous)
“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.”
● Theme of storytelling, theme of memory
● Repetition of the verb ‘believe’ — desperation?
● Link to the concept of the unreliable narrator (as well as the possible validity issues of the
text itself, being a historical reconstruction)
● Anaphora of ‘I’ = sense of desperation (use of imperatives ‘must’ and ‘need’
● Themes of illusion v. reality, survival, control, importance of narratives (link to Atwood’s own
position as an author)
Chapter 16
“the Commander fucks, with a regular two-four marching stroke, on and on like a tap
dripping.” “The Commander, too, is doing his duty.”
● Theme of sex, violence, power and control
● Simile — something mundane for him, something boring, something he has to do
● Antithesis between the expletive and the mundane simile – almost humourous extremely
unsettling
,“One detached oneself. One describes.”
● Theme of survival
● Repetition of the word ‘one’ (impersonal pronoun = lack of identity, reinforcing sense of
detachment)
● Dissociation/detachment from reality
“stiff and straight as an effigy. Which of us is it worse for, her or me?”
● Blatant religious references in the simile reaccentuate this idea of the overwhelming power
and influence of the theocracy.
● Simile connotes a lack of life/humanity by the comparison to a statuette
● Alliterative adjectives ‘stiff’ and ‘straight’ connote repression and constraint whilst
demonstrating the character’s discomfort
● The Epiplexsis (Rhetorical question) emphasises how all women are victimised under
Gilead’s regime, creating pathos for the character
● Demonstrates Offred’s remarkable ability for empathy
Chapter 19
“Sanity is a valuable possession. I hoard it the way people once hoarded money.”
● Metaphor = Themes of survival and survival
● Foreshadowing of Janine’s madness? Theme of madness
● ‘hoard’ strong connotations of desperation
“On this day we can do anything we want. I revise that: within limits.”
- Theme of freedom, or lack thereof, ideas of entrapment
• Demonstrates self-awareness, punctuation could be interpreted as mirroring these restrictions
“As I'm going up the steps, wide steps with a stone urn on either side — Ofwarren's
Commander must be higher status than ours — I hear another siren. It's the blue Birthmobile,
for Wives. That will be Serena Joy, arriving in state. No benches for them, they get real seats,
upholstery. They face front and are not curtained off. They know where they're going.”
● Theme of hierarchy/class, intra-gender conflict, power and control
● -Symbolises how the Handmaids are cut off from society
Chapter 20
“Sometimes the movie she showed would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties.
Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars
around their necks, women hanging from trees, or upside-down, naked, with their legs held
apart, women being raped, beaten up, killed. Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut
into pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach slit open and
her intestines pulled out. Consider the alternatives, said Aunt Lydia. You see what things used
to be like? That was what they thought of women, then.”
● Theme of feminism/women’s rights, sexual violence
● Linking sex & violence
● Flashback/ Analepsis (to the Red Centre)
, ● Links to the idea of freedom to and freedom from — the Aunts want to make it seem like
women had it worse under the previous system ideas of indoctrination
● Irony because they don't think that highly of women under Gilead either theme of hypocrisy
● Lots of use of triadic structure and shocking, grotesque imagery
“FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. EVERY BABY A WANTED BABY. RECAPTURE OUR BODIES. DO
YOU BELIEVE A WOMAN'S PLACE IS ON THE, KITCHEN TABLE? Under the last sign there's a
line drawing of a woman's body, lying on a table, blood dripping out of it.”
● Theme of feminism/women’s rights
● Analepsis past v. present, provides contrast
● Capitalisation accentuates message structurally
● Imperatives = tone of authority (arguably reminiscent of Gilead’s declaration Atwood’s views
regarding all forms of extremism)
“I don't want a man around, what use are they except for ten seconds' worth of half babies. A
man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.”
● Theme of feminism/women’s rights
● Possible argument/parallel of men being objectified and used purely for procreation
● Humourous, comedic tone conveyed via euphemism ‘ten seconds’ worth of half babies’
● Strategy calculated? Under duress/pressure (perhaps from society?)
Chapter 23
“This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It's a reconstruction now, in my head, as
I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should or shouldn't have said, what I should or
shouldn't have done, how I should have played it. If I ever get out of here— Let's stop there. I
intend to get out of here. It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times
before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last
forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had. When I get out of here, if
I'm ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one voice to another, it will be a
reconstruction then too, at yet another remove.”
● Theme of storytelling, memory, survival, past v. present
● Use of the unreliable narrator link to typicality within postmodernism
● Ideas of narration = accentuated by repetition of the term ‘reconstruction’, arguably
foreshadowing the Historical Notes
“Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can
do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit
and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do
what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”
● Themes of power and control, entrapment, hypocrisy, sex and violence, justice and injustice
● Anaphora of ‘Maybe’ inherent uncertainty throughout the text (means of control)
● Syntax parallelism and placement of pronouns reinforces the idea of an imbalance of power
(as does use of triadic structure)
“We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.”
● The metonymy ‘two-legged wombs’ accentuates how the handmaids’ identity has been
reduced to their ability to procreate (is Offred demonstrating self-awareness? Being complicit
in her dehumanisation + objectification?)
