The Handmaid’s Tale summary
chapter one summary
The narrator, whose name we learn later is Offred, describes how she and other
women slept on army cots in a gymnasium.
Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrol with electric cattle prods hanging from
their leather belts, and the women, forbidden to speak aloud, whisper without
attracting attention
Twice daily, the women walk in the former football field, which is surrounded by a
chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Armed guards called Angels patrol
outside.
While the women take their walks, the Angels stand outside the fence with their
backs to the women. The women long for the Angels to turn and see them. They
imagine that if the men looked at them or talked to them, they could use their
bodies to make a deal.
The narrator describes lying in bed at night, quietly exchanging names with the
other women.
chapter two summary
The scene changes, and the story shifts from the past to the present tense.
Offred now lives in a room fitted out with curtains, a pillow, a framed picture, and
a braided rug.
There is no glass in the room, not even over the framed picture. The window
does not open completely, and the windowpane is shatterproof.
There is nothing in the room from which one could hang a rope, and the door
does not lock or even shut completely.
Looking around, Offred remembers how Aunt Lydia
told her to consider her circumstances a privilege, not a prison.
Handmaids, to which group the narrator belongs, dress entirely in red, except for
the white wings framing their faces (red represents fertility)
The Handmaid’s Tale summary 1
, Household servants, called “Marthas,” wear green uniforms (their name is
reminisent with Martha from the bible)
“Wives” wear blue uniforms
Offred often secretly listens to Rita and Cora, the Marthas who work in the
house where she lives. Once, she hears Rita state that she would never debase
herself as someone in Offred’s position must. Cora replies that Offred works for
all the women, and that if she (Cora) were younger and had not gotten her tubes
tied, she could have been in Offred’s situation.
Offred wishes she could talk to them, but Marthas are not supposed to develop
relationships with Handmaids.
She wishes that she could share gossip like they do—gossip about how one
Handmaid gave birth to a stillborn, how a Wife stabbed a Handmaid with a
knitting needle out of jealousy, how someone poisoned her Commander
with toilet cleaner
Offred dresses for a shopping trip. She collects from Rita the tokens that serve
as currency. Each token bears an image of what it will purchase: twelve eggs,
cheese, and a steak.
chapter three
On her way out, Offred looks around for the Commander’s Wife but does not see
her.
The Commander’s Wife has a garden, and she knits constantly. All the Wives
knit scarves “for the Angels at the front lines,” (there is a war raging in
Gilead) but the Commander’s Wife is a particularly skilled knitter.
Offred wonders if the scarves actually get used, or if they just give the Wives
something to do
She remembers arriving at the Commander’s
house for the first time, after the two couples to which she was previously
assigned “didn’t work out.” One of the Wives in an earlier posting secluded
herself in the bedroom, purportedly drinking, and Offred hoped the new
Commander’s Wife would be different.
On the first day, her new mistress told her to stay out of her sight as much as
possible, and to avoid making trouble.
The Handmaid’s Tale summary 2
, As she talked, the Wife smoked a cigarette, a black-market item. Handmaids,
Offred notes, are forbidden coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol. Then the Wife
reminded Offred that the Commander is her husband, permanently and forever.
“It’s one of the things we fought for,” she said, looking away.
Suddenly, Offred recognized her mistress as Serena Joy, the lead soprano
from Growing Souls Gospel Hour, a Sunday-morning religious program
that aired when Offred was a child.
analysis: chapter one - three
The Handmaid’s Tale plunges immediately into an unfamiliar, unexplained world,
using new terms like “Handmaid,” “Angel,” and “Commander” that only come to
make sense as the story progresses. Offred gradually delivers information about her
past and the world in which she lives, often narrating through flashbacks. She
narrates these flashbacks in the past tense, which distinguishes them from the main
body of the story, which she tells in the present tense.
The first scene, in the gymnasium, is a flashback, as are Offred’s memories of the
Marthas’ gossip and her first meeting with the Commander’s Wife. Although at this
point we do not know what the gymnasium signifies, or why the narrator and other
women lived there, we do gather some information from the brief first chapter. The
women in the gymnasium live under the constant surveillance of the Angels and the
Aunts, and they cannot interact with one another. They seem to inhabit a kind of
prison. Offred likens the gym to a palimpsest, a parchment either erased and
written on again or layered with multiple writings. In the gym palimpsest, Offred
sees multiple layers of history: high school girls going to basketball games and
dances wearing miniskirts, then pants, then green hair. Likening the gym to a
palimpsest also suggests that the society Offred now inhabits has been
superimposed on a previous society, and traces of the old linger beneath the new.
In Chapter 2, Offred sits in a room that seems at first like a pleasant change from the
harsh atmosphere of the gymnasium. However, her description of her room
demonstrates that the same rigid, controlling structures that ruled the gym continue
to constrict her in this house. The room is like a prison in which all means of
defense, or escape by suicide or flight, have been removed. She wonders if women
The Handmaid’s Tale summary 3
, everywhere get issued exactly the same sheets and curtains, which underlines the
idea that the room is like a prison cell.
We do not know yet what purpose Offred serves in the house. However, when Cora
comments that she could have done Offred’s work if she hadn’t gotten her tubes tied,
it seems to imply that Offred’s function is reproductive. Serena Joy’s coldness to
Offred makes it plain that she considers Offred a threat, or at least an annoyance.
We do know from Offred’s name that she, like all Handmaids, is considered state
property. Handmaids’ names simply reflect which Commander owns them. “Of Fred,”
“Of Warren,” and “Of Glen” get collapsed into “Offred,” “Ofwarren,” and “Ofglen.” The
names make more sense when preceded by the word “Property”: “Property
Offred,” for example. Thus, every time the women hear their names, they are
reminded that they are no more than property.
These early chapters establish the novel’s style, which is characterized by
considerable physical description. The narrator devotes attention to the features of
the gym, the Commander’s house, and Serena Joy’s pinched face. Offred tells the
story in a nonlinear fashion, following the temporal leaps of her own mind. The
narrative goes where her thoughts take it—one moment to the present, in the
Commander’s house, and the next back in the gymnasium, or in the old world, the
United States as it exists in Offred’s memory. We do not have the sense, as in some
first-person narratives, that Offred is composing this story from a distanced vantage
point, reflecting back on her past. Rather, all of her thoughts have a quality of
immediacy. We are there with Offred as she goes about her daily life, and as she
slips out of the present and thinks about her past.
chapter four summary
As she leaves the house to go shopping, Offred notices Nick, a Guardian of the
Faith, washing the Commander’s car. Nick lives above the garage
He winks at Offred—an offense against decorum— but she ignores him, fearing
that he may be an Eye, a spy assigned to test her.
She waits at the corner for Ofglen, another Handmaid with whom Offred will do
her shopping. The Handmaids always travel in pairs when outside.
The Handmaid’s Tale summary 4
