The Handmaid's Tale

Offred comes downstairs, enters the sitting room, and kneels “near the chair with the footstool where Serena Joy will shortly enthrone herself” (89). Cora, Rita, and Nick come in. Nick stands “so close that the tip of his boot is touching my foot” (91). When Offred shifts, Nick “moves his foot so it’s touching mine again” (91).

Serena Joy enters the room and turns on the television, allowing them to watch the news, something that happens only “on the evenings of the Ceremony,” (92) the process by which Commanders attempt to impregnate Handmaids. The show reports only military victories for Gilead, the capture of religious dissidents, and the “[r]esettlement of the Children of Ham,” or people of color (93). Offred considers that the footage “could be faked” but decides that “[a]ny news, now, is better than none” (92). She remembers trying to flee Gilead with Luke and their daughter, trying to get into Canada with fake visas.

The Commander knocks and enters the room. He looks like “a midwestern bank president” with silver hair, “his blue eyes uncommunicative, falsely innocuous” (97). He looks over the assembled women and Nick “as if taking an inventory” (97). He removes a Bible from a locked cabinet and gives readings of “the usual stories” (99).

The Commander reads “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth” and the “mouldy [sic] old Rachel and Leah stuff…Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her” (99). Serena cries, “trying not to make a noise” (101).

Offred remembers Moira saying that she will “fake sick” (100) in order to be released from the Centre and seeing “her go out, to the ambulance, on a stretcher” (101). Afterward, Moira “could not walk for a week” because the Aunts “used steel cables, frayed at the ends” (102) to torture her for trying to escape. Aunt Lydia reminded them that “for our purposes, your feet and hands are not essential” (102).

For the Ceremony, Offred lies on her back in “Serena Joy’s outsized colonial-style four-poster bed […] fully clothed except for the healthy white cotton underdrawers” (104). Serena Joy is “arranged, outspread” above her, “her thighs on either side of me” (104), Offred’s head resting on her stomach. Serena Joy holds Offred’s hands, which is “supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being” (104).

Offred’s skirt is “hitched up to my waist, though no higher” and “[b]elow it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body” (104). The Ceremony “has nothing to do with sexual desire” and “is not recreation even for the Commander. This is a serious business. The Commander, too, is doing his duty” (105). Offred notes that “kissing is forbidden,” which “makes it bearable” (106).

The Commander “comes at last,” then “withdraws, recedes, rezippers,” and leaves the room (106). Although she is “supposed to have me rest,” Serena Joy tells Offred, “Get up and get out,” with “loathing in her voice” (106). Offred stands, and “the juice of the Commander runs down my legs” (106).

Back in her room, Offred takes the butter from the toe of her shoe and rubs it over her face and hands, explaining that “[t]here’s no longer any hand lotion or face cream, not for us,” which was “a decree from the Wives” who “don’t want us to look attractive” (107).

Offred decides that she “want[s] to steal something” (108) and creeps down to the sitting room, where she takes a daffodil, intending to press it under the mattress “for the next woman” (109). Nick enters the room, closes the door, and “pulls me against him, his mouth on mine” (109).

Offred is excited because “it’s so good, to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to feel so greedy” (110). She tells herself that Luke would understand, that “[i]t’s you here, in another body” but then dismisses this as “[b]ullshit” (110). Nick tells her that the Commander “wants to see [Offred][i]n his office” the next day, and they “move away from each other, slowly, as if pulled towards each other by a force” (110).

Offred lies in bed, “still trembling” and “want[ing] to be with someone” (113). She remembers “[l]ying in bed, with Luke, his hand on my rounded belly” but knows that such memories “are mirages only” and asks, “Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied” (113).

She admits that “I believe Luke is lying face down in a thicket” and hopes that he died quickly, that there had “been only the one flash, of darkness or pain […] and then silence” (114). She also believes that Luke is alive, captive somewhere, looking “ten years older,” tired and battered, “a scar, no, a wound […] the colour of tulips […] down the left side of his face” (115).

Offred “also believe[s] that they didn’t catch him […] that he made it, reached the bank, swam the river, crossed the border” (115). She believes that “there must be a resistance, a government in exile,” that Luke must have joined them, and that “[a]ny day now there may be a message from him” (115). It is “this message, which may never arrive, that keeps me alive” (116). She knows that the three scenarios “can’t all be true […] But I believe in all of them, all three versions of Luke” (116).