The Handmaid's Tale

First published in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s sixth novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has received numerous accolades and prizes and remains widely critically celebrated. Set in what used to be the United States but is now a repressive theocracy called the Republic of Gilead, the dystopian novel is narrated by the protagonist, Offred, who recounts her daily experiences intercut with memories of her life before the revolution and during her training to become a “Handmaid.”

Atwood is an acclaimed writer of novels, short stories, and poetry; her works, The Handmaid's Tale included, often explore feminist and/or speculative themes, although Atwood has also critiqued some aspects of contemporary feminism. The Blind Assassin (2000), Oryx and Crake (2003), and The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale published in 2019, are among her best-known works.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain instances and discussions of misogyny, abuse, rape, assault, and suicide.

Plot Summary

Handmaids are fertile women who have been imprisoned and indoctrinated by the totalitarian Gilead regime in response to drastically low fertility rates; they are forced to bear children for the higher-ranking members of Gilead society. The narrator, Offred, is one such woman and is assigned to the Commander and his Wife, Serena Joy. She lives in the Commander's house alongside two domestic staff known as Marthas and Nick, the Commander’s driver.

Offred must follow strict rules and regulations, remaining quiet and servile and always wearing her red Handmaid’s uniform, with a winged bonnet obscuring her face. The name “Offred,” like those of all Handmaids, comes from the Commander’s first name, indicating that she belongs to or is “of Fred.” Once a month, Offred has to undergo the Ceremony. Taking its precedent from a biblical story in which Jacob’s wife tells him to impregnate her maid, as she herself cannot conceive a child, the Ceremony involves Offred lying in Serena Joy’s lap and holding her hands while the Commander has perfunctory, passionless intercourse with her. Any child Offred conceives will belong to the Commander and Serena Joy.

As Offred goes about her restrictive, limited life, she frequently thinks about the time before Gilead overthrew the American government. She was married to Luke, a man with whom she had previously had an affair. They had a daughter together. When Gilead took over, the regime curtailed women’s autonomy, making it illegal for them to work and transferring their money to their male relatives.

Offred and Luke attempted to flee to Canada with their daughter but were caught; Offred does not know what happened to Luke or their daughter afterward. Offred herself was taken to the Red Center to be trained as a Handmaid by the Aunts, officious women armed with cattle prods who insisted that Handmaids are respected and protected in Gilead in a way they were not in the sinful and dangerous prerevolutionary society.

While Offred was at the Center, her old friend Moira was also brought in for training. Radical and rebellious, Moira managed to escape, although Offred does not know what happened to her after that.

Two events break Offred’s routine. A fellow Handmaid, Ofglen, reveals that she is a member of a secret underground organization working to undermine Gilead, reassuring Offred that she is not alone. The other interruption comes when the Commander, against all protocol, tells her to come to his study. There, they play Scrabble, and he allows her to read a magazine; both actions are illegal, as women in Gilead are banned from reading and writing. At the end of the evening, he asks her to kiss him, and she complies.

Offred soon starts coming to the Commander’s study regularly, though in secret. He lets her read his illicit collection of books, and she grows comfortable in his presence. At his request, she kisses him goodnight at the end of each evening.

Because Offred has still not become pregnant, Serena Joy suggests that the Commander may be infertile—a scandalous thing to say, as in Gilead, only women are considered capable of infertility. She proposes that Offred have sex with Nick to conceive a child.

That evening, the Commander surprises Offred by giving her makeup and a garish outfit and taking her out to Jezebel’s, a secret brothel where the Commanders spend time, and have sex, with sex workers. Offred discovers Moira living and working at Jezebel’s. She is shocked that the friend she has always seen as indomitable has also given in to Gilead’s demands. The Commander takes Offred to a private room and initiates sex, deluding himself that this is something that Offred actually wants. Offred struggles to fake any engagement with the act.

Later that night, Serena sends Offred out to Nick’s room above the garage, where Offred has far more passionate sex with Nick. She begins regularly sneaking out to sleep with Nick and quickly becomes consumed by this relationship. Although Ofglen asks her to spy on the Commander for the resistance, Offred ignores her, not willing to lose her new relationship with Nick.

When the Handmaids take part in the brutal execution of a man accused of rape, Ofglen fights her way to the front and kicks the man in the head before the others can tear him apart. When Offred confronts her about this, Ofglen explains that the man was not a rapist but part of the resistance and that she knocked him unconscious to spare him from the pain of being mobbed to death. Perhaps because of this, Ofglen is suddenly replaced by a new woman who is also called Ofglen. While on a walk, this Ofglen tells Offred that the previous woman hanged herself when she saw a black van coming to take her away.

When Offred returns home, Serena confronts her about the trip to Jezebel’s, and Offred knows that she is in serious danger. A black van pulls up outside, and Nick enters her room. He claims that the van is actually part of the resistance movement and has come to save her. She is led out, past the frightened Commander and furious Serena Joy. Offred does not know whether the van will take her to freedom or to prison and death, but she has little choice but to go.

The novel ends with “Historical Notes” purporting to be a lecture from a symposium of Gileadean Studies from the year 2195, revealing that Gilead did not last and, eventually, became a source of historical study. The professor giving the lecture explains that the story was found on cassette tapes that the narrator likely recorded after she escaped.