Offred—This unidentified, faithful wife of Luke, mother of a daughter, and successful clerk or computer operator working in the discing room of an office or possibly a library among eight or ten other female employees, bears the state-contrived label of “Offred,” a term that identifies her as a handmaid specifically to be bred “by Fred.” Early in the novel, before she has become “Offred,” she is separated from work and loses control of her finances, feels the stirrings of paranoia, and agrees to attempt flight across the Canadian border. The failure of her family’s escape leaves her uncertain as to the safety and disposition of family members, who may still survive in the society of Gilead. After becoming the psychologically conditioned Handmaid and mistress of Commander Frederick, she fails her state-mandated mission—to conceive a child.
Agreeing to the urging of Serena Joy, Offred becomes the lover of Nick, the family chauffeur. At Nick’s instigation, Offred flees with double agents posing as the secret police. Evidence suggests that she departed the Boston area via the Underground Femaleroad, settled in a Quaker way station in Bangor, Maine, and taped a narrative about her servitude in Gilead. Like other escapees, Offred may have relocated in Canada or England, possibly to live in seclusion.
Moira—A next-door friend to the novel’s central character during college, Moira, who shares internment at the Rachel and Leah ReEducation Center, remains “quirky, jaunty, athletic ... irreverent, resourceful.” She organizes an “underwhore party” to sell risque lingerie to college girls, and later she works for the publishing division of a women’s collective. After the takeover of the Congress and suspension of the Constitution, Moira warns her friend that something bad will happen.
A logical, skillful survivalist, after being remanded to Handmaid training, she lifts Offred’s spirits in clandestine meetings in the washroom. Moira suffers torture for feigning an attack of appendicitis, then overpowers a matron and escapes. Reunited with Offred, Moira continues their tradition of washroom conspiracies at Jezebel’s, a nightclub where Moira works as a prostitute. Moira, who is happy to coexist among other lesbians, explains how she was remanded there because of her incorrigible behavior. After Offred’s only visit to the night spot, she learns no more about Moira’s fate.
Serena Joy—A former soprano on the Growing Souls Gospel Hour and crusader for traditional female roles, Serena Joy, whose real name is Pam, once performed maudlin TV antics; she was well-known for being able to weep copiously on camera. Serena enters late middle age with arthritis and the responsibilities of the Commander’s household. Pampered by servants, she putters about her garden, sometimes just sitting under a willow tree or leaning on her cane in contemplation of her flower beds. A barren Wife, she detests the intrusion of the Handmaids, who threaten the stability of her marriage. On June 25, 2195, Professor Pieixoto believes that he has possibly identified her: she could be Thelma Waterford, wife of Frederick R. Waterford.
The Commander—A gray-haired former market researcher and semiretired top military official of the Eyes, his sober posture and stooped shoulders give away his age. Mild-mannered, but cynical and acquisitive, he rules over Wife and Handmaid as though they are chattel and interprets the ban on pre-Gilead decadence as it suits his needs and desires. After the Commander gets to know Offred, he treats her like a precocious child or lap dog and takes pride in her skill at Scrabble. She sees him as “daddyish” and recognizes his loneliness and need for heavy nighttime drinking.
Tentatively identified by historians as either Frederick R. Waterford or B. Frederick Judd, Professor Pieixoto’s descriptionseemingly pinpoints the former as Offred’s mate. Waterford was the designer of the Handmaids’ uniforms and originator of the term “Particicution.” He succumbed to a political purge as a direct result of his “liberal tendencies” for retaining banned pictures and books and for “harboring a subversive.”
Nick—A trusted, over-confident chauffeur for the Commander, he bears messages that summon Offred to the office and supplies black market cigarettes to Serena Joy. When Offred first enters the Commander’s household, she notices Nick, who is polishing the staff car; soon afterward, he regularly stares at her, shows off his muscles, whistles, and displays an insouciant cockiness that belies his later importance in her life. As Offred’s lover, Nick listens dispassionately to her recital of past history and emotional outpourings during their fervid lovernaking. On the day that Serena confronts Offred with evidence of adultery and calls her a slut, Nick, purportedly an operative for the Eyes and double agent for Mayday, sets up a phony arrest and has her spirited away in an Eyes van, possibly to an Underground Fernaleroad way station in Bangor, Maine.
Aunt Lydia—Caught up in her fervency as a vigilant matron at the Rachel and Leah Re-Education Center, Lydia, with her uplifted face, protruding yellow teeth, and steel-rimmed spectacles, spouts a tedious line of platitudes and truisms, warnings against immodesty, materialism, and a lack of interest in the traditional maternal role, especially motherhood. She seems sincere in her belief that the “Republic of Gilead . . . knows no bounds. Gilead is within you.”
Like a glory-struck drill sergeant, Aunt Lydia, armed with pointer, whistle, and cattle prod, stalks the gymnasium/barracks and administers mild, authoritative taps, a demonstration that “a little pain cleans out the mind.” In class, she inculcates Gilead’s future Handmaids with simplistic dogma: “It’s a risk you’re taking ... but you are the shock troops, you will march out in advance, into dangerous territory. The greater the risk the greater the glory.”
Luke—Offred’s husband is recalled in wisps of memory—the two of them walking down the street as they discussed buying a house or starting a family, throwing out accumulated plastic grocery bags to protect their daughter from suffocation, making up the term “sororize” to mean “acting like a sister.” After fleeing his first wife to rendezvous with the novel’s main character during afternoons in hotel rooms, he enjoys lying close with her. A good-natured man, Luke teases his feminist mother-in-law about the differences between men and women. She refers to him as a chauvinist “piglet.”
After the creation of the despotic state of Gilead, Luke exhibits what his wife interprets as paternalistic attitudes and behaviors toward her disenfranchisement and impounded bank account. He devises an escape plan and helps ease her tensions as the family packs a picnic and drives leisurely toward the Canadian border. Gunshots indicate that the foiled escape may have caused his death or, at best, grave injury during his capture.
