Offred’s birth Offred’s thirty-seven-year-old feminist mother (mid-1950s) disdains her mate, a useless man with memo rable blue eyes who lives on the coast.
late 1950s At age four, Offred receives a pop-up book of reproductive organs. A year later, Offred and her mother attend a Saturday rally and porno graphic magazine burning in the park. A par ticipant gives Offred a magazine to burn.
late 1960s At age fourteen or fifteen, Offred resents the illegal activities of her mother and other radi cal feminists.
mid-1970s During their college years, Offred and Moira become friends.
late 1970s Before Luke’s divorce, he and Offred enjoy a premarital affair and meet in a hotel for after noon trysts. During Offred’s pregnancy, she and Luke lie in bed and monitor their unborn child’s movements.
early to mid-1980s In September of Offred’s daughter’s third or fourth year, repressive measures halt Pornomarts, Feels on Wheels, and Bun-Dle Buggies and cancel Offred’s Compunumber. These events, prefaced by the President’s Day Massacre and suspension of the Constitution, comprise a hostile fundamentalist takeover—the beginning of early Gilead.
2:00 p.m. the next day Offred and other women are fired from their the jobs. Offred’s mother disappears.
mid-1980s In September of Offred’s daughter’s fifth year, Luke, Offred, and the child attempt to flee Gilead and cross the Canadian border. Offred and the child run through the woods and are apprehended and separated by unidentified pursuers. Luke’s fate is unknown.
two weeks after Janine is ridiculed as a crybaby. Offred Offred’s placement at will take part in the ritual of public the Rachel and Leah humiliation.Re-Education Center
a week later The authorities bring Moira to the Center for Handmaid indoctrination. Bruises suggest that she resisted arrest.
four days later Moira and Offred make tentative contact and arrange a meeting in the end stall of the wash room at 2:30 p.m.
2:30 p.m. Janine allows a group session to turn her testimony of gang rape at age fourteen into a unanimous accusation of seduction and criminality for having an abortion. Janine claims to have deserved the pain.
late winter or early After service to a bald-haired man, Offred spring of Offred’s is reassigned to the Commander.thirty-third year
three days later Offred discovers a Latin inscription scratched into a closet wall by the former Offred.
three weeks after Offred’s Handmaid companion disappears; arrival at the a second Ofglen takes her place. Commander’s home
May Offred discovers the Commander snooping near her room. She undergoes a mating ceremony and returns to the sitting room to steal something. Nick interrupts her and informs her that the Commander wants to see her the next night.
the next day Ofwarren gives birth to Angela. At nine o’clock that evening, Offred goes to the Commander’s office and plays Scrabble. Back in her room, she fights hysteria and sleeps in the closet.
the next morning Cora finds Offred in the closet and fears she has committed suicide.
end of the first year Offred observes her first Salvaging.
July of Offred’s Offred takes part in a Prayvaganza and joins
third year at the the Commander at the nightclub, where she Commander’s house reunites with Moira for the last time. Moira divulges that Offred’s mother, an Unwoman, works in the Colonies. Offred and the Commander take a room, where they have intercourse. After midnight, Offred, returned to the Commander’s house, follows Serena through the dark kitchen and out to Nick’s quarters for forbidden sex.
high summer Offred takes part in a Salvaging, where three women are hanged and a man is torn to bits. That afternoon, the second Ofglen is replaced by a new Ofglen, who divulges that her predecessor hanged herself after seeing the van coming for her. Serena stops Offred at the steps and accuses her of sluttish behavior with the Commander.
that night Nick bursts into Offred’s room and urges her to accompany two men in a black van. The Commander objects and is, according to a twenty-second-century scholar’s theory, later executed for harboring a subversive (Nick).
middle Gilead Authorities grow more cautious about liberalism.
June 25, 2195 At the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, Professor James Darcy Pieixoto, a British archivist from Cambridge University, explains how Offred’s cassette tapes were unearthed in Bangor, Maine, and pieced together into a puzzling and incomplete retelling of her ordeal.
