Daily Bread a reference to a line from the Lord's Prayer, found in Matthew 6-11.
Deuteronomy 22:23-29 the exacting Mosaic law governing punishment for rape of a virgin.
Econowives a jargon term for working-class women who lack maid service and thus must "do everything."
Emerge van A shortened version of emergency, the Emerge van carries doctors and medical machines to be used only if the "emerge" the birth proceeds abnormally.
Eurydice in Greek mythology, the luckless bride bitten by a snake on her wedding day. Her husband, Orpheus, the famed musician, convinced Hades to let Eurydice return to earth. However, Orpheus disobeyed the strictures of the journey and looked at Eurydice too soon, thus dispatching her back to the abode of the dead forever.
exploding atomic power plants an allusion to the nuclear meltdown on Three Mile Island in March 1979. Ironically, Atwood's book was published shortly before the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, which occurred in Russia on April 26, 1986.
fanlight a half-circle of colored glass meant to add filtered overhead sunlight as a further adornment of the foyer. The colors, red and blue, suggest patriotic bunting as well as the free-floating hostility between the Commander's Wife in blue and the intrusive Handmaid in red.
Feels on Wheels vans and Bun-Die Buggies vehicles carrying prostitution to the streets.
fetish a bizarre or perverse psychological obsession — such as a focus on hair, shoes, revealing lingerie, or body odor — to relieve an erotic need.
Forgive them, for they know not what they do Aunt Lydia's pious platitude, drawn from Luke 23:34, repeats one of Jesus's final utterances during his crucifixion at Calvary.
"For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to know himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards him" II Chronicles 16:9, an analysis of military victory, which occurs through human dependence on God. The passage, as interpreted by Gilead's cabal, justifies the use of the Eyes to spy on citizens.
Frailroad a multiple pun on Women as the weaker sex and the pejorative slang term frail, meaning a girl or woman. The term also suggests a line from a scene in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which the title character disparages his mother, Gertrude, a widow newly married to her husband's brother. In disgust at her haste to remarry, Hamlet mutters: "Frailty, thy name is woman" (I, ii, 146).
From each . . . according to her ability; to each according to his needs a sexist restatement of a quotation of 1875 from the writings of Karl Marx, father of Communism.
