Atwood conjoins the three epigraphs by drawing on a controlling metaphor: the images of produce, food, and eating, which create a motif of fulfillment. In Genesis 30, Jacob asks Rachel whether he is to be accused of denying her “the fruit of his womb.” Swift’s proposal, a cannibalistic economy based on the consumption of young children, supplants “vain, idle, visionary thoughts” in a lame attempt to alleviate social dysfunction. The final epigraph notes that no one seriously considers eating stones. The farfetched juxtaposition of these three citations prefigures the extent of the fantasy in which prestige and/or survival for enslaved women resides in a waning society’s obsession with producing a healthy crop of children for its upper echelon.
To assure proper nourishment in potential mothers, the control of food and the denial of cigarettes and alcohol are crucial factors. Thus, during a war-torn era marked by food shortages and rationing, Offred, like a fatted calf, journeys daily to dairy, meat, grain, and produce markets to buy nourishing milk, bread, chicken, strawberries, and radishes; as the family’s hope of viable offspring, she lives literally off the fat of the land. On the down side, Offred’s habitation resembles a stall in that she is allowed rest and exercise, but has no freedom of movement to divert her from her task of conceiving. Also, like a brood animal, she must produce within a prescribed time limit or be dispatched to toxic clean-up crews in the Colonies or to Jezebel’s, a businessmen’s brothel.
