University of Denay, Nunavit—a pun on “Deny none of it.” Nunavit suggests Nunivak, a fogbound island off Alaska in the Bering Sea. Likewise, the Dene, who are Native American ancestors of the Athapascan aborigines, inhabit the Northwest Territories of Canada south of the tree line. Another sound-alike is Danae, the character from Greek mythology who was impregnated by a ray of sunlight from Zeus while she was imprisoned. After giving birth, Danae and her child were cast into the sea. The conclusion to her story, like that of Offred, is ambiguous, suggesting both acceptance and treachery.
Pielxoto—Pieixoto’s name suggests Pope Pius IX, a Vatican pope (1854-1878), who, in his first year of office, issued the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The reign of Pius IX produced a sharp swing from liberalism as the Church fought to maintain its powers from diminishment by the aftermath of Napoleon III’s rise to power. As a result of the hostile political climate at a time when Rome became a part of the Italian kingdom, the state vs. church power struggle rendered Pius IX a virtual prisoner in the Vatican.
Krishna—a light-hearted, sensual Hindu god connected with music and dance.
Kali—a paradoxical Hindu goddess of creativity and destruction.
The Warsaw Tactic: Policies of Urban Core Encirclement—In 1940, Nazi occupation forces confined 400,000 Jews to a ghetto in the center of Warsaw, Poland. As disease, starvation, and exportation to death camps decimated the number of Jews, the authorities began reducing the perimeter of the ghetto, thus squeezing the inhabitants into a smaller and more easily controlled compound. On April 19, 1943, German and Lithuanian soldiers joined Polish firemen and police in a brutal attack against the remaining 60,000 Jews, who put up a brave, but doomed resistance. By May 16, a house-by-house search revealed that Warsaw’s Jews were annihilated.
Sumptuary Laws—legal regulation of food, drink, color and style of clothing, personal adornment and purchase and display or use of luxury items, such as furs, glass windows, chimneys, and dishes made of silver or gold.
Monotheocracies—religious dictatorships based on the worship of one god.
Arctic char—a pun on a small-scaled trout and the British slang for charwoman, a domestic worker.
soi-disant manuscript—a French literary term questioning the authenticity of a manuscript.
in homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer—author of The Canterbury Tales (1385), a series of narratives told by a contingent of pilgrims traveling to a religious shrine in Canterbury, England. Each tale is identified by the profession or social status of the teller—that is, the wife of [from] Bath, the knight, the nun’s priest, the franklin, and so forth.
Bangor, Maine—city in south central Maine. Brewer, across the bridge from Bangor, was once a Quaker waystation on the Underground Railroad. The town’s location on the Penobscot River made it a useful connection point to seagoing vessels. From Brewer, abolitionists could transport escaping slaves downriver to the Atlantic Ocean and northeast around the coast to Canada.
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).
recollected, if not in tranquility, at least post facto—an allusion to William Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. This deduction suggests that Offred lived long enough “after the fact” to compose her thoughts, when safety, privacy, cassette tape, and recorder were available.
serial polygamy—the practice of marriage, divorce, and remarriage.
simultaneous polygamy . . . in the former state of Utah—The reference is to the Mormon practice of polygamy, a socio-religious custom allowing men to take multiple wives, which thrived under the leadership of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young from 1843 until it was banned in 1890.
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.
