This grouping of five chapters delineates more thoroughly the characterization and focus of Offred. In former times, her life was full of love, friendship, learning, opportunity, and optimism. Although her mother was an actively militant feminist, Offred, a postfeminist backslider, failed to appreciate women’s rights and privileges, such as making choices, having a job, holding a bank account, controlling her reproductive capabilities, and enjoying equality with men. She paid scant attention to the ominous political, religious, and social climate that indicated an alarming rise in misogyny. By cocooning herself in Luke, her daughter, and the events of their narrow microcosm, she ignored the gathering hostile takeover until she and her family were victims of Gilead’s lethal tentacles.
Under rigorous theocratic rule, seemingly pampered with her diet of chicken, vegetables, fruit, and milk, Offred retains the womanly urge to hide in her spare pair of shoes some pats of butter which she uses as body cream. This small indulgence lightens the tedium of incarceration, as does her reading of “Faith” on the needlepoint pillow and her tolerance of Nick’s flirtations. Although willing to flout rules against makeup, reading, and infidelity in these minuscule misdemeanors, Offred is too intent on survival to risk so daring a departure from law as copulating with the doctor, a capital crime for both of the fornicators if they are discovered.
As she examines the tattooed pass number and symbolic eye on her ankle, Offred, like the women of World War II whose heads were shaved for consorting with the enemy, appears to live vicariously on the edge—never far out of compliance, yet a bit of a daredevil. Thus, against a brutally intrusive, all-knowing regime, she retains a frail modicum of individuality and self-esteem. In anticipation of another mating with the Commander, she composes herself into a soulless, long-suffering receptacle for his sperm.
