Atwood makes extensive use of the isolated chapters that depict Offred coping with loneliness. Bored with unfilled time, Offred battles ennui by pondering paintings of luxuriant, fleshy women in harem settings. Ironically, she sees herself as a kept woman, a prototype of “sedentary flesh.” Like a “prize pig,” she identifies with the groomed show animal or with a pigeon conditioned as part of a psychological experiment. She regrets having no toy similar to the pigs’ plaything to amuse her during the long waits between performances.
As Offred studies the change in her attitude toward femininity, the author, speaking clearly through her heroine, enlarges on a central theme, the focus of woman as womb, woman as begetter. The round of lunar cycles depresses Offred as her unproductive, pear-shaped uterus becomes a pulsating symbol—a pseudo-heart, the glowing core of her existence. The arrival of her menstrual period, “the droolings of the flesh,” reduces her to normal fits of the blues, exacerbated by emptiness, grief, and despair, “coming towards me like famine.” Taking a secondary role in her body, her beating heart, 11 salty and red” with its blend of tears and blood, marks the rhythm of days as she awaits conception and the resulting release from a potential death sentence if she fails to produce a child.
By the end of the chapter, the salty blood is supplanted by real tears, which Offred wipes away with her sleeve. The total effect captures the crux of the story—the fact that Gilead has performed a dire organ swap, hearts for uteruses. Too fearful of allowing herself to grieve for members of her family who might still be alive, Offred does what prisoners of war do to keep sane. She concentrates on self-control and compliance with her keeper’s wishes and wills her reproductive organs to fill the empty chamber with a fetus.
