Exuding sexuality, the prelude to the mating scene blends details and images into a sensual, pre-coital symphony: Nick twice nudges Offred with his foot, flowers become “the genital organs of plants,” and a televised male choir punctuates the refrain of “The Little Brown Church in the Vale” with the bass counterpoint, “Come, come, come, come,” an obvious reference to ejaculation. Truncated by a switch to televised video clips of religious warfare in Detroit, the news concludes with a benevolent, grandfatherly anchorman—a fictional version of Walter Cronkite—who convinces the audience that All Is Well in Gilead. After the appearance of the Commander, the sexual overlay intensifies with phallic images (“his extra, sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug’s eye, which extrudes, expands, winces, and shrivels back into himself”) and copulative metaphors (“this journey into a darkness while he himself strains blindly forward”). Offred, who is simultaneously amused and compromised by the Commander’s power, quips, “I’ve got my eye on you. One false move and I’m dead,” a snippet of black humor that captures the potential for tragedy in their unproductive copulation.
The mating scene contains, literally and figuratively, the novel’s climax. This central tableau, like a religious sacrament from the Middle Ages, exalts Serena as a madonna figure at the same time that it demeans Offred, the Handmaid. Contrasting the red and white of Offred in her upstairs quarters, the subtler apricot-hued, tufted carpet and leather upholstery set against dusky rose velvet curtains provide a fashionably domestic ambience for the room’s focus—a cloyingly cliché white china Cupid leaning its arm on a lamb and flanked by two pairs of silver candlesticks. The enigma of dried arrangements alongside “real daffodils on the polished marquetry end table” epitomizes the paradox that is Serena-wizened, but alive; brittle, yet feminine; hard, but sentimental. Over the visual images floats the sickly-sweet scent of lily of the valley, a fragrance that Offred connects with “the innocence of female flesh.”
As living proof of the Latin saying, Post coitum omne animal triste, Offred’s response to intercourse is an amplified version of post-coital sadness, the after-effects of anticipation and exploitation. In the arms of Nick, her fantasy figure, she exults in the taste of his skin and exonerates her greed for touch and guilt-laden lust by addressing Luke, “It’s you here, in another body.” Nick’s covert message underscores the Handmaid’s pawn-like helplessness-the Commander expects her the next day for a private interview. In response to the summons, Offred clutches the doorknob and acknowledges her impotence: “It’s all I can do.”
