Quotes From The Handmaids Tale

The Handmaids Tale is a best-selling feminist novel by Margaret Atwood set in a dystopian future. In it, war and pollution have made pregnancy and childbirth increasingly difficult, and women are enslaved as prostitutes  or virginal concubines (handmaiden) in an effort to repopulate and control the population. Atwoods beautiful, haunting prose in The Handmaids Tale is told from the first-person perspective of a woman called Offred (or Of Fred, her master). The story follows Offred through her third service as a handmaiden and also offers flashbacks to her life before the Revolution that led to this new American society founded on religious fanaticism. Read on to discover quotes from The Handmaids Tale and learn more about the not-too-distant-or-improbable future outlined in Margaret Atwoods famed novel. Quotes About Hope in Dystopia Offred carries with her a certain quiet optimism that her daughter—who was taken from her when she tried to flee to Canada with her husband at the start of the revolution—is still alive, though this hope is diminished by the harsh conditions she lives under as a handmaiden, as described in Chapter Five: There is more than one kind of freedom...Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Dont underrate it. In Chapter Five, Offred also speaks of her daughter, saying, She is a flag on a hilltop, showing what can still be done: we too can be saved. Here, Offred reveals that her hope hinges upon the fact that her daughter has still not turned up on the wall where the ruling class hangs sinners near where Offred is held. Still, this optimism and hope is nothing in the face of the reality Offred finds herself in, and she admits in Chapter Seven that shes pretending the reader can hear her, But its no good because I know you cant. The Other Handmaidens Offred seems to have contempt for her fellow handmaidens, perhaps for their complacency or their simplistic view of the world: They are very interested in how other households are run; such bits of petty gossip give them an opportunity for pride or discontent. Still, Offred shares similarities with all other handmaidens in that they were the people who were not in the papers, the ones who lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of print, which Offred said gave them more freedom. All of them also undergo an indoctrination, a brainwashing ritual at the Academy where they train to be handmaidens. In Chapter 13, Offred describes a scene where the handmaidens are all seated in a circle around a woman confessing to being raped—Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison, Atwood writes. The woman training them, Aunt Lydia, also encourages all the handmaidens that though the new concepts introduced in their schooling may seem strange at first, they will eventually become mundane, but if not, the handmaidens would be punished for stepping out of line. One such instance is described in Chapter Eight: She doesnt make speeches anymore. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesnt seem to agree with her. How furious she must be now that she has been taken at her word.   Offred feels a pressure to fulfill these new standards despite herself, and in Chapter 13 says of her shortcomings, I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own. In Chapter 30, Offred says of her oppressors, That was one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself. Ultimately in Chapter 32, she realizes an important lesson when her master, Fred, tells her,  Better never means better for everyone...It always means worse for some.   Other Quotes From The Handmaids Tale I dont want to look at something that determines me so completely. (Chapter 12) Give me children, or else I die. Am I in Gods stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear fruit upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. (Chapter 15) Moira had power now, shed been set loose, shed set herself loose. She was now a loose woman. (Chapter 22) Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isnt really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isnt about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe its about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing. (Chapter 23) There is something subversive about this garden of Serenas, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently. (Chapter 25) Agreed to it right away, really she didnt care, anything with two legs and a good you-know-what was fine with her. They arent squeamish, they dont have the same feelings we do. (Chapter 33) And Adam was not deceived, but the women being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved by childbearing. (Chapter 34) There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits, as Moira would say. (Chapter 39) The trouble is I cant be, with him, any different than I usually am with him. Usually, I am inert. Surely there must be something for us, other than this futility and bathos. (Chapter 39) It makes me feel more in control as if there is a choice, a decision that could be made one way or the other. (Chapter 41) The crimes of others are a secret language among us. Through them, we show ourselves what we might be capable of, after all. This is not a popular announcement. (Chapter 42) Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that youve let me off, Ill obliterate myself, if that is what you really want; Ill empty myself, truly, become a chalice. Ill give up Nick, Ill forget about the others, Ill stop complaining. Ill accept my lot. Ill sacrifice. Ill repent. Ill abdicate. Ill renounce. (Chapter 45) Dont let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, Dont let there be air; or Dont be. I suppose you could say that. (Chapter 46)