The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
Chapter 13-15
Chapter 13
There is unfilled time. Offred feels bored and remembers about painting of harem. She used to think that the pictures were supposed to be erotic but she now sees what they were really about; paintings about boredom. “Maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.” Offred thinks about her time in the Centre, where Moira was brought in. They pretended to not know each other because friendships were suspicious. Moira and Offred arranged to meet in the restroom to talk to each other and this made Offred “ridiculously happy.” At the Centre, they were required to “Testify” their previous lives. Janine testified that she was once gang raped. The Aunts asked who was the one at fault and the women all chanted saying it was Janine’s for leading them on. Offred thinks about herself, how she once had control over herself, but now, others see her as not a person, but an object, with a sole purpose of bearing children. She dreams about herself holding her daughters hands, running away. The physical restraint as she watches her daughter being dragged away from her.
Purpose:
A significant part of this chapter is when Offred thinks of her body as not an “instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of [her] own will [... but] a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than [she is] and glows red with its translucent wrapping.” This reinforces the dehumanization of women. In the Republic of Gilead, women are denoted to being objects of producing children. These continuous flashbacks gives a representation of Offred’s life before becoming a Handmaid. So far several people appear in her flashbacks and each representing some human need. Moira represents the need for friendship, Offred’s mother for family, her daughter for giving love or need for children, Luke the need for romantic love. Atwood uses the flashback as a device where Offred uses to deal with her current life.
Chapter 14
After a bath and dinner, the household must attend the Ceremony. Offred kneels on the floor while Serena sits in her chair. Rita, Cora and Nick stand behind Offred. Nick purposely moves his feet so that his shoes touch Offred’s. She shifts away but Nick persists to touch her foot. The Commander is late to the Ceremony “as usual” and Serena turns on the T.V. The channel is changed to the news. The news reports that spies were caught smuggling “national resources” across the border and that “five Quakers” were arrested. The news reporter also declares that the “resettlement of the Children of Ham is continuing on schedule.” When Serena grows impatient and turns off the T.V, Offred remembers how she and Luke purchased fake passports when they planned their escape and how they told their daughter they were going out for picnic, planning to give her a sleeping pill in order to cross the border without any giving them away.
Purpose:
The purpose of the television and new reports gives Offred ‘FAITH’. The news show that there is indeed possibilities of escape. The fact that subversives exists also gives her hope, that someone somewhere is resisting the government.
Chapter 15
The Commander finally arrives into the sitting room and proceeds to open the box which contains the Bible. She wonders what the Commander must be feeling or thinking of with this many women watching him. The Commander reads passages from the Bible which emphasizes childbearing. Offred remembers about the Centre and how these passages were pounded into the Handmaids by being repeated daily during lunch time. Offred remembers a time where Moira decided to fake illness, hoping to escape the Centre by bribing one of the men in the ambulance with sex. When she tried it with one of the Angels, he reported her. As a punishment, she was tortured and beaten by the Aunts with steel cables. Offred remembers Aunt Lydia saying “for our purposes your feet and hands are not essential.”
Purpose:
The use of the Bible and emphasis on childbearing and the role of a woman reinforces the idea that the Republic of Gilead is trying to turn back time, to where there was no feminism and that a woman’s job was to bear children, heir, for the men and for that reason, they are useful.
"I don't want pain. I don't want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don't want to be a doll hung up on the Wall, I don't want to be a wingless angel. I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to the uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am abject.
I feel, for the first time, their true power.