He offers her hidden or contraband products, such as old (1970s) fashion magazines, cosmetics and clothes, takes her to a secret brothel run by the government, and furtively meets with her in his study, where he allows her to read, an activity otherwise prohibited for women.

Although he is supposed to have contact with Offred only during 'the Ceremony', a ritual of sexual intercourse intended to result in conception and at which his wife is present, he begins an illegal and ambiguous relationship with her. The Commander is a high-ranking official in Gilead. Offred describes the structure of Gilead's society, including the several different classes of women and their circumscribed lives in the new theocracy. Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds she has lost all autonomy to her husband, through her failed attempt to escape with her husband and daughter to Canada, to her indoctrination into life as a handmaid. Offred describes her life during her third assignment as a Handmaid, in this case to Commander Fred who is formally referred to as The Commander. The character is one of a class of women known as Handmaids who are kept for reproductive purposes by the ruling class in an era of declining births due to sterility from pollution and sexually transmitted diseases. The story is told in the first person by a woman called Offred (literally 'Of-Fred'). In this society, human rights are severely limited and women's rights are unrecognized as almost all women are forbidden to read.

The new regime, the Republic of Gilead, moves quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsory regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious fanaticism among its newly created social classes. They are quickly able to eliminate all women's rights, largely attributed to financial records being stored electronically and labelled by gender. The Handmaid's Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic military dictatorship formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America.īeginning with a staged attack that kills the President and most of Congress, an extreme Christian movement calling itself the ' Sons of Jacob' launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order.

The hand maids tale book