the-handmaids-tale-characters

The Handmaid’s Tale: Characters

Told from a first-person narrative perspective, Atwood brings her characters to life through details woven into the story, as well as characters’ actions and reactions. She relies on indirect characterisation, so that the characters’ personalities are revealed via their actions (and in Offred’s case, her thoughts) rather than being based on appearance or description. This gives the reader the decision of how to view the characters, based on what you gather from the information you are given. Characters can be also symbolic, representing certain ideas or ideals, so it is essential that you consider:

• how characters are established

• how characters are presented via:

  • actions and motives

  • what they say and think

  • how they interact with others

  • what others say and think about them

  • their physical appearance or description

• how far the characters conform to or subvert stereotypes

• the relationships between characters

• what they might represent

Below you will find detailed character profiles for the major characters in The Handmaid’s Tale, along with a summary of the significant other characters:

Major characters

• Offred

• The Commander

• Serena Joy

Other characters

• Nick

• Aunt Lydia

• Ofglen

• Janine/Ofwarren

• Rita and Cora

• Moira

• Luke

• Offred’s mother

Offred

• Offred is the protagonist and narrator of the novel:

  • The story is told from her perspective

  • The reader therefore experiences Gilead via Offred’s thoughts and descriptions

• She is also a handmaid, a “woman-for-breeding” role designated to her, as she is of an age where she is potentially still fertile in an increasingly infertile state

• She is “re-educated” at the Red Centre, and her individual identity is erased:

  • She is forbidden to use her real name (June) and she is allocated the name Offred meaning “of Fred” – belonging to the Commander

• She keeps her real name hidden

• She tells Nick her real name as a token of her feelings:

  • But she does not trust the reader with it directly, indicating that she lives in a world where who she can trust is extremely unclear

• Offred is not an obvious dissident

• She uses her memories of her past and who she used to be as her weapon against the regime:

  • She refuses to forget her own name and the time when she was a mother, a daughter, a lover, a wife, a working woman and a friend

  • In this way, Offred retains her psychological freedom

  • It is her power to remember that helps her cope with her present

  • Atwood reconstructs Offred’s past through memory and flashback, layering and interweaving them so that Offred simultaneously inhabits two spaces: her present handmaid’s space (or lack of it) and the freer spaces of her memory

• She does not outwardly rebel against the regime:

  • In many ways, she seems to go passively along with it

  • Instead, she commits her own little acts of rebellion, such as making eye contact with the town gate’s young guard, or memorising the inscription she discovers in her closet

• This is in contrast to a character such as Moira, who is openly resistant and confrontational, or her mother, whose political causes were a source of discomfort for Offred:

  • This can also be thought of in terms of political resistance, which is more moderate, versus direct action

  • This may explain why she is unwilling to directly spy on the Commander and report back to Ofglen, but she is willing to take risks in the arrangement itself or in her relationship with Nick

• She is sharply observant and responsive to the world around her:

  • She notes all of the seasonal changes in Serena Joy’s garden, which represents beauty and the fertility denied to the Commander’s wife

  • Her observations of the natural world also serve to remind her that life goes on, and things once buried can resurface anew

  • The natural imagery also contrast with the polluted, masculine world of Gilead

  • Her narrative can be viewed as feminine subversion of a patriarchal system

• But she is also lonely and isolated, and longing for physical and emotional connection, which could explain the relationships she develops with the Commander and with Nick:

  • In her arrangement with the Commander, both characters revert to old yet familiar social and sexual codes

  • Yet she is too intelligent to know that this is nothing more than a masquerade or a parody of the past, as represented by the evening at Jezebel’s

• Even with the indoctrination and brain-washing Offred has encountered, she never really succumbs to the belief system of Gilead

• However, she is aware that she needs to appear to be obeying Gilead’s laws:

  • This is reflected in her questioning the motives of characters who appear to want to help her

  • The fact that she never believes in the doctrine demonstrates the limitations of Gilead’s power over its subjects

  • Her relationship with Nick allows Offred to hope, and to even come to terms with her current situation as being bearable, but with that comes risk

• As a narrator, Offred is self-aware and reflective of her own contradictions and failings:

  • This improves her integrity as a narrator

  • She is more believable as a character due to her flaws and contradictions

  • She has enough faults to make her human, but not so many as to render her unsympathetic and a character the reader cannot engage with

• She is therefore the heroine of this novel, but not in the traditional sense:

  • She deals with the everyday practicalities of a life in which she has very little freedom or choice

  • She uses strategies to endure the boredom, monotony and ultimate futility of her existence (as in the novel she fails to fulfil her sole purpose in Gilead – to get pregnant)

  • She represents the resilience and endurance of the human spirit

The Commander

• The Commander is a distant figure, described as being seen only fleetingly at the start of the novel:

  • This is ironic given the importance of his status and position, both in relation to Offred herself and to Gilead

• He is the most powerful male authority figure in the novel, and in Offred’s world:

  • Yet he is presented as a man who is lonely and who is seeking connection

• Offred describes his physical appearance in detail, and observes him as being unremarkable

• He represents male power and dominance, along with stereotypical traits of indifference to domestic practicalities, ignorance to women’s actual needs and wants, and subject to his sexual desires

• But he is an ambiguous character, important but shadowy, with motivations that remain unclear to Offred throughout

• The power relationship between the Commander and Offred changes depending on whether they are in a public or private space:

  • In public, the Commander is aloof and dominant, and Offred is considered his “property”

  • However, in private, we see glimpses of a more balanced power relationship, with Offred occasionally growing in confidence, or apparently vulnerability on the part of the Commander

  • He appears to desire friendship and intimacy with his handmaid, not just a service

  • However, as the novel progresses, Offred realises that these visits are selfish, as while they satisfy his need for companionship, he does not seem to realise nor care that they put Offred in danger

  • This is reinforced by his apparent indifference to the fate of his previous handmaid

• His moral blindness and hypocrisy are highlighted by his attempts to justify Gilead and his visits to Jezebel’s

• He seems to yearn for what life was like before, while justifying the treatment of women under the totalitarian regime

• The Commander might think of himself as much a prisoner as Offred, but it is a prison that he was instrumental in building, and the prison he has created for women is far worse

• Atwood’s presentation of the Commander shows the humanity behind evil or extreme ideas:

  • Atwood means to convey that a society such as Gilead could happen anywhere

  • Therefore, the Commander personifies this idea

  • He is a well-dressed, respectable and occasionally sympathetic character, showing that evil and oppressive people can appear to be normal

  • This is further reflected in Offred’s reflection on the story of the Nazi officer’s mistress in Chapter 24

• The role and importance of memory is also significant when considering the character of the Commander:

  • He is convinced that their outing to Jezebel’s is like walking into the past, but this is not a version of the past that Offred remembers

• It is a grotesque parody of an element of the past, in which the Commander is reduced from a figure of authority to, essentially, a dirty old man

• At the end of the novel, the Commander stands at the doorway as Offred is taken away looking old, worried and helpless:

  • He maybe realises that his own downfall is imminent, and the balance of power between he and Offred shifts, as she realises that she is above him, looking down, as he shrinks

Serena Joy

• Serena Joy is the Commander’s wife, and is presented as a bitter and mostly unsympathetic character

• She is significant, not only because she is referred to by her own name (unlike the other wives), but also because she is the most dominant female figure in Offred’s present:

• She is older, childless and deteriorating physically:

  • She may therefore resent Offred not only for her position, but also for what she represents (youth and fertility)

• Before Gilead, she was a singer on a gospel television show and a media personality promoting right-wing ideology and extremely conservative domestic policies:

  • She now appears to be trapped in the very ideology on which she based her former popularity

  • The character could be viewed as a satirical portrait of Christian Right wives who were media personalities in the US in the 1980s

  • Even her name is ironic, as she is the opposite of “serenity” and “joy”

• Via Offred’s observations, the reader learns both what Serena Joy looks like, and how she moves, spends her time and what she finds difficult:

  • However, Offred finds it difficult to work out what Serena Joy is thinking

• She wears blue, as do all of the wives, symbolic of the Virgin Ma