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Cora is one of the Marthas, working as a house maid for the Commander and Serena Joy. A meek and quiet person, she interacts mainly with Rita, the house cook, who is also a Martha. Rita is bristly and looks down on Handmaids, and Cora generally submits to Rita’s preferences by avoiding Offred. However, Cora is an undoubtedly kind person who values peace and compromise, and over the course of the novel, she becomes increasingly sympathetic to Offred. However, the two never become friends – the hierarchical structures of Gilead discourage mingling between classes, and for their own survival, Marthas and Handmaids often stick to communicating only with their own.
Cora is traumatized by the previous Handmaid’s suicide and is horrified when she finds Offred asleep in the wardrobe one morning, thinking that Offred has met the same fate. For Cora, Offred’s presence in the household represents hope. Just like Offred, Cora has had her autonomy, family, and intellectual life stripped from her. As a low-status, infertile woman, her only use in Gilead is as a domestic laborer. Like many of the women in Gilead, Cora sees children as the only remaining way to find happiness. The only brightness in her difficult, constrained life is the possibility of a child in the home, which she would have a hand in raising. As such, she is often kindest to Offred when her chances of pregnancy are at their highest.
