Summary: Chapter 37
The Commander takes Offred to an old hotel that Offred
remembers from pre-Gilead days, when she often met Luke there. In
the central courtyard, Offred sees women dressed in gaudy and revealing
clothing from the past. The women mingle with important, powerful
men. Offred realizes she should stay quiet and look dumb. She senses
that the Commander likes showing her off and enjoys showing off
for her. He explains that “the club” is officially forbidden, but
that everyone knows that to be satisfied, men require a variety
of women. Some of the women were prostitutes before Gilead. Others,
once lawyers, sociologists, and businesswomen, prefer turning tricks
in the club to a life in the Colonies or as a Handmaid. Suddenly
Offred spots Moira in the crowd. Moira wears an ill--fitting Playboy
bunny costume. She turns and sees Offred. They pretend not to recognize
one another, and then Moira gives the old signal to meet her in
the washroom.
Summary: Chapter 38
Five minutes later, Offred makes her way to the washroom.
A dressed-up Aunt standing guard with a cattle prod tells her she
has fifteen minutes. Offred meets Moira inside and explains that
the Commander smuggled her into the club just for the night. Moira tells
her own story. After escaping from the Red Center, she made her
way to the center of town in Aunt Elizabeth’s clothes and went to
the home of a Quaker couple involved in the resistance. She says at
that time the general public did not know about the Red Center because
the authorities of Gilead feared people would object at first. The
Quakers put her on the Underground Femaleroad, a system for getting
women to safety. They tried to smuggle her out of the country, but
just as Moira was leaving the final safe house to slip across the
border in a boat, she was caught. The Eyes tortured her and showed
her movies of the Colonies, where old women and subversives clean
up radioactive spills and dead bodies from the war, and the life
expectancy is three years. Moira chose to work as a prostitute in
the club, which is nicknamed “Jezebel’s,” rather than go to the
Colonies. Offred is disappointed to hear the fatalism in Moira’s voice—Moira
resignedly tells Offred she should try to work at the club, where
they get three or four years to live, and face cream. Offred misses
the old Moira who was so spirited and full of rebellion. After she
leaves the club, she never sees Moira again.
Summary: Chapter 39
The Commander takes Offred to a hotel room, which reminds
her of her affair with Luke. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She
hears toilets flushing in other rooms and feels comforted, thinking
of the universality of bodily functions. She thinks about Moira and
her mother. In the washroom, Moira said that she saw Offred’s mother
in one of the films about the Colonies. Offred had assumed her mother
was dead. Offred remembers going to her mother’s apartment with
Luke during the early days of Gilead; she found the place in disarray
and her mother gone. Luke told her not to call the police, saying
it wouldn’t do any good. She remembers how much spirit her mother
used to have, but she realizes that the Colonies must have stripped
it away. The Commander is lying on the bed waiting for her when
she exits the bathroom. He seems disappointed that she is not excited
about a real sexual encounter. He looks smaller and older without
his clothing. Offred feels no excitement and silently orders herself
to fake it.
Summary: Chapter 40
Back in her room at the Commander’s house, Offred has
removed her makeup and put on her Handmaid clothes. Serena plans
to meet her at midnight to take her to Nick so that Offred and Nick
can have sex. In the middle of the night, Serena comes and tells
Offred to go to Nick’s apartment. Serena will wait for Offred to
return.
Offred twice tells the story of what happens next. The
first story, thick with passion and desire, is told in the breathy
language of a romance novel. The second, probably more accurate,
is awkward, uncertain, and full of sadness for the lost courtship
rituals of the pre-Gilead world. “No romance . . . okay?” Nick says
before they begin. Offred takes pleasure in the act this time. Offred
says that neither of the versions is completely accurate, that every
story is by nature a reconstruction. After sleeping with Nick, she
feels ashamed. She feels she betrayed Luke and wonders if she would
feel differently if she knew Luke was dead.
Analysis: Chapters 38–40
Atwood suggests that patriarchal societies tend to divide
women into two types: the virgin and the whore. In Gilead, the virginal women
are the nearly sexless Wives and daughters, the invisible Marthas,
and the holy Handmaids—all of whose sexual lives are tightly restricted.
The whores are the prostitutes at Jezebel’s. Jezebel, for whom the
men’s club is named, was an evil Old Testament queen, guilty of
every sort of depravity, who came to symbolize the prototypically
vicious woman in the Judeo-Christian imagination. The men of Gilead
admit to no middle ground or gray area between virgin and whore.
