In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, a brutal, highly organized society is established. Formed from the ashes of a society devastated by chemical warfare, a cult like atmosphere transpires. Non-participants of this society are deemed tainted and the outside women are labeled as un-women as their natural ability to reproduce has been biochemically stripped from them.
Reconstruction of the social order is terrifying due to its concieveable application to reality. Rights once possessed by the characters, especially those of the women, are revoked. Women are no longer allowed to read, all signs have been replaced by pictures and the privilege of free will has been exterminated. Women must now mourn their departed husbands until their own demise, wearing attire reflecting their social cast, or they must serve as wives whom can only reside with their husbands but not provide them with any sexual satisfaction. Lastly, the handmaidens, who are residents among the married couples, serve as the womb for society and robed in scarlet red, are the Hester Prynnes of this society.
Ofglen, the narrator handmaiden describes how she is imprisoned in the home, summoned to her duty to her master and not much more than that. Small items like butter become treasures to her, stolen to keep her skin from cracking. Ofglen describes the training embedded by the Aunts into the handmaidens from a young age and how she went from a modern women shopping with credit cards and watching her friends smoke cigarettes to not being allowed to communicate with anyone without fear of the Eye finding out. The infamous Eye plagues the characters and any attention from them meant disappearance. This is similar to today's society's fear of being investigated by the FBI. Obedience was accomplished through this intimidation, this mental and visual terrorism as there is also a wall upon which damned members, many of them doctors, of the previous culture are hanged, bludgeoned and coated with blood as reminders that socity has changed.
Despite the extensive orderliness of this society, this society is far from safe. This total restraint on human emotion leaves the characters crisp and inhumane. Cracks are forming in the system. The wives detest the handmaid's presence as would any married woman and the handmaid's detest being an object of organized rape and when conception takes place, other handmaiden's are wickedly envious and attempt to endanger the lives of the mother and child-to-be. Humans need emotion, women need liberation, love needs to blossom naturally. These are elements that are attempted to be repressed but are irrepressible. Just as bootlegging transpired during prohibition, so does an underground playground of pleasure come into existence. Privileges are renewed although only for a short while and Ofglen is brought into this world by none other than her master. This dangerous move excites curiosity by other than the two attendants which means either trouble or freedom for Oflgen. The reader is left to decide the fate of the young handmaiden.
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