FREEDOM AND CONFINEMENT

Question 1

Give an overview of freedom and confinement.

Answer 1

If Handmaid’s become pregnant by their commanders their reward is not being sent off to die. If they do get pregnant, they are confined to their bodies in a different way, forced to have children they don’t get to keep, fathered by a man they don’t love.

Question 2

Give a quote in relation to appearance and freedom.

Answer 2

“As long as we do this, butter our skin to keep it soft, we can believe that we will some day get out” (17.6)

• Another kind of freedom or potential to escape exists here too. By stealing butter and using it as a pathetic sort of lotion, the narrator and the other Handmaid’s ‘believe that they will some day get out’. Here, the potential of freedom lies within an ordinary household staple.
• Links to how Blanche deems her appearance to be the key to escape and find a husband - stability.

Question 3

Give a quote in relation to boundaries and freedom.

Answer 3

‘As if everything were available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries’ (35.22)

• Offred feels so separate from her life before, when freedom and autonomy were rights, not privileges. Now she recognises them as the previous things they were, almost marvelling at how little they were appreciated when people had them, and how they seemed worlds away from the life she has now.
• Blanche has fallen from a position of power in Belle Reve to confinement in Stanley’s household where he is in charge