The Handmaid's tale Quotes Flashcards
Offred on the angels in the red centre
chp.1 page 4
‘The angels stood outside with their backs to us. If only they would look. If only we could talk to them.’
How handmaids communicated in the red centre
chp.1 page 4
‘we learnt to whisper without sound’
‘we learnt to lip-read’
Offred on the suicide proofing of her room chp.2 page 7
They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to
Offred on touch
chp.2 page 11
I hunger to commit the act of touch
Offred talking about the wives hurting the handmaids
chp.3 page 16
‘They can hit us, there’s scriptural precedent’
Aunt Lydia dehumanising the Handmaids
“Think of yourselves as seeds”
“lets pretend we are trees”
Offred on news
chp.4 page page 19
‘I’m ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it is false news’
Aunt Lydia on Freedom
chp.5 page 24
‘Freedom to and freedom from’
Offred on the foreign visitors
chp.5 page 29
‘It’s been a long time since I’ve seen skirts that short on women. Then I think: I used to dress like that. That was freedom.’
Offred on what men used to say
chp.7 page 37
‘Lay is always passive. Even men used to say, I’d like to get laid. Though sometimes they said, I’d like to lay her. All this is pure speculation. I don’t really know what men used to say. I only had their words for it’
Offred on telling her story
chp.7 page 39
‘I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it.’
‘If it’s a story I’m telling then I have control over the ending’
Offred on claiming her room
chp.9 page 50
‘My room then. There has to be some space, finally that I claim as mine, even in this time’
Note left by the past handmaid in Latin
chp.9 page 52
‘Nolite te bastardes caborunderum’
Offred on complacency
chp.10 pages 56-57
‘There were stories in the newspapers […] but they were about other women and the men who did such things were other men’
‘we lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of the print’
Offred on children
chp.11 page 61
‘Give me children, or else I die. There’s more than one meaning to it’
Offred on her body in the bath
chp.12 pages 62-63
‘I avoid looking down at my body not because it’s shameful or immodest but because I don’t want to see it.’
Offred on her body equaling her worth
chp.12 page 63
‘I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely’
The biblical language of the Handmaid’s greetings
‘Blessed be the fruit’
‘May the lord open’
‘Praise be’
‘Under his eye’
Offred on how she used to feel about her body
chp.13 page 73
‘I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will’
Offred on the bible
chp.15 page 88
‘It’s an incendiary device: who knows what we’d make of it, if we ever got out hands on it’
Offred on the lack of love
chp.18 page 103
‘But this is wrong, nobody dies from a lack of sex. It’s a lack of love we die from’
Aunt Lydia speaking about future handmaid’s
chp.26 page 161
‘for future generations it will be so much better. The women will live in harmony together’
Offred on her relationship with her mother
chp.28
‘No mother is ever, completely a child’s idea of what a mother should be and I suppose it works the other way around as well’
Offred on the sterility of men
‘There is no such thing as a sterile man’
