WOMEN AND FEMININITY

Question 1

Which quote describes how the women’s individuality has been stripped away?

Answer 1

There are other women with baskets, some in red, some in the dull green of the Marthas… (5.5)

Here the narrator describes the roles of women in this society. All but the Econowives are “divided into functions,” as shown by their dresses. The women are basically color-coded: their individuality is completely stripped away.

Question 2

Which quote suggests how Offred wants to be valued as a woman once again?

Answer 2

I want Luke here so badly… (17.11)

The narrator misses other elements of being a woman and a person. For her, being held, named, and valued in the ways she used to be—as a person, not a uterus—are part of being a woman.

Question 3

Which quote depicts a reversal of feminist values?

Answer 3

Mother, I think. Wherever you may be… (21.34)

In an ironic moment of anti-feminism, a “women’s culture” does exist, but it isn’t one any reasonable feminist (male or female) would have wanted. It’s a terrible realization of a different kind of imagined equality.

Question 4

Which quote suggests women are interchangeable?

Answer 4

“So now that we don’t have different clothes,” I say, “you merely have different women… (37.26)

Men treat women like they’re interchangeable. In a weird way, this is representative of the narrator’s observation about casual dating, when “men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit” (9.7-8).