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Summary from the Library of Congress cataloging-in-Publication Data: Not available in the book. LOC Categories:
Man-woman relationships—Fiction; Misogyny—Fiction; Women—Fiction

Notes:

* There are Cliffs Notes to this book. Information found at the Cliffs Notes website.
* Several other study guides for this book exist as well. I found one study guide that the American Library Association lists on its website.
* Margaret Atwood is what I view as a modern-day, radical feminist. The book is full of erotica and foul language. The following information comes from Paul Brian’s study guide on The Handmaid’s Tale that the ALA linked to. According to the website last updated in 2004, Brian is with the Department of English at Washington State University. “It [the book] is also the product of debates within the feminist movement in the 70s and early 80s. … The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the rise of the religious right, the election of Ronald Reagan, and many sorts of backlash (mostly hugely misinformed) against the women's movement led writers like Atwood to fear that the antifeminist tide could not only prevent further gains for women, but turn back the clock (“Study Guide”).” (Retrieved July 24, 2005 from http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/handmaid.html).
* On the back of this book is a review from the Washington Post Book World: “A novel that brilliantly illuminates some of the darker interconnections between politics and sex…Just as the world of Orwell’s 1984 gripped our imaginations, so will the world of Atwood’s handmaid!”

--The aforementioned notes come from research I performed, while the excerpts belong to PABBIS (Parents Against Bad Books in School, www.pabbis.org). However, I did verify this 1998 book by adding page numbers to the excerpts of the 1986 version posted by PABBIS. Please remember that PABBIS provides content on their website that may contain “controversial and potentially objectionable or inappropriate material in a book.” -- Lyn, OFSA

Excerpts:

- Story set in future where psychotic theocracy controls every aspect of everyone’s life

- “..isn’t running away they’re afraid of... It’s the other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself given cutting edge.” (8)

- “Stillborn, it was. Or, Stabbed her with a knitting needle, right in the belly. ..Or.. It was toilet cleaner she used.” (11)

- “..I know they’re watching, these 2 men who aren’t yet permitted to touch women. They touch with their eyes instead... I move my hips a little... like.. teasing a dog with a bone held out of reach.. I enjoy the power... I hope they get hard at the sight of us and have to rub themselves.. They will suffer.. at night, in their.. beds... no outlets now except themselves, and that’s a sacrilege.. no more magazines, no more films..” (22)

- “..there are 6 more bodies hanging, by the necks, there hands tied...heads in white bags.. must have been a Men’s Salvaging.. Sometimes they’ll be there for days... hanging from hooks... on one bag there’s blood.. seeped through... [they] wear white coats.. Each has a placard.. to show why he has been executed.. drawing of a human fetus.. were doctors.. when such things were legal. Angel makers.. turned up know by.. hospital records... by informants.. evidence from a single woman is no longer admissible.” (32-33)

- “I just did [a paper] on date rape. Date rape, I said. You’re so trendy.. sounds like some kind of dessert. Date rape.” (38)

- “..woman handed me.. magazine.. pretty woman on it, with no clothes on, hanging from the ceiling by chain wound around her hands.. Don’t let her see it, said my mother.. I threw [it] into the flames.. parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash, in the air..” (38-39)

- “..like Tupperware, only with underwear. Tart’s stuff. Lace crotches.. bras that push your tits up.. big in the suburbs, once they start getting age spots they figure they’ve got to beat the competition. The Pornomarts and what have you.” (56)

- “The finger retreats, enters otherwise, withdraws... My breasts are fingered in their turn, search for ripeness, rot. ..I could help you [the doctor] says.. I’ve helped others.. his hand, sliding up my leg.. taken off the glove.. The doors locked. No one will come in. They’ll never know it isn’t his... Most of the old guys can’t make it anymore.. Or they’re sterile... Your soft [he says]. It’s time.. It’d only take a minute, honey... We are all honey.” (60-61)

- “It’s J., telling bout how she was gang-raped at 14 and had an abortion.. told same story last week... seemed almost proud of it.. whose fault was it? Aunt H. says.. Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant.. Who led them on? She did. She did. She did. Why did God allow such a terrible thing... Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.” (71-72)

- “I won’t have to listen to that old bitch.. They send 2 guys with you, in the ambulance. Think about it... must be starved for it, shit, they aren’t even allowed to put their hands in their pockets.” (89)

- “They took her into the room... Afterwards she could not walk for a week, her feet would not fit in her shoes.. too swollen.. used steel cables frayed at the ends. After that the hands.. didn’t care what they did to your feet or your hands, even if.. permanent.” (91)

- Young woman slaves to make babies for older couples: “..towards the head of the bed S. is arranged, outspread.. legs are apart, I lie between them.. head on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base of my skull, her thighs on either side of me. She too is fully clothed.. My.. skirt is hitched up to my waist. Below it the Commander is fucking.. fucking the lower part of my body.. not making love.. [not] copulating.. because it would imply 2 people and only 1 is involved.. wasn’t a lot of choice, but there was some, and this is what I chose... I wish he would hurry up... S. grips my hands as if it is she, not I, who’s being fucked.. [he] fucks with a regular 2-4 marching stroke, on and on like a tap dripping. He is preoccupied.. somewhere else.. an impatience in his rhythm now.. isn’t this everyone’s wet dream, 2 women at once? They used to say that. exciting, they used to say... nothing to do with sexual desire, at least for me, and certainly not for S. Arousal and orgasm are no longer thought necessary.. his not-unpleasant face hanging over my torso... If he were better looking would I enjoy this more?.. an improvement on the previous [man], who smelled like a church cloakroom in the rain, like your mouth when the dentist starts picking at your teeth.. Kissing is forbidden between us. This makes it bearable... He comes at last, with a stifled groan of relief... rests a moment, withdraws, recedes, rezippers.. nods, then turns and leaves the room..” (93-95)

- “[N.}.. pulls me against him, his mouth on mine.. how I’d like to.. on the.. carpet. A man entirely unknown. ..I could unbutton, and then.. want to reach up, taste his skin, he makes me hungry.. good to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to feel so greedy. L., you’d know, you’d understand. It’s you here in another body. Bullshit... I think of the hanged men, hooked on the wall.. Can I be blamed for wanting a real body to put my arms around?.. I can stroke my self, under the.. sheets, in the dark, but I too am dry and white.. like running my hand over a plateful of dried rice” (97-104)

- “I pray that the [bullet] hole, 2 or 3.. were close together.. pray that at least one hole is neatly, quickly and finally through the skull, through the place where all the pictures were, so that there would have been only the flash, of darkness or pain.. only the one then silence.” (104)

- “No anesthetics [anymore in childbirth]. Aunt E. said it was better for the baby, but also: I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” (114)

- “Sometimes.. movie [Aunt L.} showed would be an old porno film, from the 70’s or 80’s. Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, woman tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks.. hanging from trees.. upside-down, naked,..legs held part, woman being raped, beaten up, killed. Once.. woman slowly cut into pieces, fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach slit open and her intestines pulled out.” (118)

- They don’t play the soundtrack, on movies like these, though they do on the porno films... want us to hear the screams and grunts and shrieks of.. extreme pain or extreme pleasure.. but they don’t want us to hear what the Unwomen are saying.. writing, in paint, on.. bedsheet: TAKE BACK THE NIGHT.. FREEDOOM TO CHOOSE. EVERY BABY A WANTED BABY. RECAPTURE OUR BODIES. DO YOU BELIEVE A WOMAN’S PLACE IS ON THE KITCHEN TABLE?.. line drawing of a woman’s body, lying on a table, blood dripping out of it.” (119-120)

- Her Mother: “You were wanted child... did I get shit from some quarters. My buddy.. the bitch.. sending me.. stuff about how hard it was to be a single parent.. Fuck that shit, I told them... I don’t want a man around, what use are they except for 10 seconds worth of half babies. A man is just a woman’s strategy for making other woman..” (120)

- “Cooking’s my hobby, Luke would say... my mother [said] .. don’t have to make excuses with me. Once upon a time.. they’d have called you a queer.” (121)

- “Aunt E. kneels.. to catch the baby.. the head, purple and smeared with yoghurt, another push and it slithers out, slick with fluid and blood... Oh praise.” (126)

- “Maybe it isn’t about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it... I want you to kiss me, said the Commander” (135)

- “..could approach the Commander, to kiss him.. put my arms around him and slip the lever out from the sleeve and drive the sharp end into him suddenly, between his ribs. I think about the blood coming out of him, hot as soup, sexual, over my hands.” (139-140)

- “Men are sex machines said Aunt L. and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good. Lead them around by the nose; that is a metaphor. It’s natures way. It’s God’s device.” (144)

- “..the man had been cruel and brutal.. my mother explained mistress, she did not believe in mystification.. had a pop-up book of sexual organs by the time I was 4. ..[the mistress] denied knowing about the ovens [which were in the camp beside their house]. She did not believe he was a monster. He was not a monster to her. Probably he had some endearing trait.. how easy it is to invent a humanity for anyone at all... Several days after this interview.. she killed herself.” (145-146)

- “Saint S. on her knees, doing penance.. doesn’t do to linger watching S. from behind... What I coveted was the shears.” (153)

- “The Commander and I have an arrangement.. I visit [him] 2 or 3 nights week, always after dinner.. The difficulty is the Wife as always.. What had I been expecting.. the first time. Something unspeakable, down on all fours perhaps, perversions, whips, mutilations? At.. very least some minor sexual manipulation.. prohibited by law and punishable by amputation.” (154-155)

- “He might have been thinking about what he did during the day, or about playing golf, or about what he’d had for dinner. The sexual act, although he performed it in a perfunctory way, must h[a]ve been largely unconscious, for him, like scratching himself.” (160)

- “I felt uncouth. This act of copulation... should have been no more than a bee is to a flower, had become for me indecorous, an embarrassing breach of propriety... He was no longer a thing to me. That was the problem. ..also felt guilty about her.. Now that I was seeing the Commander on the sly..”(161)

- “Are you calling L. a social disease?.. M. laughed.. Shit.... was a time when we didn’t hug, after she’d told me about her being gay; but then she said I didn’t turn her on..”(172)

- “Fucking pigs. Fucking bleeders, one of her friends said..” (180)

- “Acts of perversion for all he knows. The Commander and me, covering each other with ink, licking it off, or making love on stacks of forbidden newsprint.” (181)

- “While I read, the Commander sits and watches.. This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it.” (184)

- “My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven... I think about the chandelier too much.. you could use a hook in the closet... after attaching yourself.. lean your weight forward and not fight.. I feel very unreal, talking to You like this. I feel as if I’m talking to a wall. I wish You’d answer. I feel so alone... Oh God... Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living?” (194-195)

- “Your time’s [to become pregnant] running out [the Commander’s wife] says.... Maybe he can’t she says... Maybe you should try it another way. Does she mean on all fours? Another man she says.... It’s a risk I say.. Maybe I could get something... you want [she says].. A picture.. Of her.. Your little girl... The bitch not to tell [where they’ve put her]” (204-206)

- “What about all the Pornycorners, it was all over the place, they even had it motorized.. the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it.” (210)

- “Will S. talk about me like that, if I do as she wants: Agreed to do it right away, really she didn’t care, anything with 2 legs and a good you-know-what was fine with her.” (215)

- “..you aren’t expected to love him.. Just do your duty in silence. When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look up at the ceiling... Is anything wrong dear the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don’t move.” (221-222)

- “Camaraderie, shit says M.... right fucking on, Aunt L., as they used to say. .. bet she’s got Janine down on her knees.. What do you think they get up to in that office.. bet she’s got her working away on that dried-up old withered--.. something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power.. delightful.. naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling.. someone.. had scratched [on bathroom stall wall] Aunt L. sucks.. So now I imagine, among these Angels and their drained white brides, momentous grunts and sweating, damp furry encounters.. better... failures, cocks like 3 week old carrots..” (222)

- “He’s holding.. garment.. for a woman.. cups for the breasts.. feathers around the thigh holes.. had to guess the size he says... Now we may have come to it, his deep-down real desire. Does he have a pony whip, hidden behind the door? Will he produce boots, bend himself or me over the desk?” (230-231)

- “Chickenshit..” (232)

- “There are a great many buttocks in this room. I am no longer used to them... He is showing me off.. they are decorous enough, they keep their hands to themselves, but they review my breasts, my legs... Nature demands variety for men [he says].. procreational strategy.. Nature’s plan.. Women know that instinctively... buy so many different cloths, in the old days.. To trick the man into thinking they were with several different women. A new one each day.” (235-237)

- “What the hell are you doing here? M. says.. What’d you do wrong? Laugh at his dick?... The shit you’re with.. I’ve had him, he’s the pits.. He’s my Commander I say. She nods. Some of them do that, they get a kick out of it.. like screwing on the alter.. your gang are supposed to be such chaste vessels. They like to see you painted up.” (243)

- “The first [checkpoint] scared the shit out of me.” (244)

- “..that Aunts way like a goddamn soldier, poker up the ass..” (245)

- “..nearly shat bricks the whole time... They had silent prayers every evening.. reminded me too much of that shit at the Center... ever thought what it would be like to be shat on by a truckload of chickens, all of them carsick... She pretended to do all that love-the-sinner, hate-the-sin stuff, but she enjoyed it [steel cable torture].. I did consider offing myself, and maybe I would have if there’d been any way.” (247)

- “..supposed to demoralize the men, having to wear a dress. Shit, it would demoralize me.. shit, nobody but a nun would pick the colonies.. So here I am.. even give you face cream. You should.. [get] in here... have 3 or 4 good years before your snatch wears out and they send you to the boneyard.. there’s drink and drugs... and we only work nights... lots of women around. Butch paradise.. hell, they encourage it.. we’re all damned anyway.. doesn’t matter what sort of vice we get up to.. don’t give a piss what we do in our off time.. women on women sort of turns them on.” (249)

- “Everybody shits, as M. would say.” (252)

- “He’s stroking my body now.. down the left leg.. fingers encircling the ankle.. where the tattoo is.. cattle brand. It means ownership.. begins to unbutton.. pulls down one of my straps, slides his other hand in among the feathers.. I lie there like a dead bird. He is not a monster, I think. ..Fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how. Lets get this over with.. move your flesh around, breath audibly. It’s the least you can do.” (254-255)

- “Separate entrance, it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved... No preliminaries; he knows why I’m here.. doesn’t even say anything.. it’s an assignment.. He’s undoing my dress.. I can’t see his face.. mouth is on me, his hands... it’s been so long.. I made that up. It didn’t happen that way. Here is what happened... he knows why I’m here. To get knocked up, to get in trouble, up the pole, those were all names for it once... I don’t have much time I say.. I could just squirt it in a bottle and you could pour it in, he says.. doesn’t smile.. Possibly he feels used. ..wants.. acknowledgement that he too is human, is more than a seedpod.. I get paid, he says...... leads me over to the fold-out bed, lays me down.. begins to unbutton, then to stroke, kisses beside my ear.. It didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly.. I thought about S. sitting down in the kitchen. Thinking: cheap. They’ll spread their legs for anyone. All you need to give them is a cigarette.” (260-263)

- “.. he turns out the light.. not much talking.. anymore.. Already I am half out of my clothes.. here, each time, I keep my eyes open... For this one I’d wear pink feathers, purple stars, if that were what he wanted.. even the tail of a rabbit.. We make love each time as if we know.. there will never be any more, for either of us, with anyone, ever.” “..they half carry, half drag a third man.. I can smell him: he smells of shit and vomit.. This man, says Aunt L. has been convicted of rape.. His partner.. has already been shot. The penalty for rape as you know is death. Deuteronomy 22:23-29... one woman was pregnant and the baby died.. I want to tear, gouge, rend.. [they] let go of the.. man’s arms.. He staggers- (278-279)

- is he drugged? --and falls to his knees.. eyes are shriveled up inside the puffy flesh of his face... He says, I didn’t.. [then he is beaten to death]” (279)

- “Death makes me hungry... I want to go to bed, make love, right now.” (281)