"They're protected, they can fulfill their biological destinies in peace. With full support and encouragement" (284). This sentiment is echoed by Aunt Lydia as she indoctrinates the new Handmaids, "Why expect one woman to carry out all the functions necessary to the serene running of a household? It isn't reasonable or humane" (210). But Gilead has not "returned things to Nature's norm" (285) as the Commander and the Aunts would have the women believe. The women are slaves, and their only rights lie in their restriction: they have been granted freedom from speech, freedom from choice, and freedom from identity. Like all slaves, the women are valued solely for the ways in which they perform each function for their captors. The women of Gilead are barred from education, socialization, and property ownership to make sure that their best efforts and energies are dedicated to their individual tasks, which leave them feeling emotionally incomplete. Their dissatisfaction is meant to attach them all the more firmly to the dynamic male householder. For this reason, the women are not allowed to socialize with each other, in case they come to prefer their own company and overturn the Gileadean system.
Through both Offred's narrative and the historical notes at the end of the text it is revealed that the Republic of Gilead is meant to be a world of our immediate future, where disease, pollution, and apathy have decreased Caucasian birth rates. Gilead, once New England, is a highly military city-state with sociobiological agendas dictated by a hierarchy of men. As a Handmaid, Offred has the role of surrogate mother for her Commander and his Wife. Within this role she has no identity, her name being "a patronymic, composed of the possessive preposition and the first name" (291) of her Commander. Offred is "of Fred," and as such, her only use as a human being is for childbearing. The methods of fertilization go as such: .