Important Quotes

Chapters 1-46:

• "Give me children, or else I die"
• "We learned to whisper almost without sound"
• "They've removed anything you could tie a rope to"
• "Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?"
• "I intend to last"
• "red: the colour blood which defines us"
• "I refuse to say my" (refering to the room given to her)
• "A sister dipped in blood"
• "How I use to despise such talk. Now I long for it. At least it was talk. An exchange of sorts." (refering to the lack if communication between women in Gilead)
• "I am a reproach to her; and a necessity" (Although Serena Joy despises Offred she needs her to bear children)
• "The truth is that she is my spy, as I am hers"
• "Doubled I walk the street" (double imagery)
• "Freedom to and freedom from"
• "She is a magic presence to us an object of envy and desire" (Janine also known as Ofwarren is withchild and she is an object of envy since she is expecting and the other handmaids are not)
• "Tell, rather than write, because I have nothing to write with and writing in any case is forbidden"
• "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" - Don't let the bastards grind you down.
• "the amount of unfilled time, the long parenthesis of nothing"
• "I wait, washed, brushed, fed like a prize pig" (women are objects not people)
• "Each month I watch for blood, fearfully for when it comes it means failure" (the constant demand for a pregnancy)
• "For our purposes your feet and your hands are not essential." (they are there for breeding purposes)
• "Buttered, I lie on my single bed, flat, like a piece of toast"
• "The greater the risk the greater the glory"
• "the Birthing Stool, with its double seat, the back one reaised like a throne behind the other" (the hierarchy of Gilead, although the handmaid is giving birth its the mother that is given importance)
• "according to her ability; to each according to his needs."
• "it's a bouquet of flowers: someting she's won, a tiribute" (refering to the baby that has just been born)
• "two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"
• "It's an oasis of the forbidden" (refering to the Commander's office filled with books)
• "We are not each other's anymore, Instead I am his" (now that Offred has no rights she is the property of her husband Luke)
• "the pair of us, and in front of us another pair and across the street another" (further proof of double imagery meaning that these handmaids have no individual identity)
• "I tell, therefore you are" - Descartes's theory of I think therefore I am
• "He has become a it" ( the man allegedly accused of rape not man but an it)
• "I resign my body freely, to the uses of others"
• "I feel for the first time, their true power"
• "And so I step up, into darkness within, or else the light" (Offred's fate is undecided because as readers we don't know what happened to her)

Historical Notes:

• "The Underground femaleroad" is referred by Professor Piexioto as "The Underground Frailroad"
• B.Fredrick Judd: "our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won't do that again." refering to women being though how to read.
• "Gilead was, although undoubtedly patriarchal in form, occasiotnally matriarchal in context."
• "had she had a different turn of mind, she could have told us much about the workings of the Gileadean empire, had she had the insticts of a reporter or a spy."

 

For further information on quotes and quotes explained go to:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/handmaid/quotes.html