Sanity in Gilead
Chapter 19: I chose this chapter because its following chapter 16 where the birth ceremony took place, and 17 where she imagines making love to Nick then envisions his body dead following their failed escape. The rest leading up to 19 is her lying in bed and reliving her past trauma and events of Gilead. Chapter 19 kicks off with Offred dreaming of catching her daughter in a hug before the thought of it sends her into a wave of sorrow; she then wakes up in bed with her mother holding a tray of breakfast. She is stuck in a dream sequence which is making her relive these moments especially during the aftermath of experiencing extreme trauma.
While this might seem like just your usual chapter there is a lot to unpack. The silence and sleep is broken by a birthmobile arriving to take Offred to a birth. Janine is expected to give birth and have her baby. During the ride to the commander’s house Offred wonders if she will give birth to a child with birth defects. This was one of the more confusing parts of the chapter but it shows the effects Gilead has on their person and how many ways that this birth can turn out. Though there are times in the text where they make questionable comments. The birth seems somewhat ritualistic in a sense, women are praying, in the text it states “what will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as we all hope? Or something else, an unbaby, its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet?” They speak of the possibility of a baby born with a disability as if it is a demon dreaming of an unbaby and wondering if they would be born with webbed feet or a pig snout.
I thought this was note worthy because it shows that they have more or less lost their grip on reality. They treat their day to day life in a cult like fashion and they are showing signs of starting to give into their environment. The lack of the previous normal they once had led them down the path of adapting whether they previously tried to fight it or not. They believe that 1 of 4 women have been poisoned by toxins and environmental pollution and that women outside poison their bodies or get their tubes tied calling these types of women Jezebels, scorners of God’s Gifts. In a classroom Aunt Lydia shows them a graph of how the birthrate has fallen over the course of history, eventually falling under the “line of replacement.” Aunt Lydia said that women who didn’t want to breed were lazy sluts. She claims that childbirth in Gilead is in contrast to the old days, because birth then was entirely natural. When women were not allowed drugs to sooth their pain, because it’s better for the baby, and because god wanted women to suffer in childbirth. The birthmobile eventually arrives at Ofwarren’s Commander’s home and the handmaids are told to go in. Offred imagines the Wives sitting around talking about their Handmaids, calling them sluts and complaining about their uncleanlyness, then chapter ends. The whole point of this chapter is to show us the reality of life in Gilead. We get a look into how skewed and diluted the media they are fed really is.
