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I have still never been on a swing. It remains one of my wishes.
I always made dough men, I never made dough women, because after they were baked I would eat them, and that made me feel I had a secret power over men. It was becoming clear to me that, despite the urges Aunt Vidala said I aroused in them, I had no power over them otherwise.
Aunt Vidala said that best friends led to whispering and plotting and keeping secrets, and plotting and secrets led to disobedience to God, and disobedience led to rebellion, and girls who were rebellious became women who were rebellious, and a rebellious woman was even worse than a rebellious man because rebellious men became traitors, but rebellious women became adulteresses.
And bless Baby Nicole, stolen away by her treacherous Handmaid mother and hidden by the godless in Canada; and bless all the innocents she represents, doomed to be raised by the depraved. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. May our Baby Nicole be restored to us, we pray; may Grace return her.
On my private shelves I’ve arranged my personal selection of proscribed books, off-limits to the lower ranks. Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Paradise Lost, Lives of Girls and Women—what a moral panic each one of them would cause if set loose among the Supplicants!
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.
You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.
Because if you weren’t an Aunt or a Martha, said Aunt Vidala, what earthly use were you if you didn’t have a baby?
All that was necessary was a law degree and a uterus: a lethal combination.
But loyalty to a higher truth is not treason, for the ways of God are not the ways of man, and they are most emphatically not the ways of woman.”
Paula was out, which was a lucky thing; though after I came to know Aunt Lydia better, I realized that luck had nothing to do with it.
“There is never violence in our homes in Gilead,” said Aunt Beatrice.
Being able to read and write did not provide the answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.
The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.
