How Does Offred Change In The Handmaid's Tale

“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases” -Carl Jung. This quote tells the wrongs of both the society in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the slavery system in the United States. The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of Offred, a rebellious Handmaid and the narrator, who is only valued for her fertility by the society. Throughout the novel, Offred constantly criticizes the regime (also known as the Republic of Gilead) for taking away her life from before the regime had even existed. Women in the Republic of Gilead, especially the Handmaids, are oppressed, giving them no sense of individuality. The regime molded the personalities of each Handmaid for the convenience of the society.

If The Handmaid’s Tale had been written for abolitionists rather than feminists and during the mid 1800s, the characterization, the plot, and the flashbacks throughout the novel would differ.
The plot and many major events of the novel would have to be changed to situations that correspond to the slavery system. The relationship between Offred and the Commander’s Wife (also known as Serena Joy) is a recurring tension throughout the novel’s plot. When she first arrived at the household, Offred recalls that “[Serena] wanted her to feel that she could not [go into] the house unless she said so” (Atwood 13). Serena’s and Offred’s first impression of each other set the tone of all of their encounters throughout the novel. This situation would probably be rewritten to describe a slave (represented by Offred) arriving at his/her new household and being greeted by the mistress of the house (represented by Serena) in an unfriendly way. The climax of the novel occurs when the Commander has an affair with Offred. Offred began to see herself as more powerful than Serena and even as the Commander’s mistress (163). With this much power over Serena, Offred gets a type of blind courage in which she starts to become more reckless of her actions. The Commander’s affair with Offred would probably be rewritten as a slave owner falling in love with one of his slaves. The slave owner, as a result, starts to bestow his slave more hospitality, making his wife jealous.
The identities of many characters would change if they were shaped to fit into the slavery system in the United States. Before becoming Handmaids, Offred and other fertile women had to live in the Red Center where they were trained to become Handmaids. Every night at the Red Center “Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled” with “electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts” (4). The Aunts were responsible for educating and teaching the women in the Red Center. If the novel was about slavery, the Aunts would be slaves who became slave watchers, individuals responsible for keeping field slaves in line. As the story progresses, Offred becomes more rebellious in the choices that she makes to take control her life and actually ignored the consequences. During her time of ignorance of consequences regarding her rebellious actions, Offred thought about who she was before the Republic of Gilead but “[has] trouble remembering what [she] used to look like” (143). She then continues on to think about her rebellious actions and choices. Offred would most likely be a female African-American slave if the novel was written for abolitionists.
If Offred’s recurring flashbacks throughout the novel were changed to compliment the idea of slavery, it would explain Offred’s backstory as a slave.

Offred’s mother was a feminist and raised Offred to become a feminist as well. Offred recalls that she went to a park with her mother to feed ducks when she was a child, but her mother and her mother’s friends were actually burning pornography magazines (38). Offred, her mother, and her mother’s friends were participating in a pornography protest, one of the many protests that Offred’s mother presumably participated in. If it were rewritten in terms of slavery, Offred would not have always been a slave and she was raised by an abolitionist mother. Before the Republic of Gilead, Offred had a family-- a husband and a daughter who was five years old the last time she saw her. Whenever Offred starts to think about her daughter, “[her daughter] fades” and she tells herself “I can’t keep her here with me” (64). Offred has to make herself think that her daughter is dead so that she does not feel the pain of knowing that her daughter is living without her. This fraction of Offred’s past life would be rewritten as Offred getting kidnapped and forced into slavery, separating her and her family. This also implies that Offred would have gotten captured sometime during her adult

years.
The plot points, the flashbacks, and the traits of characters in The Handmaid’s Tale would be different if the novel was written for abolitionists in the mid 1800s rather than for feminists in the 1980s. It would recreate the novel to tell the story of Offred, a rebellious female African-American slave and the narrator, and explain how she lives her life and deals with the memories of her past life. One thing that should be learned from both texts (The Handmaid’s Tale and the abolitionist version of the novel) is that all humans need to be their own person. A person’s individuality is the most precious and significant trait that makes people different from each other.