Chapter Two
In Chapter Two the narrator’s tour of the “guest” room operates as a micro‑cosm of the Republic’s ontological policing. The meticulous inventory of objects—wreath‑shaped ceiling relief, shatter‑proof glass, partially opening window, red gloves, white wings—functions as a semiotic register through which the regime inscribes its authority onto the body. By foregrounding the sensory textures (the “highly polished” wood, the smell of polish, the tactile “braided rags” rug) Atwood foregrounds the paradoxical intimacy of confinement: the protagonist can physically inhabit the space while being constantly reminded that every element is a calibrated instrument of control.
Color functions as a leitmotif of power and subjugation. The recurring red (shoes, gloves, umbrella, cloak) recalls blood, violence, and the reproductive function that the state extracts from Handmaids. The white wings and veil, described as “prescribed issue,” simultaneously obscure vision and render the wearer invisible, echoing the nunnery’s historic regulation of women’s bodies. The blue irises behind the glass—a floral image still permitted—serve as a sanctioned glimpse of natural fertility, yet the absence of protective glass underscores the regime’s fear of “escapes” that are not physical but psychic.
Spatial dynamics further articulate the dialectic of confinement. The corridor’s “runner down the centre, dusty pink” and the “late Victorian” house evoke a palimpsest of pre‑Gilead domesticity, now re‑appropriated to reinforce hierarchy. The bell that measures time and the grandfather clock symbolically replace personal chronologies with institutional temporality, echoing the novel’s broader theme of language compression. Mirrors, sparse and convex, distort the protagonist’s reflection, producing a “parody” of self that mirrors the fragmented identity imposed by the state.
The chapter also introduces a covert network of female solidarity through the kitchen scene. Rita’s routine of token exchange, the description of bread‑making, and the whispered gossip function as acts of “sororize,” a linguistic counter‑measure to the regime’s lexical control. The tactile yearning—“I hunger to touch something, other than cloth or wood”—reveals the embodied resistance that persists beneath the layers of prescribed propriety. By juxtaposing the regimented material environment with these fleeting moments of corporeal contact and linguistic play, Atwood illustrates how the regime’s inscription upon space is continually negotiated by the bodies that inhabit it.