The Handmaid’s Tale characters

Appears from the start

The narrator, a woman held as a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a harsh theocracy that has overthrown the United States government. Because a catastrophic drop in fertility has made healthy births rare, women who can still bear children are stripped of their names, property, and freedom and assigned to powerful households to produce babies. Her name marks her only as the property of a Commander called Fred. She remembers an earlier life with a husband and a young daughter, and she narrates in guarded, watchful fragments, holding onto memory and small acts of defiance as a way to remain herself.

Appears from the start

One of the Aunts who run the center where women are trained to become Handmaids. She enforces the regime's doctrine with a mixture of piety, sentimentality, and cruelty, teaching the women to accept their new role as a sacred duty and to blame themselves and the old world for their circumstances. Offred recalls her sayings and lessons throughout her ordeal.

First appears in chapter 4

The wife of the Commander to whom Offred is assigned. Once a public figure who sang on television and campaigned for traditional domestic roles for women, she now finds herself confined to precisely the powerless, home-bound life she once preached. Bitter and resentful, she treats Offred coldly, unable to forgive her presence or the ritual that requires it, and yet she is bound to it by her own longing for a child.

Also known as Fred

First appears in chapter 8

A high-ranking official in Gilead and the head of the household Offred serves; her designation marks her as belonging to him. Outwardly the embodiment of the regime's authority, he presides over the monthly ceremony meant to father a child on Offred. In private he proves more complicated and lonely than his position suggests, and he begins to seek out Offred in ways the rules of Gilead forbid.

First appears in chapter 6

The Commander's chauffeur, a low-status man who lives above the garage. His true loyalties are unclear, and Offred suspects he may be an Eye, one of Gilead's secret informers. He watches Offred with an interest that is hard to read, and a quiet, dangerous connection begins to form between them.

First appears in chapter 5

Another Handmaid who becomes Offred's assigned shopping partner. The two must walk together on their daily errands, and Gilead requires them to speak only in approved pious formulas. At first Ofglen seems a model of devout caution, but there is more to her than her careful public manner reveals.

First appears in chapter 8

Offred's close friend from the time before Gilead, outspoken, irreverent, and fiercely independent. Sent to the same training center, she refuses to be broken by it and becomes for Offred a symbol of resistance and of the freedom the regime has taken away.

Also known as Ofwarren

First appears in chapter 20

A fellow Handmaid, more thoroughly shaped by the training center than most. Fragile and desperate to please, she is held up by the Aunts as an example after being pressured to accept guilt for her own past. Under the strain of her role she is prone to breaking down.

First appears in chapter 8

Offred's husband from before the founding of Gilead. As the regime seized power and began stripping women of their rights, the couple tried to flee across the border with their daughter. The attempt failed, the family was separated, and Offred does not know whether Luke is alive, imprisoned, or dead.