Women and fertility

Quote

Character

Chapter

“Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”

Offred

2

“There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law.”

Offred

11

“Did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach? I did, without thought, among men, without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs and back were on display, could be seen. Shameful, immodest.”

Offred

12

“Four digits and an eye, a passport in reverse. It’s supposed to guarantee that I will never be able to fade, finally, into another landscape. I am too important, too scarce, for that. I am a national resource.”

Offred

12

“I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.”

Offred

13

“As long as we do this, butter our skin to keep it soft, we can believe that we will someday get out, that we will be touched again, in love or desire.”

Offred

17

“We are containers, it’s only the insides of our bodies that are important. The outside can become hard and wrinkled, for all they care, like the shell of a nut.”

Offred

17

“Mother... You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists.”

Offred

21

“My breasts are painful, they’re leaking a little...

Each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby”

Offred

21

“We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.”

Offred

23

"So now that we don’t have different clothes, I say, ‘you merely have different women.’ This is irony, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.”

Offred

37