The novel I turned to was one I’d been considering off and on since 1981. I’d tried it out in my writing room on Manning Avenue, but had shelved it because I thought it was too weird, even for me. A future United States that was a totalitarian theocracy? Surely not. However, the book had continued to percolate.
It was initially called Offred. This was the name my central character had been given when forcibly enlisted in the ranks of the Handmaids—fertile, divorced, and therefore Biblically sinful, women assigned to elite older men in order to bear children for them and their wives, just like the handmaids of Rachel and Leah in the Bible. Offred was renamed when assigned to a Commander named Fred. (“ Commander,” as in “Commander of the Faithful.”) We are never told what Offred’s real name is, though readers and television scriptwriters have since decided that her name is June. They made this decision because “June” is mentioned in the first chapter while real names are being whispered among the Handmaids, but the name “June” never occurs in the book again. I’m happy with the readers’ choice: it makes sense.
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