Rita
Rita is the Martha in the Commander's household, a stern and disapproving cook whose resentment toward Offred reflects the social divisions among women in Gilead, yet whose daily routines and grudging gestures also reveal the small, complex dependencies that sustain life under the regime.
Identity and Role
Rita is one of the two Marthas—the domestic servants who wear dull green dresses, long and concealing like the Handmaids' red habits but without the white wings and veil. She works in the kitchen, making bread, chopping vegetables, and preparing meals for the household. Her brown arms are visible when she rolls up her sleeves, and she wipes her floury hands on her bib apron. She is over sixty, and her face, which might be kindly if she would smile, is almost always set in a frown. That frown is not personal, Offred understands: it is the red dress Rita disapproves of, and what it stands for.
Resentment and Social Distance
Rita thinks Offred may be catching, "like a disease or any form of bad luck." She has been overheard saying she "wouldn't debase herself like that," and when Cora suggests that the Handmaids are doing it for everyone, Rita replies, "Better her than me." She treats Offred as a household chore, one among many, and the two Marthas talk about her as though she cannot hear. Rita is surly when Offred returns from shopping, frowning while opening the parcels, never fully pleased with what has been brought. She disapproves of the red dress and what it signifies, and her resentment is a constant presence in the kitchen.
Small Gestures and Hidden Dependencies
Despite her hostility, Rita occasionally makes grudging gestures that reveal the complex dependencies of the household. When Offred asks for a match—permitted by Serena Joy—Rita unlocks the cupboard, selects a single match, and hands it over with a warning not to set fire to the curtains. She also offers Offred an ice cube, saying, "A shame, making you wear all them pillowcases on your head, in this weather." Offred recognizes this as a small gift, a response to the possibility that Offred has risen in status. Rita also provides information indirectly: when Offred asks about the previous Handmaid, Rita reveals that there have been more than one, and that the one with freckles "didn't work out," but clamps her lips shut when pressed for details. She is a source of unofficial knowledge, part of the network of Marthas who pass news from house to house.
The Butter Ritual and Shared Practices
The butter that Offred saves from her dinner and rubs into her skin is a trick she learned at the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, and she notes that her predecessor in the room must have done it too. "We all do it," she says. This shared practice—using butter as a substitute for the hand lotion that the Wives have forbidden—is a private ceremony among the Handmaids, a way of believing that they will someday be touched again in love or desire. Rita, as a Martha, is not part of this ritual, but she is the one who provides the butter in the first place, through the meals she prepares. The kitchen, where Rita rules, is the source of both the resentment and the small comforts that sustain Offred.
Narrative Significance
Rita embodies the social stratification that Gilead enforces among women: the Marthas are not supposed to fraternize with the Handmaids, and Rita enforces that distance with her frowns and silences. Yet she also represents the everyday texture of life under the regime—the routines of bread-making, the gossip overheard at closed doors, the grudging exchanges that nonetheless constitute a form of human contact. Her presence in the kitchen, with its smells of yeast and nostalgia, is a reminder of the ordinary world that has been lost, and her small gestures of reluctant kindness are among the few threads of connection that Offred can hold onto.
