Underground Femaleroad
The Underground Femaleroad is the clandestine escape network that operated within and beyond the borders of the Republic of Gilead, dedicated to smuggling women—particularly Handmaids, but also others marked for reclassification or punishment—out of the regime's territory. It is one of the few organized counter-structures depicted in the novel, a fragile, decentralized system of safe houses, couriers, and transit routes that existed in constant peril of infiltration and betrayal. The network is known primarily through the testimony of Moira, who was sheltered and moved along its chain after her escape from the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, and through the later discovery of Offred's tape-recorded narrative in a footlocker in Bangor, Maine, a known way station on the route. The Femaleroad represents a persistent, if precarious, assertion of solidarity and resistance against the regime's total control over women's bodies and movements.
Structure and Operation
The Underground Femaleroad was organized on a strict need-to-know basis: each station was in contact with only one other station, the next one along the route. This compartmentalization meant that if one station was discovered and dismantled, the entire chain did not necessarily collapse, though it could back up until contact was reestablished through a courier who could set up an alternate route. The network had infiltrated a few useful positions, including the post office, where a driver with a mail truck could be used for transport. Moira, for instance, was moved over a bridge and into the city proper hidden inside a mail sack. The system relied on the courage of ordinary people—Quakers, but also others who were not even religious—who risked their lives to harbor fugitives. They did so for religious reasons or simply because they disliked the direction the regime was taking. The network was better organized than one might expect, given the extreme danger, and its members knew more or less what would happen to them if they were caught: by the time of Moira's journey, the regime had begun putting trials and executions on television.
Moira's Journey
Moira's escape and flight along the Underground Femaleroad provides the most detailed account of the network's operation. After overpowering Aunt Elizabeth and escaping the Red Center in an Aunt's uniform, Moira walked through checkpoints by maintaining a stern, imperious demeanor. She eventually reached a married couple—Quakers, marked with a "Q" on the mailing list she had memorized—who took her in, burned the Aunt's outfit and pass in their furnace, and then passed her to another Quaker household that was a station on the Femaleroad. From there, she was moved from one safe house to another over a period of eight or nine months, working her way north through Salem and into Maine, where a boat was to take her across the border. The plan failed: she was picked up by Eyes just as she was coming out the back door to go down to the dock, along with the older couple who had been harboring her. She never learned what became of them. After her capture, she was shown a film about life in the Colonies—the toxic-cleanup squads where women were sent to die—and given a choice between that and Jezebels, the state-run brothel for high-ranking officials. She chose Jezebels.
Relationship to Mayday
The Underground Femaleroad was not identical with the quasi-military resistance organization known as Mayday, but the two had connections. Mayday operatives are known to have infiltrated the Gileadean power structure at the highest levels, and the placement of one of their members as chauffeur to a Commander would have been a significant coup. The Femaleroad was purely a rescue operation, while Mayday was more directly engaged in subversion and intelligence-gathering. The two networks sometimes shared personnel and routes, but they remained distinct entities.
Historical Discovery and Significance
The existence of the Underground Femaleroad is known to posterity through the discovery of Offred's tape-recorded narrative, which was found in a metal footlocker on the site of what was once Bangor, Maine. Bangor was a prominent way station on the Femaleroad, and the tapes were likely recorded in a safe house there, perhaps in an attic or cellar, during the weeks or months Offred was hidden before being smuggled out of Gilead. The tapes themselves—thirty cassettes, with labels like "Elvis Presley's Golden Years" and "Folk Songs of Lithuania" used as camouflage—were sealed in the footlocker and discovered centuries later by scholars at the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies. The network thus left behind not only the lives it saved but also the only surviving first-person account of life as a Handmaid, a testament to the courage of the ordinary people who built and sustained it.
