Wife

In the Republic of Gilead, the Wife is the senior female figure in a Commander's household, a woman who has traded her former public identity for a position of domestic authority and bitter, enforced complicity in the regime's reproductive system. She is defined by her blue dress, her garden, her knitting, and her complex, often hostile relationship with the Handmaid, whom she both needs and resents.

Identity and Position

The Wife occupies a paradoxical place in Gilead's hierarchy. She is a figure of authority within the home, yet her power is circumscribed by the regime's patriarchal structure. Her status is signaled by her clothing: the blue dress, a color that distinguishes her from the Handmaids' red, the Marthas' green, and the Econowives' stripes. She is entitled to a cigarette and a lighter, luxuries forbidden to the Handmaid, and she can move through the house with a cane, a symbol of her age and her limited physical dominion. The Wife's domain is the sitting room, the garden, and the knitting of scarves for the Angels, activities that define her role as a keeper of the domestic sphere. She is, as Offred notes, a woman who has become "speechless," having once been a public figure who made speeches about the sanctity of the home, only to be "taken at her word" and confined to it.

Relationship with the Handmaid

The relationship between the Wife and the Handmaid is one of structured antagonism and mutual dependence. The Wife is a "reproach" to the Handmaid and a "necessity." She resents the Handmaid's presence and her reproductive function, which is a constant reminder of her own failure to bear a child. This resentment is palpable in their first meeting, where Serena Joy blocks the doorway, asserting her control. The Wife's power is exercised through small cruelties and acts of surveillance, but she is also dependent on the Handmaid to fulfill the regime's primary goal: procreation. This dependence creates a tense, often unspoken, negotiation. The Wife's hatred is not pure; it is mixed with jealousy and a sense of intrusion, as Offred's secret visits to the Commander's study create a new, illicit territory that the Wife cannot control.

The Ceremony and Its Humiliation

The Wife's role in the Ceremony is a central and deeply humiliating aspect of her existence. She is required to lie beneath the Handmaid, holding her hands, while the Commander performs the ritualized act of procreation. This arrangement is meant to signify that the three are "one flesh," but in practice it underscores the Wife's loss of control and her reduction to a mere spectator and enforcer. She grips the Handmaid's hands so hard that her rings cut into the flesh, a gesture of both control and shared pain. After the Commander finishes, she dismisses the Handmaid with loathing, her voice thick with disgust. The Ceremony is a ritual that degrades all three participants, but for the Wife, it is a public performance of her own infertility and her complicity in a system that has stripped her of her former identity.

Change and Ending

Over the course of the novel, the Wife's position becomes increasingly precarious. Her discovery of the Handmaid's secret meetings with the Commander leads to a confrontation, but it also reveals her own vulnerability. She is not the one who calls the black van; her private punishment is preempted by the regime's security apparatus. In the final scene, she stands in the hallway, "incredulous," as the Eyes take Offred away. Her power, which seemed absolute within the household, is revealed to be contingent and fragile. She is left behind, a figure of faded authority, her garden and her knitting no longer a source of peace but a reminder of her own entrapment. The Wife's story is one of a woman who helped build a cage and then found herself locked inside it.