Hand Mirror

The Hand Mirror appears only fleetingly in the Republic of Gilead, yet each appearance marks a moment of transgression, disguise, or forbidden self-scrutiny. In a society that has removed mirrors from Handmaids' bathrooms and replaced them with oblongs of tin, the mirror becomes a charged object—an instrument of vanity, a tool of deception, and a fragile link to a lost world of personal choice and self-definition.

Appearance and Prohibition

Handmaids are systematically denied mirrors. In Offred's bathroom, the mirror over the sink has been taken out and replaced by an oblong of tin, a measure designed to prevent vanity and self-regard. The regime considers hand lotion and face cream "vanities" as well; such items are forbidden for Handmaids, whose bodies are valued only as containers. The outside can become hard and wrinkled, Offred reflects, "for all they care, like the shell of a nut." This decree, she notes, originated with the Wives, who do not want Handmaids to look attractive. The removal of the mirror is part of a broader erasure: the hall mirror remains, but it is a convex pier glass that distorts Offred's reflection into "a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak." She can see herself only as a "Sister, dipped in blood."

The Commander's Silver-Backed Mirror

The most significant appearance of a hand mirror occurs during Offred's preparations for the clandestine visit to Jezebels. The Commander produces a large silver-backed hand mirror, which Offred recognizes as belonging to Serena Joy. He must have borrowed it from her room. Using this mirror, Offred applies the makeup he has provided—an old, runny lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara—transforming herself from a red-clad Handmaid into a painted woman in a feather costume. The mirror here is a tool of disguise, enabling Offred to cross the boundary between her prescribed identity and a forbidden, theatrical self. It is also an object of theft and collusion: the Commander has taken it from his wife's room without her knowledge, and Offred uses it to prepare for a night that is both a betrayal of Serena Joy and a violation of every rule of Gilead.

The Butter Ritual and the Absence of Mirrors

In the absence of hand lotion and face cream, Handmaids have developed a private ceremony of self-care: they save butter from their meals and rub it into their skin. Offred learned this trick at the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, and she knows that her predecessor in the room—the woman who scratched "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" on the closet wall—must have done the same. "As long as we do this, butter our skin to keep it soft," Offred reflects, "we can believe that we will some day get out, that we will be touched again, in love or desire." This ritual is a form of resistance, a way of maintaining the body as something more than a vessel. But it takes place without a mirror: Offred cannot see her own face as she applies the butter. The absence of the mirror is itself a condition of this private ceremony, a reminder that the self being preserved is invisible even to itself.

The Mirror as a Symbol of Fragmented Identity

Throughout the novel, mirrors reflect not a coherent self but a fractured one. The hall mirror shows Offred as a "distorted shadow"; the bathroom mirror has been replaced by tin; the hand mirror at Jezebels reveals a "travesty, in bad make-up and someone else's clothes, used glitz." When Offred looks at herself in the hotel bathroom, she sees a wreck: smudged mascara, bleeding lipstick, trailing hair, tawdry feathers. The mirror does not offer reassurance but confirms her dislocation. Yet even this degraded reflection is a form of self-knowledge denied to her in Gilead. The hand mirror, borrowed from Serena Joy and used in secret, becomes a brief, illicit window onto a self that the regime has tried to erase.