Moira's escape

Moira's escape from the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center is the most audacious act of defiance in the novel, a meticulously planned and violently executed breakout that exposes the regime's vulnerabilities and becomes a legend among the Handmaids, embodying both the possibility of resistance and the terrible cost of failure.

Background and Motivation

Moira had been at the Center for three weeks when she was brought in, still wearing her own clothes—jeans and a blue sweatshirt—with a bruise on her left cheek turning purple. She recognized Offred at once but turned away, already knowing what was safe. The two women communicated through furtive glances and whispered exchanges during the twice-daily walks around the football field, and in the washroom, through a small hole in the wooden stall wall. Moira told Offred she was "going bats" and needed to get out. Offred pleaded with her not to try it alone, but Moira had already begun planning. She had a history of resourcefulness: in high school she had once induced scurvy by cutting out vitamin C, knowing it couldn't be diagnosed in its early stages. She told Offred she would fake sick and be taken to the hospital by ambulance, but Offred knew the plan was more elaborate than that.

The Breakout

Moira executed her escape during Exercises. She raised her hand to go to the washroom, and Aunt Elizabeth, on duty outside the door, followed standard procedure. Once inside, Moira called out that the toilet was overflowing—a common problem, since unknown persons regularly stuffed wads of toilet paper down the bowls to cause floods. Aunt Elizabeth, suspecting no harm, entered the cubicle and bent over the back of the toilet to lift the porcelain lid. Moira had dismantled the inside of one of the toilets and taken out the long, thin, pointed lever that attaches the handle to the chain. She jabbed this sharp metal rod into Aunt Elizabeth's ribs from behind and said, "Don't move, or I'll stick it all the way in, I know where, I'll puncture your lung." Moira then took Aunt Elizabeth's cattle prod and whistle, ordered her to undress, and put on the Aunt's brown uniform herself. She allowed Aunt Elizabeth to put on her own red dress, then tore the veil into strips, tied Aunt Elizabeth up behind the furnace, gagged her, and bound her neck to her feet. Moira did not kill or mutilate her, though she later told Offred she had wanted to. Aunt Elizabeth was discovered seven hours later and, after an interrogation for possible collusion, was back on duty within days.

The Escape Route

Dressed as an Aunt, Moira marched straight out the front door of the Center with the stiff-backed posture of someone who knew where she was going. The Angels on guard saluted her and did not check Aunt Elizabeth's pass—no one would dare affront an Aunt in that way. Once outside, she walked toward the center of the city, bluffing her way through multiple checkpoints by frowning and looking through the guards "as if they were festering sores." She eventually reached the home of a married Quaker couple, who took her in despite the enormous risk. They burned the Aunt's uniform and pass in their furnace, gave her civilian clothes, and passed her along to another Quaker household that was a station on the Underground Femaleroad. Moira was moved from safe house to safe house over eight or nine months, traveling in mail sacks and chicken trucks, nearly making it to the border at Salem and then Maine, where a boat was to take her up the coast. But she was picked up just as she was coming out the back door to go down to the dock, along with the elderly couple who were helping her. She never learned what became of them.

Consequences and Aftermath

After her recapture, Moira was not returned to the Red Center. Instead, she was taken to an undisclosed location where she was interrogated—she told Offred she would rather not talk about what happened, only that "they didn't leave any marks." She was shown a film about the Colonies, where women spent their time cleaning up toxic waste and dead bodies, with a life expectancy of three years before their noses fell off and their skin pulled away like rubber gloves. Given the choice between the Colonies and Jezebel's, the regime's secret brothel for high-ranking officials, Moira chose Jezebel's. There she was issued a costume—a black satin strapless outfit that didn't fit, with a wad of cotton attached to the back as a tail and rabbit ears on her head, one ear flopping down. She worked nights, serving Commanders and foreign trade delegations, and was given face cream, cigarettes, and alcohol. When Offred encountered her there, Moira was smoking a cigarette, standing on one foot then the other because her high heels hurt, her spine sagging slightly. She told Offred that the Commanders encouraged lesbian relationships among the women because it turned them on, and that she had made a kind of peace with her situation. "It's not so bad, there's lots of women around. Butch paradise, you might call it," she said. Offred never saw her again.

Narrative Role and Significance

Moira's escape became a legend among the Handmaids at the Red Center. The story passed from bed to bed in the semidarkness, and the thought of Moira at large expanded till it filled the room. She was "like an elevator with open sides," making the other women dizzy with the thought of freedom even as they were already losing the taste for it. She was "lava beneath the crust of daily life," a fantasy that made the Aunts less fearsome and more absurd. But Moira's eventual fate—choosing Jezebel's over the Colonies, becoming a prostitute in the regime's secret club—is a devastating commentary on the limits of resistance. Offred wanted gallantry from her, "swashbuckling, heroism, single-handed combat," but what she got was a woman who had been broken and had made a pragmatic accommodation. Moira's story is a reconstruction, pieced together from what Offred heard from Alma, Dolores, Janine, and Aunt Lydia herself, and from what Moira told Offred during their brief reunion at Jezebel's. It is, Offred admits, "a way of keeping her alive."