the sitting room

The sitting room in the Commander's house is a carefully curated space that serves as the stage for the household's most significant rituals, particularly the Ceremony. It is a room where power, hierarchy, and the regime's ideology are made visible through its decor, its rules of access, and the prescribed postures of those who enter. For Offred, the Handmaid, the sitting room is a place of enforced waiting, silent observation, and the performance of submission, a space that both contains and reveals the tensions of Gilead's domestic order.

Description and Decoration

The sitting room is furnished with an eye toward a particular kind of traditional elegance that the regime endorses. It features a marble mantelpiece, an oval mirror flanked by silver candlesticks, and a white china Cupid with a lamb. The room is dominated by a large leather chair reserved for the Commander and a matching set of eighteenth-century chairs. The floor is covered with a tufted Chinese rug in a "dusty-rose" color, and the drapes are of dusk-rose velvet. On the walls hang two paintings of women in dark dresses, which Serena Joy, the Commander's Wife, likely acquired to suggest a lineage of domestic virtue. The room smells of lemon oil, heavy cloth, fading daffodils, and Serena Joy's Lily of the Valley perfume, a scent that Offred finds cloying and slightly nauseating. The overall effect is one of subdued luxury and symmetrical order, a space where money has "frozen" into a display of taste and status.

Rituals and Power Dynamics

The sitting room is the primary setting for the Ceremony, the monthly ritual in which the Commander attempts to impregnate Offred. Before the Ceremony, the household assembles here: Offred kneels near Serena Joy's chair, the Marthas (Rita and Cora) stand behind her, and Nick, the chauffeur, takes his place as well. The Commander enters after a prescribed knock, retrieves the locked Bible from a box beside his chair, and reads a passage. Serena Joy, seated in her chair with her foot on a footstool, often cries during the reading, a display of emotion that Offred finds both horrible and absurd. The room's layout enforces hierarchy: Offred kneels, the Marthas stand, Serena Joy sits, and the Commander occupies the central leather chair. The space is also used for other formal occasions, such as when Serena Joy receives visitors or when Offred is summoned for a private audience with the Commander, though such meetings are forbidden and take place in his study, not the sitting room.

Offred's Experience and Resistance

For Offred, the sitting room is a place of enforced passivity and observation. She kneels near Serena Joy's chair, her hands folded, her head lowered, waiting for the Ceremony to begin. The room's decor, with its "flesh tones and hints," feels oppressive, and the smell of Serena Joy's perfume makes her feel ill. Offred sometimes fantasizes about stealing a small object from the room, such as the scrolled ashtray or a silver pillbox, as a way of asserting a small measure of power. She also uses the time to observe the others, noting the tension between Serena Joy and the Commander, the resentment of the Marthas, and the subtle, forbidden contact with Nick, who sometimes lets his boot touch her foot beneath her skirt. The sitting room is thus a space where the regime's control is most visibly enacted, but also where small acts of defiance and observation occur.

Thematic Significance

The sitting room functions as a microcosm of Gilead's social order. Its decor, with its "authentic" antiques and "sentimental" touches, reflects the regime's attempt to create a stable, traditional past. The room's rules of access and posture enforce the hierarchy of the household: the Commander sits, the Wife sits, the Handmaid kneels, the Marthas stand. The room is also a site of emotional tension, particularly between Serena Joy and Offred, who are bound together by the Ceremony but divided by jealousy and resentment. The sitting room, with its "cow's-tongue hush" and "suave leather," is a space where the regime's ideology is made material, but also where its contradictions and the human costs of its order are most keenly felt.