Dark Knowledge in The Handmaid's Tale Vol. 53, No. 3 Spring/Summer 1991

[...]they are asked to address rather than know the text. [...]real mirrors reflecting the heroine's self image gradually give way to windows which reveal her alter ego. Even in the appendix the comments directed at Professor Crescent Moon by her male colleagues indicate the continuing oppression of women, though obviously in a softer and subtler form in the new society that eventually follows Gilead. [...]while it is an alternative to the male Sun, the female Moon in this book that calls to Offred is another deluding ocular metaphor. Darkness furnishes the women with a hiding place from oppression, but the light also keeps them there. [...]enclosure in The Handmaid's Tale may seem at first to be an escape, but it is more of a trap. (52) Later, Offred also says to us: "By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. Offred's last words describe getting into a van with her lover Nick and into either captivity or freedom—she doesn't know which: "And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light" (378). Because it preserves the novel's openness, this sudden and ambiguous ending is strangely satisfying.