“‘I don’t think you should go out alone at night,’ Darlene said, ‘you put yourself in a position,’ and I may have been mistaken but she was looking at me.”

Darlene’s scolding, accusatory remark aligns with the 1970s media messaging that instructed women to stay at home after dark to avoid being victims of sexual violence. Darlene has absorbed this messaging and taken it as truth. She is then disseminating these same victim-blaming notions to her female peers, holding them responsible for their own safety. This moment shows how the culture impacts the Dynamics of Female Discourse. Even among women, language shaped by fear and control becomes a tool of judgment rather than solidarity.

“‘I certainly don’t,’ Darlene said, and she wrinkled up her nose, like this, and I had to laugh. ‘I think it’s disgusting.’ She’s divorced, I read that in the file too, she never talks about it. It must've been years ago anyway. She got up and went over to the coffee machine and turned her back on us as though she wasn’t going to have anything more to do with it.”

Estelle’s description of Darlene captures Estelle’s disdain for her and attempts to minimize her to make herself feel superior. She references snooping into Darlene’s personnel file and discovering the details of her personal life; she sees this information as an explanation for Darlene’s discomfort in the lunchroom scene. Further, Estelle’s remarks on Darlene’s body language capture Darlene’s embarrassment and shame—emotions she’s been taught to feel because of societal misunderstandings of rape. This moment also illustrates how women are trained to discredit each other’s unease instead of validating it—an internalized dynamic of misogyny.

“‘Anyway you might get bubbles up your nose,’ I said, ‘from the deep breathing,’ and I swear all four of them looked at me like I was in bad taste, like I’d insulted the Virgin Mary or something. I mean, I don’t see what’s wrong with a little joke now and then. Life’s too short, right?’”

Estelle’s use of humor conveys her fear of facing the topic at hand. She makes fun of Chrissy’s fantasy, identifying the alleged holes in her imagined sexual encounter. She thinks that she’s making a harmless joke, but her teasing in fact reflects her own discomfort. Furthermore, her peers’ response to her joke captures the women’s inability to communicate honestly and openly because of how the media has taught them to feel shame around sex, desire, and rape.

“‘Listen,’ I said, ‘those aren’t rape fantasies. I mean, you aren’t getting raped, it’s just some guy you haven’t met formally who happens to be more attractive than Derek Cummins […] and you have a good time. Rape is when they’ve got a knife or something and you don’t want to.’”

Estelle’s domineering, instructive tone captures her desire to be the authority on the topic at hand. She is talking about rape in a cavalier manner while also diluting the entirety of what her friends have just shared with her. At the same time, her insistent tone belies her real confusion. The coming passages will reveal how little Estelle understands her own sexual desire and how willing she is to delegitimize her own fantasies and fears. Atwood uses Estelle’s definition of rape fantasies to critique the cultural tendency to simplify rape into easily dismissible scenarios, ignoring the nuances of consent, power, and emotional coercion.

“‘So I hand it to him and he’s very obliging, he twists the top off and hands it back to me, and I squirt him in the eye.’ I hope you don’t think that’s too vicious. Come to think of it, it is a bit mean, especially when he was so polite and all.”

Estelle’s internal monologue following her recounting of her rape fantasy reveals her fear of identifying what constitutes violence. She is blaming herself in this scene and casts herself as the “impolite” individual who’s had no consciousness of the man's (or rapist’s) feelings. Her society has taught her to invalidate her feelings and experiences and to make room for those of sexual predators instead. Her worry about seeming “mean” in a life-or-death scenario reveals how deeply she’s been socialized to prioritize male comfort over her own safety.

“So he gets me pinned against the wall, he’s short but he’s heavy, and he starts to undo himself and the zipper gets stuck. I mean, one of the most significant moments in a girl’s life, it’s almost like getting married or having a baby or something, and he sticks the zipper.”

Estelle’s use of humor in this rape fantasy captures the Conflation of Fantasy and Reality. While her imagined attacker has her “pinned against the wall,” Estelle’s tone is more lighthearted and witty. She is infusing this violent scene with humor because she cannot distinguish between her own sexual desires (or fantasies) and the reality of sexual violence that haunts her. This tonal mismatch emphasizes the story’s satirical edge, pointing to how absurd and dangerous it is that women must mask trauma beneath comedy.

“I’m telling you, I was really lonely when I first came here; I thought it was going to be such a big adventure and all, but it’s a lot harder to meet people in a city. But I guess it’s different for a guy.”

Estelle’s allusion to her own loneliness reveals a new facet of her character. Throughout the majority of the short story, Estelle rarely describes herself in explicit details. (The reader is rather left to discern her identity via her narration.) This moment disrupts this narrative pattern and reveals Estelle in a more vulnerable light. Estelle is on her own in a new city, a facet of her circumstances that clarifies her intense fear of being attacked and sexually violated. At the same time, this vulnerable moment is fleeting; Estelle quickly interrupts herself and negates her own experience to make room for the hypothetical experience of her could-be attacker.

“So I ask him why doesn’t he let me fix him a Neo-Citran and scotch, that’s what I always take, you still have the cold but you don’t feel it, so I do and we end up watching the Late Show together. I mean, they aren’t all sex maniacs, the rest of the time they must lead a normal life. I figure they enjoy watching the Late Show just like anybody else.”

In this rape fantasy, Estelle imagines herself assuming a caretaking role on behalf of her could-be rapist. She plays the part of the caring, conscientious, and comforting female partner—making the rapist a nice drink, sitting with him late into the night, and watching television with him. She is thus performing the societal role she’s been conditioned for: to be docile, sweet, and understanding so that her rapist won’t hurt her. This moment crystallizes how gender expectations distort survival strategies, teaching women to placate threats with kindness instead of resisting or naming harm.

“I don’t think about that one much. My mother always said you shouldn’t dwell on unpleasant things and I generally agree with that, I mean, dwelling on them doesn’t make them go away. Though not dwelling on them doesn’t make them go away either, when you come to think of it.”

Estelle invokes a lesson her mother taught her which provides insight into her outlook on herself and the world around her. Instead of fully confronting her fear of being attacked and raped, Estelle tries to apply her mother’s avoidant technique and put it out of her mind. Because rape is “unpleasant,” Estelle has learned not to think about it. This moment reiterates the notion that Estelle has been socially conditioned to discredit her own experience; she has learned to blame herself instead of owning the reality of her fear and dangerous circumstances.

“But I could never really stick my fingers in anyone’s eyes, could you? It would feel like hot Jello and I don’t even like cold Jello, just thinking about it gives me the creeps. I feel a bit guilty about that one, I mean how would you like walking around knowing someone’s been blinded for life because of you?”

Estelle tries to imagine fighting back against her hypothetical rapist, but her own conscience precludes her from fully inhabiting this scenario. She likes to think she could “stick her fingers in someone’s eyes” to defend herself, but she immediately discounts this self-defense technique because she would feel too guilty about it later. Again, this moment underscores how societal misunderstandings of rape disempower women. Her reflexive guilt reveals the extent to which she has internalized the belief that female aggression—even in self-defense—is immoral.

“Well, it turns out that he has leukemia himself, and he only has a few months to live, that’s why he’s going around raping people, he’s very bitter because he’s so young and his life is being taken from him before he’s really lived it.”

Estelle’s most “touching” fantasy reiterates her habit of validating her rapist’s experience over her own. In this fantasy, both Estelle and the rapist have leukemia. Although both are allegedly on the verge of death, only the rapist’s despair manifests as sexual violence. However, Estelle allows for this reality because she is trying to humanize her imagined attacker, a habit she exhibits throughout the short story. This fantasy is particularly revealing, as it transforms rape into a shared sorrow rather than a violation, reflecting Estelle’s desperate wish to be seen even if it means excusing harm.

“You may not believe this but sometimes I even start crying. I cry at the ends of movies, even the ones that aren't all that sad, so I guess it’s the same thing.”

Estelle’s allusion to her crying habit reveals a new facet of her character. This is one of the few times that Estelle allows space for her emotional experience on the page. At the same time, Estelle is also discounting her emotionality. In this passage, she’s crying over a rape fantasy, but is dismissing this emotive experience as the same as crying over a movie. This blurring of emotional registers—genuine distress versus aesthetic sentiment—mirrors her confusion over real danger and imagined fear, rooted in societal minimization of both.

“You can’t spend your whole life in the Filing Department or cooped up in your own apartment with all the doors and windows locked and the shades down.”

Estelle employs the second person when she is trying to claim her own experience, wants, and needs. She is insisting that she can’t spend her life locked up at work or in her apartment. However, she uses second-person instead of first-person pronouns because she is still reluctant to acknowledge what she wants and to exercise her agency without feeling guilty for it. This is largely because she’s been taught to stay inside and stay away from windows if she wants to be safe. Her use of “you” is a distancing mechanism: She wants freedom but cannot fully admit it without fearing punishment or shame.