Offred recalls being held and trained at the Red Centre with other women preparing to become Handmaids.

Offred arrives at the Commander's household and meets his cold and hostile Wife, Serena Joy.

Offred and her shopping companion Ofglen pass the Wall where executed dissidents hang on display.

The Commander performs the monthly Ceremony with Offred lying between him and Serena Joy.

Nick kisses Offred in the sitting room and tells her the Commander wants to see her in his study.

The Commander secretly invites Offred to his forbidden study, where they play Scrabble.

At the end of their first evening together, the Commander asks Offred to kiss him as if she means it.

Ofglen confides to Offred that she belongs to a secret underground resistance organization.

Serena Joy suggests that Offred sleep with Nick to conceive, since the Commander may be infertile.

The Commander surprises Offred with a revealing outfit and secretly takes her to Jezebel's brothel.

Offred discovers her old friend Moira working at Jezebel's, apparently resigned to her situation.

Serena sends Offred to Nick's room above the garage, where they have passionate sex for the first time.

The Handmaids are ordered to form a circle and mob a man accused of rape in a Particicution.

Serena Joy confronts Offred with the feathered outfit, revealing she knows about the Jezebel's trip.

Nick enters Offred's room and tells her the black van outside is from Mayday and she should go with them.

The story follows Offred, a fertile woman assigned as a Handmaid to a senior official known as the Commander in the totalitarian state of Gilead. She endures the ritualized monthly Ceremony while carefully navigating relationships with the Commander's jealous Wife, Serena Joy, and the household driver, Nick. When the Commander begins secretly inviting Offred to his study for forbidden activities, she finds herself caught in a dangerous arrangement that offers small comforts while deepening her entrapment. The discovery that her old friend Moira has ended up working at Jezebel's, a secret brothel for officers, forces Offred to confront how completely Gilead crushes even the most defiant resistance. A passionate affair with Nick begins after Serena herself arranges it, giving Offred something to live for but making her less willing to fight back. The story ends with Serena's fury and a black van arriving outside, as Offred steps into an unknown fate, unsure whether she is being saved or condemned.

The core story of Offred's life as a Handmaid in Gilead.

Captive women at the Red Centre learn to lip-read and secretly exchange their real names at night.

Offred recalls being shown a photo of her daughter after the failed escape and told the child had been rehomed.

Offred is examined by a doctor who illegally offers to impregnate her himself to ensure she conceives.

Moira arrives at the Red Centre with a bruised face, giving Offred a feeling of comfort and solidarity.

At a Testifying session, Janine confesses her gang rape and the other Handmaids chant that it was her fault.

The Commander reads Bible passages aloud to his assembled household during the ritual gathering before the Ceremony.

Ofwarren gives birth and the newborn is immediately handed to the Commander's Wife while Janine weeps.

Moira escapes the Red Centre by threatening an Aunt with a sharpened cistern lever and fleeing in the Aunt's clothes.

The Commander begins giving Offred small gifts during their study visits, including an outlawed women's magazine.

Ofglen explains the resistance movement's secret password to Offred during one of their shopping walks.

Offred attends a Women's Prayvaganza where a group of young women are publicly given as wives to loyal soldiers.

The Commander attempts to justify Gilead's treatment of women to Offred, claiming the regime has given women more than it took.

Serena Joy shows Offred a photograph of her daughter as a reward for agreeing to sleep with Nick.

Ofglen is suddenly replaced on the shopping walk by a new woman who introduces herself as Ofglen.

A historian's lecture reveals that Gilead eventually fell and that Offred's story was found recorded on cassette tapes.

These events trace the texture of Offred's captivity, from her indoctrination at the Red Centre to the household rituals and hidden relationships that define her days in the Commander's house. Figures like Moira and Janine illustrate radically different ways of surviving Gilead's brutality, while the Testifying sessions expose how thoroughly the regime turns women against one another. The Commander's growing attention brings small mercies, including outlawed books and magazines, even as Offred remains a prisoner of the system he built. Serena's cruelty is revealed most sharply when she withholds and then dangles a photograph of Offred's unseen daughter as a bargaining chip. The resistance exists only at the edges of this world, hinted at through the Mayday password and the sudden, unexplained disappearance of the trusted Ofglen. An epilogue set centuries later confirms that Gilead did eventually fall and that Offred's recorded testimony somehow survived to be studied by historians.

The people, rituals, and hidden moments surrounding Offred's daily existence.

Offred and Luke's attempt to flee to Canada with their daughter fails and the family is permanently separated.

The Commander is spotted standing near Offred's room for no clear reason, violating household protocol.

Offred discovers a Latin phrase scratched into her closet floor, left as a secret message by a previous Handmaid.

Offred remembers her mother at a feminist protest where participants burned pornographic magazines in a park.

Gilead's new regime freezes all women's bank accounts and prohibits them from working or owning property.

Luke dismisses Offred's loss of her job as trivial, quietly revealing his comfort with the laws that make her dependent on him.

Offred asks the Commander what the Latin phrase means and learns it is a joke meaning 'Don't let the bastards grind you down.'

The Commander reveals that the previous Handmaid hanged herself after Serena Joy discovered their secret meetings.

Offred tells the Commander she believes she may be pregnant, though she privately knows this is wishful thinking.

Offred refuses Ofglen's repeated request to search the Commander's study and gather intelligence for the resistance.

Three people are publicly hanged at a Salvaging ceremony as Handmaids place their hands on the rope in forced complicity.

After the Particicution, Ofglen reveals the victim was a resistance member she knocked unconscious to spare him from being torn apart.

The new Ofglen whispers that the previous Ofglen hanged herself the moment she saw the black van coming to take her.

Offred is led out of the house past the frightened Commander and furious Serena Joy and steps into the waiting van.

A historian reveals Commander Waterford was eventually purged for harboring a subversive, while Offred's ultimate fate remains unknown.

These events mark the moments where Offred's understanding of her situation fundamentally shifts, beginning with the memories that explain how Gilead rose and how she came to lose everything. The failed escape, the regime's swift dismantling of women's rights, and Luke's quiet comfort with Offred's dependence reveal the ordinary complicity that allowed catastrophe to take hold. Clues left by a previous Handmaid accumulate into a dark revelation about what happened to the woman who lived in Offred's room before her. As Offred deepens her relationship with Nick and refuses to help the resistance, she makes increasingly passive choices that leave her more exposed. The brutal Salvaging, the truth behind the Particicution, and the sudden loss of Ofglen all signal that the walls are closing in around her. When the van finally arrives, Offred surrenders herself to strangers, and a later historian's account confirms that the Commander was eventually destroyed while Offred's ultimate fate was never determined.

The discoveries, decisions, and revelations that reshape Offred's understanding of her world.