. Women who put on ten pounds are put into solitary and the handmaids are only fed so that they are fully functional and can perform their duties. Even the exercises that Offred does are only so that she remains limber to an extent, she cannot do more than that or the people of the house will come to find out what is wrong with her.
             The reference to the handmaid is taken from the Biblical Rebecca who asks her husband to have a child by her handmaid. There is no consideration of the handmaid's feelings or what she wants and once her child is taken from her, she is completely forgotten. This is the case of most of the handmaids. It is so severe that when a handmaid cannot produce a child, she is sent to a forced labour camp without first checking whether the man she is sent to is impotent or not.
             The identities of the handmaids are not valued or considered. This is what Atwood tries to bring about when she makes her protagonist a handmaid. She wants to look at the forgotten person's perspective of what is happening to her and see things from a new point of view, rather than a solely patriarchal point of view. Yet, although Offred resists Gilead inwardly, once her attempt at escape fails, she submits outwardly. She is hardly a feminist champion; she always felt uncomfortable with her mother's activism, and her pre-Gilead relationship with Luke began when she became his mistress, meeting him in cheap hotels for sex. Offred's search for identity is evident when she muses later:
             "What the Commander said is true. One and one and one and one don't equal four. Each one remains unique; there is no way of joining them together. They cannot be exchanged, one for the other" (THT. p. 248).
             The fact that the handmaids' names change every time they get a new master shows the control of their identity and personality that is taking place in the novel. They are expected to understand and respect the wishes of the wives...