Minor Characters in The Handmaid's Tale

Why are they Important?

• Carry story line
• Dig deeper to character
• Reveal things about characters

The Minor Characters

• Unwomen
• Dolores
• Offred's Predecesor
• Ofcharles
• Professor Maryann Crescent Moon
• Wilfred Limpkin
• Frederick Judd
• Quakers

• Cora
• Rita
• Luke
• Offred's Mother
• Aunt Lydia
• Aunt Elizabeth
• Professor Pieixoto
• Alma
• Offred's Daughter

Rita

• Over sixty
• Tight lipped
• Kitchen Servant
• Limited Domestic power
• Envies Offred's ability to walk to the market
• Meticulously checks what Offred returns with.

Cora

• Fifty-ish
• Finds previous Offred hanging.....
• Fears that Offred has killed herself because....
• Cora offers a semblance of friendship by concelling an untouched breakfast.
• Cora weeps when Offred is lead away.

Aunt Lydia

• Caught up in enthusiasm as a vigliant matron at the Rachel and Leah re-decuation centre.
• Uplifted face, protuding yellow teeth and steel rimmed spectacles
• She spouts lots of propaganda
• She seems sincere in her beliefe that the "Republic of Gilead...knows no bounds. Gilead is within you."
• She stalks the halls of the red centre with cattle prob in hand.
• Believes that "a little pain clears out the mind."

Aunt Elizabeth

• Key authority figure of the red centre.
• Guards wash room on the day of ......'s escape.
• She is bound behind the furnace for 7 hours.
• Authorities treat her as a possible collaborator and conducts an official interrogstion.
• She birth master
• Supervises Ofwarren during chilbirth
• What was Ofwarrens child called?

Luke

• Offreds Husband
• Recalled in wisps of memory
• Has a child with Offred (pre-gilead)
• Was previously married
• Had an affair with Offred
• Good natured man
• Teases mother-in-law about differences between men and women.
• Married to Offred now.
• He devises an escape plan to help get Offred and their child out of Gilead.
• What is his plan?
• He most probably dead, but readers can interpret it their own way.

Offred's Daughter

• Child of Offred and Luke
• Born pre-Gilead
• Small girl
• only a memory of Offred's past
• Child was kidnapped briefly by a stranger. When she was 11 months old
• Where did this happen?
• Taken from Offred when she was 5
• A single Polaroid photo confirms that she survived capture.

Offred's Daughter

Offred's Mother

• An elderly militant feminist
• Gave birth to her daughter at the age 37
• Would currently be 70 (if she survived)
• She chose to raise Offred as a single mother
• Had a friendship with both Moira and Luke.
• Burned pornographic magazines in the park.
• Lived in Boston and used to make frequent visits to Offred.
• Moria recognizes Offred's mum from a documentry about Unwomen.

Delores

• She is a handmaid in training.
• She wets the floor rather than missing Testifying
• Its suggested that you could be punished for leaving Testifying
• It is also infered that Delores gets punshed for this.
• What chapter does this happen in?

Delores

Offred's Predecessor

• Handmaid who previosuly recided in Offred's room
• She visited the commander.
• Accompanied him to the club
• She scratched what Latin phrase into the wardrobe?

Offred's Predecessor

Ofcharles

• Handmaid who is excecuted for an unnamed crime at an event.
• What is the name of this event?
• This happens during Offred's 3rd summer at the commanders house.

Alma

• A handmaid who whispers her real name to Offred during the birthing ceromony.
• Offred suppresses the urge to talk about Luke, who Alma would have no reason to know.
• What Offred ask her?

Alma

Professor James Darcy Pieixoto

• Pedantic
• Director of the 20th and 21st centry archives
• Pompus
• British
• Serves as key note speaker at the 12th symposium on Gileadian Studies

Professor James Darcy Pieixoto

Professor Maryann Crescent Moon

• Glib, mild humorous character
• She is the chair of the 12th Symposian on Gileadian Studies
• Proffesor at the department of Caucasian Anthropology.
• She works at the University of Denay, Nunavit (fictional setting)

Professor Maryann Crescent Moon

Wilfred Limpkin

• A sociobiologist in the early Gildean Period
• Was present at meetings of the Sons of Jacob Think Tank
• He kept a coded diary.
• Forseeing his demise he hid it with his sister-in-law in Calgary.
• He is interested in the odder practices of the regime
• Produced documents that convinced Offred was a Handmaid to the commander.

Frederick Judd

• We find out about Judd through Limpkins diaries.
• Judd is a hardliner commander of The Eyes from Gileads Early period.
• He was responsible for banning what for women?
• He masterminded the presidents day massacre.
• As well as the National Homeland and Jewish boatperson plans
• He used scapegoting through Particution as a relief of tension among Handmaids.
• "a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it"

Tasks