<P> "The Ceremony" is a non-marital sexual act sanctioned for reproduction . The ritual requires the Handmaid to lie on her back between the legs of the Wife during the sex act as if they were one person . The Wife has to invite the Handmaid to share her power this way; many Wives consider this both humiliating and offensive . Offred describes the ceremony: </P> <P> My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher . Below it the Commander is fucking . What he is fucking is the lower part of my body . I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing . Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved . Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for . </P> <P> In the novel's fictional fundamentalist society, sterile is an "outlawed" word . In this society, there is no such thing as a sterile man anymore . In this culture, women are either fruitful or barren, the latter of which are declared to be "unwomen" and are sent to the colonies with the rest of the "unwomen" to do life - threatening work until their death, which is, on average, three years . </P> <P> Atwood emphasises how changes in context affect behaviours and attitudes by repeating the phrase "Context is all" throughout the novel, establishing this precept as a motif . Playing the game of Scrabble with her Commander illustrates the key significance of changes in "context"; once "the game of old men and women", the game became forbidden for women to play and therefore "desirable". Through living in a morally rigid society, Offred has come to perceive the world differently from earlier . Offred expresses amazement at how "It has taken so little time to change our minds about things". Wearing revealing clothes and makeup had been part of her former life, but when she sees Japanese tourists dressed that way, she now feels the women are inappropriately dressed . </P>

The handmaid's tale book by margaret atwood