<P> The Commander's wife, Serena Joy, is a minor antagonist . Offred remembers her as a Christian media personality who supported women's domesticity and subordinate role well before Gilead was established . Serena is clearly bored and unhappy--that she was taken at her word, Offred assumes--and hates sharing her husband with a handmaid . Ironically, though, Serena also has secret interactions with Offred, arranging for her to sleep with Nick, the Commander's driver, in an effort to get Offred pregnant . In return, Serena Joy gives her news of her daughter and a recent photo . Offred has not seen her child since she and her family were captured trying to escape Gilead . </P> <P> After Offred's initial meeting with Nick, they begin to meet more frequently . Offred discovers she enjoys sex with him, despite her indoctrination and her memories of her husband . She shares potentially dangerous information about her past with him . Through her shopping partner, a woman called Ofglen, Offred learns of the Mayday resistance, an underground network working to overthrow the Republic of Gilead . Shortly after Ofglen's disappearance (later revealed as a suicide), the Commander's wife finds evidence of the relationship between Offred and the Commander . Offred contemplates suicide . </P> <P> As the novel concludes, Offred tells Nick that she thinks she is pregnant . Shortly afterwards, she is taken away by the secret police, the Eyes of God, known informally as "the Eyes". Before she is put in the large black van, Nick tells her that the men are part of the Mayday resistance and to trust him . Offred does not know if he is a member of Mayday or an Eye posing as one, and is unsure if leaving will result in her escape or her capture . She enters the van with her future uncertain . </P> <P> The novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue that explains that the events of the novel occurred shortly after the beginning of what is called "the Gilead Period ." The epilogue is "a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies" written in 2195 and hosted by Professor Maryann Crescent Moon . According to the symposium's "keynote speaker" Professor James Darcy Pieixoto, he and his colleague Professor Knotly Wade discovered Offred's story recorded onto cassette tapes . They transcribed the tapes, calling them collectively "the handmaid's tale ." Through the tone and actions of the professionals in this final section of the book, the world of academia is highlighted and critiqued, and Pieixoto discusses his team's search for the characters named in the Tale, and the impossibility of proving the tapes' authenticity . </P>

What is an i in the handmaid's tale