Faces

This drawing depicts Offred from the Commander’s perspective. It takes place in the Commander’s study on the night they go to Jezebel’s, and shows Offred seated across from the Commander at his desk, just after he has given her makeup.

When Offred is with the Commander, she often seems conscious of her face and facial expressions. During their first secret meeting, when he asks her to play Scrabble with him, she narrates, “I hold myself absolutely rigid. I keep my face unmoving” (p. 138). The night they go to Jezebel’s, when Offred is going into the Commander’s study, she says, “I knock on his door, hear his voice, adjust my face, go in” (p. 229). To Offred, facial expressions seem like a point of vulnerability, where her true emotions can be seen. She frequently adjusts her expressions, as if putting on a mask in an attempt to hide these feelings. This action is seen most often with the Commander, likely because of the extreme imbalance in their power dynamic. In my illustration, I depicted Offred’s face as completely blank, because it sometimes feels as though this blankness is what she aims to achieve. With a blank face, the Commander would not be able to discern any of her thoughts or feelings.

I also noticed the idea of faces as a point of vulnerability and intimacy during the first Ceremony after Offred and the Commander start meeting in secret. During this scene, Offred recounts, “He reached his hand up as if to touch my face; I moved my head to the side, to warn him away, hoping Serena Joy hadn’t noticed, and he withdrew his hand again, withdrew into himself and his single-minded journey” (p. 162). Here, the Commander’s movement to touch Offred’s face displays the shift in the pair’s relationship, the new connection that had previously been absent. But Offred pulls away. To her, their relationship is not one of intimacy. She has to be conscious of what this action could give away to Serena Joy, as she is more likely to be punished for it. In pulling away, she is again pulling back and hiding her face from the Commander.

In my illustration, on the Commander’s desk is the makeup that the Commander gives to Offred the night they go to Jezebel’s. This moment felt significant because we see that despite all of the hiding that Offred does around the Commander, he doesn’t really care about seeing her real face, or her real emotions. He only cares about her face looking the way he wants it, and that night, he wanted her in makeup. Although the makeup ended up helping Offred fit in at Jezebel’s, initially, it felt like the Commander was picking out Offred’s face for her that night, deciding on his own how he wanted her to look. This is one of many examples in The Handmaid’s Tale of Offred having other people decide what she should do, what she should think, and how she should act.