Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading and forming friendships. She serves in the household of the Commander and his wife, and under the new social order she has only one purpose: once a month, she must lie on her back and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if they are fertile. But Offred remembers the years before Gilead, when she was an independent woman who had a job, a family and a name of her own. Now, her memories and her will to survive are acts of rebellion.