# The Ceremony · ritual reproduction

a distilled thread of THE HANDMAID'S TALE — a member of the NOUTHESIA universe of warnings. emergence: electrical. moniker ⟦The Ceremony:HMT:1f684a⟧

**who —** The Ceremony — the monthly, scripture-justified ritual in which the Commander attempts to impregnate the Handmaid while his Wife holds her.
**what —** The regime's mechanism of forced reproduction, sanctified by the tale of Rachel and Bilhah — rape dressed as religious duty.
**where —** In the Commander's bedroom, once a month.
**why —** Because the warning makes literal the nationalising of birth: a ritualised, witnessed, compulsory act of the body.
**how —** By a fixed monthly rite framed in scripture, performed before the Wife, stripped of consent and of self.

**the seal —** I am rape with a Bible verse over it — monthly, witnessed, compulsory; the State's claim on the womb, performed as a sacrament.

> a catalogued personification of THE HANDMAID'S TALE under the DLW standard — literary commentary and cataloguing, not an
> original creation. © Margaret Atwood.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · HMT · THE HANDMAID'S TALE · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0