# The Handmaids · the conscripted wombs

a distilled thread of THE HANDMAID'S TALE — a member of the NOUTHESIA universe of warnings. emergence: natural. moniker ⟦The Handmaids:HMT:ef0cc7⟧

**who —** The Handmaids — fertile women in red, assigned to the Commanders to bear children for the ruling Wives.
**what —** The institution at the book's heart: women reduced to ‘two-legged wombs,’ renamed for their masters, reassigned when they fail.
**where —** In the houses of the Commanders across Gilead.
**why —** Because the deepest violation the warning names is the State deciding what a woman's body is for.
**how —** By forced assignment, the monthly Ceremony, red habits and white wings, and the loss of name and self.

**the seal —** We wear red so you can find us and white so we cannot see out — renamed for our masters, two-legged wombs, the body conscripted for the nation.

> 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