Red in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

One is introduced to the color red at the very beginning of the story: “my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us,” “I never looked good in red, it is not my color,” “some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak,” “sister, dipped in blood”, “the one assigned to me, which is red”, “red umbrella” (8, 9). Red is repeated over and over again. One gets the sense that the color plays a very important role in the story and one needs to take note of it.

One later finds out that the color indeed is significant as it's the color the handmaids are assigned to wear. To get a deep grasp of the red color implication, you need to understand who exactly the handmaids are: they actually are baby incubators assigned to commanders whose wives cannot bear children. They perform wordless sex, referred to as the “ceremony,” with the commanders while the wives watch. After which, they give the children born out of the ceremonial union to the wives to call their own.

One figures immediately that to be a handmaids isn't enviable, as the women actually commit condoned adultery with commanders. This is substantiated when Offred, from whose point of view we see the story, and Ofglen put their hands over their hearts to show the Econowives, the wives of poorer men, their sympathy to their beavered. One of the Econowives spits on the sidewalk while another scowls at them. Offred responds that “the Econowives do not like us” (44). The handmaids are seen as scarlet ladies, sluttish.

It is rather ironical that although the color red represents blood, stigma and adultery, it also represents life as well. Which is actually the bane of the handmaids. They are required to bring forth children out of adultery with the commanders. Blood, which is associated with fertility (the caste’s primary function), is a process from menstruation to giving birth, during which blood is shed - red color.

In all, I can’t find another color other than red, which can collectively symbolize and alludes to these various markers of the handmaids; stigma, blood, life, menstruation, birth, adultery or sin. Since Gilead is a theocratic state, one also can assume that the handmaids is a reference to the scarlet woman in the bible.