M. Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

The story is told from the perspective of Offred, a handmaid. Offred is a patronymic which describes her function in the Republic of Gilead. Offred belongs to her Commander, Fred, as a concubine; her real name is not revealed.
As the novel opens, the government of the United States has been overthrown several years earlier. The country has been taken over by Christian fundamentalists who have renamed it and made it into a theocratic state. Women must submit to men and no longer have any civil rights. Their chief function is childbearing and taking care of their husbands. This has been imposed as a means to improve the birth rate as infertility has become rampant due to environmental pollution. This also makes it a serious problem for the handmaids as the punishment for failing to produce a child after attempts with three commanders is to be declared an Unwoman and then sent to the colonies. Furthermore, Gilead does not recognize male infertility.
Highly placed party men — known as Commanders — in the Gilead government are given handmaids to have sex with and bear their children, just as Bilhah and Zilpah, handmaids to the biblical matriarchs Rachael and Leah, bore children for them with Jacob when they were infertile. Handmaids are drawn from "fallen women" — those who have committed sexual crimes.
The narrator was previously married to a divorced man. Since divorce has been declared retroactively non-existent, she was declared to have been living in sin with him. Her daughter is taken away from her to be raised by another family, and she, with proven fertility, is forced to become a handmaid. Offred is placed in the household of the Commander Fred, and Serena Joy, his wife.
Handmaids spend a maximum of two years in a particular household before they are moved. Those who cannot conceive within three placements are deemed barren Unwomen and sent to the colonies, so that many genuinely fertile Handmaids seek to impregnate themselves using alternative methods. For example, when Offred receives a medical check-up, the doctor offers to "do the job" for her. Similarly, Fred's wife Serena Joy arranges an illicit affair between Offred and Nick the chauffeur, so that Offred may conceive and produce a child for Serena Joy and her husband and avoid deportation. The dual pressure to conceive produces an insurmountable psychosis in the handmaids. Offred frequently refers to the words secretly carved in dog Latin inside her closet where no one can see, presumably left by a former handmaid — Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (Don't let the bastards grind you down). Offred's current assignment is her third after she had failed to become pregnant with her previous two Commanders.
This third assignment differs from her earlier experiences in that she is given, in various disjointed episodes, glimpses that all is not as it seems in Gilead. Through these glimpses she discovers that the people in her life, while paying lip service to Gilead's rigid mores, seek various means of expressing their illicit desires.
Offred initially becomes aware of these transgressions when Fred orders her to visit his study late at night. He wishes to establish a more personal relationship with her, as he is forbidden to converse with her outside of their monthly sex. He offers to play Scrabble with her. Since women are forbidden from reading and restricted to specific duties assigned to them, this is an illicit activity. He also obtains forbidden hand lotion for her and allows her to read books and magazines from the past. On one occasion, he dresses her in a sexy costume and smuggles her into Jezebel's, a nightclub and brothel run by the party. He asks that she keep all this secret from his Wife, Serena Joy.
At the same time, Serena Joy has also asked Offred to keep secrets from the Commander. Resentful of having been deprived of her formerly prominent role as a televangelist and right-wing lecturer, she feels the only thing that can give meaning to her life is a child. Since the Commander is likely to be sterile (his previous handmaids did not conceive), Serena Joy suggests that Offred attempt to conceive a child with Nick, the chauffeur, later revealed to be a member of the Mayday underground resistance.
Nick and Offred begin an emotional and sexual relationship which they continue until the end of the novel where it is left a little ambiguous whether Offred's transgressions have been discovered and is taken away for them or is being smuggled out of the household by the resistance movement. By this time, Offred and Nick believe that she might be pregnant.
Even though her fate is not made clear by the ambiguous ending, since she was able to make tapes on which she recounts her experiences — as stated in the appendix — it seems likely that she was rescued and may have been able to leave the country via the "Underground Femaleroad." Offred's on-tape narrative is treated as a historical document and is discussed at an academic conference far in the future.