Offred exits from the kitchen out the backdoor as any servant would be expected to do in affluent households from former times (in American, from slave times through at least the 1950s). She walks into the Commander’s Wife’s garden (where she always wears a blue veil), filled with flowers and metaphor. The tulips are red, like the Handmaids. She comments that they are more crimson (the color of blood) near the stem because the flowers had been cut at some point. If we take the tulips to stand in for the Handmaids, we might wonder if the Handmaids ever get cut at the stem. (Plucked sexually? Replaced by another red Handmaid later?) This idea of cutting a stem and amputation of human limbs is repeated often in the novel. We learn that Guardians can be assigned to Commander’s Wives, being made to do menial tasks like digging holes. Also, Offred gives us another echo—she remembers in concrete details what it was like to garden. She remembers seeds and bulbs in her hands, all metaphors of procreating. We snap back to the...