Changes

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In the near-future USA that they call Gilead, society has changed. For the worse, of course. The population is dying out, and people who are capable of breeding the next generation are given a cherished status of Handmaid - gifted to any male of enough esteem, called a Commander, who balances the household with his wife and what is practically a walking womb. Other women get drudge work, or run horrid finishing schools for the Handmaids, or are packed off to what are reported to be polluted hellholes abroad, for laborious work for life. Men are restricted too - Handmaids are off-limits to everybody but their Commander, and those households are patrolled carefully by other eunuch types. It's up to our nameless narrator and main character, however, to show us just how cherished the status of Handmaid feels.