The Red Motif in The Handmaid's Tale In the dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale" written by Margaret Atwood, the recurring appearance of the color red draws an interesting but perverse parallel between femininity and violence. The dominant color of the novel, red, is associated with everything feminine. However, red is also the color of blood; death and violence are therefore closely associated with women in this ultra-conservative, male-dominated government. We are first introduced to the color red when the narrator describes how he dresses: "Red gloves lie on the bed. Everything except the wings around my face is red; the color of blood, which defines us." Here we are unsure whether Atwood is referring to the blood as menstrual and feminine, or as a result of disobedience and the resulting violence. The women of "The Handmaiden" are cloaked in red as a reminder of their fertility. However, in the context of Gilead, red is not just menstrual blood or blood from birth; red is a death threat. Offred would later say: "I've never looked good in red, it's not my colour." Red tulips are also a recurring image in "The Handmaid's Tale". Even tulips, often seen as lonic symbols in many works, can be interpreted in this way. Tulips are women, and red tulips are women cloaked in red, red blood. On page 12 Offred narrates, “The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as if they had been cut and were beginning to heal there.” If a deeper interpretation of this thought were warranted, I would think of the point where the tulip meets the stem in the woman's neck, and when the government came and stripped them of all power, they "cut off their heads " in a sense depriving them of money, reading material and any kind of education. Tulips, like cloaks, are symbols of violence against women in the twisted world of Gilead. An overt use of red to relate women to violence can be seen on page 32: "But on one bag there is blood, which has seeped through the white cloth, where the mouth should have been. It makes another mouth , small and red. This bloody smile is what finally fixes the attention. The hanging men are intended to scare, as Atwood clearly states, but they intend to scare who?