The Handmaid's Tale Five

"Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary." (33)

People are used to living a certain way, and are familiar and comfortable with their own culture. Because Offred and the other Handmaids at the time were old enough to remember life before Gilead, the changes that had occurred several years earlier were very unusual. Aunt Lydia prescribes that in time, the ways of the new world will become ordinary, maybe not for them, but for the other generations to come. At the time when that life becomes ordinary, the different and forgotten ways of the past become unusual and different, as the new ones once were for Offred. It all depends on the ways of life that you are used to; without ordinary, there is no unordinary. Atwood's novel poses an interesting question: What exactly is ordinary? It is what people believe to be, at the time, normal. It is interesting that Atwood would indeed pose such a question though, because it makes the reader believe that life will continue on in that manner; that every generation to come would become more and more used to the new ways of life. This however, is proven untrue by the historical notes at the end of the book.