In The Handmaid's Tale, there is a great emphasis on shape, or rather lack of it. In the very beginning, Offred tells of her imprisoning surroundings, describing the woven, oval carpets, calling them the female relics of the past. According to Euclidean geometry, the more elliptical a person the less well-rounded she is. Here, she presents a seeming contradiction: wherefore she had intimated that she longed to return to Luke and to the past and now she presents the older echelons of tradition as the past's relics. It is thus that she clarifies that the past exists in degrees, and perhaps even varying planes- something which draws her to her eventual friend Ofglen. In addition to Ofglen's portrayal of perfection and piety, Offred reveals her envy of Ofglen's apparent ability to act as if on "little oiled wheels, " - the very picture of a circle. In such a scenario, the circle can portray function and the oval illusion. When Serena Joy, the Commander's wife, approaches her about an alternative to her current reproductive partner (the Commander), she cuts the blossoming, pointed bulbs with her shears, thereby exterminating that which was an an oval. Through this critical scene the author shows that the women only in murderous unison, sullying each other and eventually killing their essence. When she sees an updated picture of her daughter, she thinks that she seems an angelic oval, in other words, an antiquated image. It is thus that the circle becomes a symbol for life and its propagation and the oval its regression.
