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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a question about the Marthas and other people in Gilead.

So you have the Commanders, Wives, and the Handmaids. That's been pretty well explained (the Handmaids were all fertile young women who did something "bad" before Gilead - like with June stealing someone's husband - and now have to be punished by giving their babies to infertile Wives).

How did people like Rita end up as Marthas? Is it just because she wasn't married at the time that Gilead formed? Are there a bunch of married couples just going along to get along? Where and what are the "non-important" people doing?[/quote]

The Econo-people. I can't remember if it was Season 1 or 2 when June was on the run (I think S 1) and she's picked up by a bread delivery guy and hidden in his home. He has a wife and a child. They live in an apartment building. It's never really explained, but basically they are living in Gilead as normal people and presumably given whatever job Gilead wanted them to do. They are subject to all the harsh laws of Gilead.

I think Marthas were basically single women that couldn't have children but hadn't done anything "wrong" before Gilead. There was one episode in S 3 where Lawrence had to pick who got to come to Gilead as a Martha and who would be sent to the colonies, so even being good pre-Gilead wasn't a guarantee.[/quote]

Marthas were infertile women, sometimes older, but also women who had their tubes tied or were otherwise unable to bear children. I don’t know if they were first tested out as Handmaids if young.[/quote]

The Handmaids had proven fertility and documented moral transgressions. That suggested "morally upstanding" women were not forced to be Handmaids, and were eligible to be Marthas. Commander Lawrence's two Marthas (the ones pushed off the ledge) were young and probably fertile. So on the one hand they're not forced to be sex slaves, but on the other they're inherently less valuable and not everyone eligible gets to be one.[/quote]

Fertile women were expected to bear children. I can’t see young, fertile women being left on the shelf and Marthas were celibate. As Rita reminded us, they were also property. A Martha caught with her Commander or another man could be killed or sent to the Colonies. You don’t hear about them being made handmaids for this sexual transgression.[/quote]

It's an interesting question. The weird moral code is referred to multiple times--only fertile sinners become Handmaids. Some Marthas may have been fertile technically but were single and old enough not to be worth putting into arranged marriages with Eyes etc,, which seemed to focus only on totally indoctrinated teenagers. Just like in much of pre-modern Europe, weirdly enough. I'm not sure about the other Commander Lawrence Martha, who looked pretty young, but Beth looked around 35. Most that we've seen looked 35+. 
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I think the you g Martha had been a med student? So, she was ‘bad’ insofar as she’d sought an education, but not bad enough to be a handmaid.[/quote]

The Marthas are infertile, so if she is a Martha she wouldn’t qualify to be a handmaid. Gilead decision makers wouldn’t make a fertile woman a Martha- they would declare her freckles, ear piercings, or education sinful if they wanted her as a handmaid.[/quote]

Except there's no evidence that's true. Every handmaid we've met had a major "transgression." The Marthas didn't. Definitely possible the younger ones were tested and found to be infertile, but if that's the case where are the virtuous fertile women? We haven't met one yet. Maybe the econowives? Anyway, I do think the moral code about virtuous women not being forced into sexual servitude is true. [/quote]

In the book, fertile non-sinner women were allowed to continue as econowives.  So if Luke had not been divorced, he and June would have continued as econopeople with their daughter.  The epilogue to the book implies this fell apart as the years went on because obviously you didn’t have a lot of divorcees or single moms in gilead, so they had to just start taking whoever.  I think a young fertile woman (like the med student, if she was unmarried and fertile) would have been given as a wife to a guard or someone in the book—unless she was a vocal feminist in which case probably HM for her.  Infertile young woman would go to jezebels if she was hot or the colonies if not.   None of the martha’s were young in the book which makes sense because the wives didn’t want sexy young martha’s in their house to distract their husbands—the whole HM construct was so that the husbands could procreate in the least appealing way possible.[/quote]

This may be informative regarding Gilead societal roles:

http://academic.depauw.edu/aevans_web/HONR101-02/WebPages/Fall%202007/Sarah/Handmaid%27s%20Tale/basics.html[/quote]

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