Fear still lingers, there's some past experience of something, the world isn't safe enough that clothes on the floor already create suspicion.

An alternate interpretation is that this natural reaction implies that Cora is a very humane character and will foreshadow both that Cora will be an ally and that this handmaid will draw parallels to the one who hanged herself.

This is symbolic of rape, which is ironic because now Offred seeks hope in getting raped -- to be immorally penetrated is a sign of hope. Even when their society's aim was to grant women freedom from rape.

Even though his words are reassuring, his power and the underlying tone. of rape still hangs. This is ironic because Gilead should be free from rape, of sin. And yet Gilead is turning women into sin, out of desperation. A utopia becomes more of a living hell than any sinful world.

Irony in this. A culture in which a producer of life is close to death -- Shows how this new world is upside down and wrong.

In some way, anyone born in Gilead would be born into a life for death.

"The land of milk and honey" usually means paradise; utopia, another sense of irony here. And touches on the idea that imperfect is as perfect as perfect gets, and perfect is as imperfect as imperfect gets.