The Handmaid's Tale Vol 2

[PacificDogwod]

I go to work and this is what happens: the previous thread fills up when I have pertinent things to say!

Hope nobody minds, I've taken the opportunity to start a new one before the Offspring demand food and the likes...

One of the masterful strikes of strategic genius of the new regime is the division and envy between everybody and everybody: men vs women, women in different roles vs other women, high ranking vs low ranking.
No solidarity is allowed - even the partnered Handmaids were half companion and have guard. Never knowing who might be an Eye and who to trust must be soul destroying.

I think Serena is quite a tragic figure - in the book and in the TV series. She must feel so betrayed by the ideals she fought for and that she is now kind of forced to uphold because otherwise what would her life be?? Admitting that she supporting a world view that while giving her some kind of social status by dint of her husband's role, considers her without value as she cannot have children would render everything she stands for invalid, and herself by extension.

The author who wrote a book about women being able to electrocute men by touch thereby causing a power change over (sorry, I cannot remember either name ) was talking on Radio Scotland today. She said the idea for her book came from when she wondered why so many mechanisms in society seem to go back to the fact that 'more men can throw a woman across a room than the other way around'. It's a depressing thought that physical strength underpins so much.

The red symbolism is made pretty clear in both the book and the show, I thought. When book Offred describes it she says 'it's the colour of blood, which defines us'.

The Hester Prynne reference was talked about at length in my English A level classes. It's one of those very clever (if a bit on the nose) allusions Atwood makes in the books to just how contradictory Gilead's ways are. State sanctioned adultery.

The Marthas wear green, not blue, the green of surgical gowns from the time before. They are reduced to a function, like all the women of Gilead, and no one is interested in their faces. They are, quite literally, a domestic appliance.

I am loving the costume interpretations on the show, and as someone said upthread there is nothing you see or hear that isn't done on purpose (I'm going on what's happened so far, I'm hoping that pans out). I also think the way the camera focuses on June's whole face in close up is brilliant as a foil to how hidden her face is in the 'real world' of the show. The women are stripped of all personality and individuality, but we the viewer get to see every emotion in close up high definition.

I haven't read the book,so can't comment on how it differs from the tv adaptation, but this is a good summary of the symbolism and motifs used.

www.slideshare.net/mobile/lmv17/the-handmaids-tale-symbols-and-motifs

Oh gosh, I wrote a comparative A level essay about symbolism in HMT and Tess of the Durbevilles. I can suddenly smell chalk and Body Shop Dewberry

Serf I studied THT for A Level and I vaguely remember writing an essay on its symbolism and that used by Angela Carter in 'The Bloody Chamber'. I did it the olde fashioned way with pen and paper, too

I'm also thinking of The Red Tent by Anita Diamant - anyone else read it? Women retire to the Red Tent for one week a month while they have their period.

Also, interesting how MA describes the handmaid's white head coverings as resembling a nun's wimple (I think?). So, there's the titilating dichotomy (for men) of the Madonna/Whore complex...prim, austere, head-dress coupled with the brazen 'look at me' of the red dresses...

Conversely, you could argue that the handmaiden's heads (and therefore their brains) are totally unimportant, hence they are made to disappear by their large, concealing headresses...it's only their (fertile) bodies which are important - to all intents and purposes they are just walking wombs.

And, we're back to Angela Carter and 'The Bloody Chamber'...

Ah, got mixed up Essie it's the Wives who wear Virgin Mary blue. Both cruel and ironic...they're the wives, so clearly not virgins...but coerced to wear virginal blue all the same. They are sterile, so have become sexless, because in Gilead the only reason to have sex is to procreate.

Also, think that the celestial blue has connotations of the overly sentimentalised Victorian construct of 'the angel in the house' etc.

With regards the 'why not use artificial insemination' thing, I seem to remember from the book that there were strong religious objections to it, as in 'playing God caused all the trouble in the first place'.
It's a very much 'it's God's will' kind of attitude.
While the men at the top are happy to break the rules when it suits them, I think there are enough true believers in the ranks propping them up that going against that religious belief would be difficult for them politically.
And of course, then there'd be no reason for the 'ceremony' which is already just an excuse for the man to have an extra woman to have sex with.

I had kind of assumed the no artificial insemination thing was because masturbation is bad? Would have been better to have had that discussed and the reasons clarified though. AI would be by far the more efficient way of doing things

Re the Ceremony, anyone else felt how twisted it was in that first episode that it involved the wife holding the handmaid's wrists so she couldn't move at all, and that the wife had to have the handmaid's head between her thighs, effectively pushing against her sexual/baby making area as the husband thrust??! That really shocked me. Made me imagine those same sickos from the car in the latest episode deciding those nice little details...
Serena clearly hated that - as would any woman watching her husband rape a woman at all. I wonder if that's when she realized that the whole thing (that she'd encouraged and supported) had just gone over a line that she hadn't even realized was there?

Also...if a woman isn't sexually aroused, she's going to be dry which will make penetration uncomfortable and painful for her, was that addressed in the book at all?

I noticed the blue scarf too, but didn't think of the mirror in the jewellery box as potential means of suicide. It was an odd gift, even for Serena who does have form for infantilising June (telling her to be part of the 'clean plate club')

I was a bit disappointed the credits didn't run to the full orchestral version of the jewellery box music though (Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake)

Like PPs, I find the comments and analysis on this thread to be so very interesting and enlightening.

For me, reading everybody's viewpoints is adding hugely to the weekly viewing experience.
Both from the perspective of total newcomers to The Handmaid's Tale, since this current screen adaptation, and that of those already familiar with (or who have formally studied) MA's original book.

Thank you, all.

I too am finding this thread absorbing. The series is so well-made and really conveys the chillingness, and the feeling that it could really happen and we mustn't get complacent.

And heartbreaking that in some places this kind of treatment is a reality.

One of the hardest things I find, on top of everything else, is that June has to seem happy and grateful all the time to her oppressors.

I feel like I am entering an alternate reality every week when I watch it. It feels so real! And every time I end up thinking, as I'm sure a lot of us do, what would I do in June's situation...?

Interesting article of the use of Swan Lake and how it relates to June's situation:

www.bustle.com/p/the-song-offreds-music-box-plays-in-the-handmaids-tale-sends-a-haunting-message-61731

Inigo Thank you. Everything is deliberate in this show.

Very interesting link Inigo I love that this thread conjures up so many elements that I hadn't even considered.

I didn't really see Nick as a great person, but just someone else who was using her and very quick to discard her when it no longer suited him.

I quite like Nick. If I understood it right (was nursing baby while watching the last episode so wasn't at my most attentive!) he was trying to look after two alcoholic family members in a society that was falling apart. If so I feel sorry for him and can understand why he got involved in the Eyes. A bit like the new Ofglen - a 'willing participant' in that previous life was so bloody awful, Gilead is better. Not best, by any stretch, but at least everyone in his family is probably fed now and the alcoholics probably can't get hold of alcohol.

By being with June he is risking the safety of that family - and he is probably the only thing standing between them and the wall in the first place (miscreants are probably rounded up for various spurious reasons).

Not best, by any stretch, but at least everyone in his family is probably fed now and the alcoholics probably can't get hold of alcohol.

Wait a minute, is that who he was getting alcohol FOR in his Jezebel kitchen deals? His family? I was so distracted by the "sleeping beauty fantasy" nastiness, I didn't think about it at the time.

Yes brilliant symbolism with the swans/doomed love of Swan Lake.

Although I have no sympathy for him I thought the flashbacks of the Commander showed him to have slightly more conscience, in his wish for Serena to be part of meetings initially, and his conversation with her in the cinema about the pain to come for the general public. (Which was horribly chilling, seeing the general public all around them going about their lives, eating popcorn, watching a film etc) I thought he seems to have been, if not corrupted, then his nasty characteristics exaggerated, or given free reign, in the new social order.

Doesn't MA describe the handmaidens' white headresses as being like swans wings?

It's been 20 years since I read it, so not sure.

This is a great thread. I wonder whether Margaret Atwood or the makers of the show have read it?

Did anyone else notice the article last week, I think on tv, reporting on the rise of infertility due to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
It makes you think doesn't it?

Eh, nick-alcoholic family-what??
I was a tad tipsy when I watched the last episode, so this seems to have bypassed me.
Will rewatch tomorrow morning...

I have also read recently about the discovery of antibiotic-resistant strains of gonorrhoea in several parts of the world. Very scary.

I was wondering earlier why there were no old people at all - surely in such a patriarchal family then parents would be looked after? Whats happened to the commander's parents? Why are they not living in and part of the household?

@nigelsbigface

His backstory. When he was recruited at the employment agency and was telling the chap about his family and his struggles in the diner.

Then later in the kitchen at Jezebels he was trading drugs and pregnancy tests for booze (and something else?) with the chef who was also his old flame.