The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 (UK Pace) - thread 2

[CruCru]

Hi all

Here is the next thread for those who are watching The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 on Channel 4. Please don't put any spoilers on this - the other thread (for those in other countries who are watching ahead of the UK) is www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/3239228-Handmaids-Tale-Season-2-SPOILERS-VIEWING-AHEAD-OF-UK-SREENING.

Isn't that a reflection of real life sobriquet?

Men pulling the strings and pitting women against each other.

Soubriquet I guess when you have ALL the power, can run show trials where witnesses & the prosecution aren't allowed to speak, can order executions, can torture, can detain, can expel to the colonies and can rape all without any fear of reprisal - it is probably easier to act "nicey nice" in front of your terrified and oppressed household.

I though Fred was pretty manipulative in this episode. Serena absolutely didn’t want June to stay (and in a strange sort of way, who can blame her, Fred wanted to and did sleep with her outside of the ceremony. Yes, it was all rape but by Gilead standards the ceremony is ritualistic and without intimacy but Fred stepped out of those boundaries and lusted after June).

Anyway, not only did Fred talk Serena into letting Offred stay but he made her think it was in her best interests, not missing out on the pregnancy etc.

He is every bit as evil as AL (even more so actually) as are all those who were architects of Gilead. I can’t get my head around anyone who thinks the women are worse when they are being used by men to implement this misogynistic regime.

I think it mostly comes down to screen time. The female characters get far more. And rightly so because it is a show about the plight of women. But it does mean we see more of the women’s nastiness than the men’s.

I wonder whether those who see the men as nice and the women as bad, are instinctively more sympathetic to male characters.

Not all the wives are bitchy to the Handmaids.

I think when Emily was sent to a different household and her name was changed from Ofglen to Ofsteven, the wife in that household was kind.

And the Econowife would have been terrified for her family when June arrived. Rightly so as it turned out. June wasn't there long enough to be anything but a worry to her, she didn't have time to be nice, but she was frightened for her husband and son from the moment June arrived.

I think that's the nature of Gilead though. Nothing is real, nobody can trust anybody else, the wives even have little digs at each other, and they are all living under the power and control of the men.

The man are not nice to each other, although they can't be openly hostile either. That scene with the Commanders shooting clay pigeons was filled with unspoken hostility to each other. They are spying on each other and plotting. They're prepared to cut off each others arms if need be.

And it's not the women raping people is it, even though the wives participate by holding women down? It's not women walking around with guns and dogs, or dragging people away in vans. Women aren't hanging people from the wall. The Handmaids are used to stone people to death, mostly I think other women or gay men, but it's still all these 'nice' men behind the scenes making that happen.

Nice men who shot civilians in the streets in the first series. Nice men who murdered the US Congress in a terrorist attack. Nice men who sat in a limo dreaming up the ritual to involve the wives in the monthly rape.

We've already seen the sleazy side of Fred, taking June to Jezebel's and we know he's raped other women there as well. I think we're going to see worse from him this series and perhaps from the other Commanders too.

We already know Janine's Commander was as sleazy as they come, making her believe he would take her and the baby and leave his wife, just so he could rape her more often and have her think it was love.

The women are all fighting for something. Lives, sanity, status, freedom, motherhood, they're all desperate but they are all living in Gilead as it is. The men are presenting a pious facade while still keeping their old sleazy habits on the side. Fred and his magazines and scrabble games and his trips to Jezebel's to have sex with women who have no choice and his minimising of his wife who I seriously think was the brains who got him where he wanted to be, misguided as that was, I think the credit is hers.

I wonder if we're so used to seeing men behave like this that that's why they can seem nice to us while they do it?

Oh jeez I'm defintely not more sympathetic to men's characters!!

I defintely root for the women and the books I read tend to be women centered.

This was just pointed out on a previous thread and I could see it

RE the idea that Serena is allowing women to be ritually raped to give her a child.. whilst this is of course wholly true, this is not how the regime has dressed it up.

Blessed be the fruit
May the Lord Open

That ritual June went through at the Baby Shower is supposed to represent her consent to act as Serenas surrogate.

Even when they had the Mexican delegates that was the narrative that the Handmaids were both willing and happy. It even features in the book.

Of course it's a lie, but so is that June was kidnapped or in Nazi Germany that "Jews were being rehoused in the East"

That's how they live with it as the idea that this is blessed by God

Re Commander and Serena. If June were to leave not only would his household look unsteady but also Serena would miss her moment in the limelight, the ridiculous ceremony etc which adds to her status among the Wives

It is how they live with it and how they dress it up.

But they know the truth, all the same.

That's why Serena attacked June in private. It was all "you were kidnapped" when others were present but "ninety-two days!" and strangulation when she got June alone.

And the handmaids had to say they were happy to the Mexican delegates, because they weren't allowed to tell the truth.

It's why Fred admitted that better for some always means worse for others. On the better side you can dress up rape as a sacred ritual and lie to yourself that god wants you to take another woman's baby because you've tied a bit of string to her hands and chanted a bit, but on the worse side you just have to stay quiet to stay alive.

It is how Gilead has dressed things, but unless they are batshit crazy they know the truth. It's rape and kidnapping.

Gilead is like a really extreme version of Nice Guy Syndrome.

People who live in any kind of regime know they have to accept and promote the 1984 esque Doublespeak or die.

What would happen to any wife who didn't go along?

Death, that's what, and lucky if it's quick and painless

I honestly find it very concerning that anyone could think that Fred is in any way portrayed as a good guy. Even the things he does that appear good are manipulative and to serve his own ends, and his own ends are raping women and driving them to suicide. I’m a couple of episodes ahead and I think there is more of an effort in this series to portray the complex psychology of some of the female characters - I don’t think at all that the women are portrayed as one dimensionally evil.

Fred is a less murderous version of Amon Gothe in Schindler’s List - he can be kind when it serves him, and utterly psychopathic when it suits him. He wants to be thought of as benevolent to those whose opinions matter to him, but he couldn’t give the merest hint of a shit about anyone, including his wife. I have increasing sympathy for SJ in some respects, although I can’t fathom how she can actually treat someone who was once a peer in the way she does. I do however understand some of her pain.

It's easy to think that in Nazi Germany had you lived through it you would've been one of the good guys

Or that if you were in Gilead I think we'd all like to believe we'd respond like Emily or June or Moira but the Aunt Lydia's the Serena Joys they are your neighbours, your colleagues and maybe even you. No one knows until it's their life on the line, their DCs life, their DHs.

I suspect I wouldn't have lasted long enough to find out in my situation Clement

My understanding is that if you were found helping someone that the Nazi regime didn’t like, your entire family would be sent to a concentration camp. It’s proba the case in Gilead - the econowife will never see her son again.

BritabroadinAsia the interview is on YouTube, I just googled Ann Dowd; she's an awesome interviewee. I believe that Lydia believes wholeheartedly in her role, she seems unconflicted unlike almost everyone else. Remember her tears of joy when she knew of Offred's pregnancy? I saw that as real joy and just relief that one of her charges had done what was required of them.

Could someone just clear up for me- the family that hid her in the previous episode, what ‘class’ (for lack of a better word) were they? I thought only the upper class were allowed to keep children in Gilead. Why hadn’t their son been taken off them?

My understanding is that if you were found helping someone that the Nazi regime didn’t like, your entire family would be sent to a concentration camp

I was thinking about this - and how much that breeds resistance.
You have people who don't want to get involved and just try to survive, and those people who have grown up under this fear, seeing the awful things happen and want to resist and who don't care about the consequences.

When an occupying regime goes all out to suppress people and to take revenge on family and friends, you can see how people who feel powerless eventually start fighting back and to hell with the consequences.

So far we've some fighting back from people with minor acts of resistance which have been met with the regime using its power to keep control.

But surely there must be more active resistance coming soon - with people not caring about what they have to lose - as most people have nothing to lose except their life.

They were Man and wife presumably prior to Gilead.

What God has put together...

Unlike June who was an adulterer, or a lesbian or a party girl/stripper/junkie etc

They seem to have only targeted women considered "nasty" or the "wrong sort" for Handmaiddom

I have no idea why the word "Clement" tagged itself on to my post above

I don't think Lydia truly cares for the handmaids. She only cares about the regime. She shows some kindness like when she promised Janine a tray of cakes when she was not allowed to go to the celebration in the first series. However, this was simply a way to get her to do what she wanted with minimum fuss. She needs to get them to conform other wise it reflects badly on her and it may be her head that faces the chopping block. I wonder what the repercussions may be for Lydia if she were to fail.

"Could someone just clear up for me- the family that hid her in the previous episode, what ‘class’ (for lack of a better word) were they? I thought only the upper class were allowed to keep children in Gilead. Why hadn’t their son been taken off them?"

June spoke about it in the episode, that was the life she could have been living in Gilead. “It’s where I would live if I weren’t an adulteress, if I’d gone to the right kind of church, if I’d played my cards right — if I’d known I was supposed to be playing cards.”

They were married and a family before Gilead, and as long as they behave and tow the line they can stay that way. Now that they have been caught helping June, the husband is dead, the wife is a handmaid, and the son has been given to a new family. Who knows what that means for him really?

It has made me wonder about the Commanders and their Wives though. The Econofamilies who are fertile must still be having sex.

Fred and Serena don't seem to go anywhere near each other. Surely as well as raping the Handmaid once a month you would think that they could still have sex together as well. But I've had the impression that they don't and I'm wondering if they are allowed.

Serena tried once and Fred wasn't interested, I think, back in the first series.

hygge not sure if they are meant to. They had sex once in the first series and Fred got angry at Serena. Perhaps it something to do with sex only being for procreation and as Serena is supposedly infertile then it would be sex for pleasure which surely would be viewed as sinful

I think that Fred is infertile not Serena, which is why Serena took June to Nick in the first place. Even the doctor offered to impregnate June, as he said that the men are mostly infertile.

@MilkandCookies1 they were an Econofamily. They don't have a Martha and the wife does everything - cooking, cleaning - hence the "economic". They will have already been married in a church before Gilead hence why they were allowed to stay together, so long as they didn't go against the regime.

I think that Fred is infertile not Serena, which is why Serena took June to Nick in the first place

And somehow you can't imagine a Gilead where fertile men are held like June and forced to impregnate the fertile wives of the Commanders whilst they looked on and imagined themselves doing it....

@crinkle77

I think that's right, Serena tried to give oral sex to Fred.. In the book it was in response to her seeing Fred and June making eye contact in the ritual.
Fred rebuffs her angrily and if I recall right he says something about it being not allowed.
I find this odd... I'd have thought they would all be encouraged to try to procreate as much as possible.. But of course if a wife got pregnant, the other wives might demand to get rid of handmaidens as if wives can do it, they are not needed.
I think though we arw led to believe the wives are older generally, it would make sense. Gilead has been years in the planning, cthe men at the top were no doubt married when or before they started planning gilead. The intervening yrs fertility declined, leaving them with a nice opportunity to have young women to have sex with every month

nd somehow you can't imagine a Gilead where fertile men are held like June and forced to impregnate the fertile wives of the Commanders whilst they looked on and imagined themselves doing it....

Well precisely. Great post.

kerbside that is why I said it was Serena who was supposedly infertile. of course infertility would be the woman's fault. Women are always at fault in gilead.