Foof I actually found that bit quite empowering. To me it was June casting her mind back for support and as much as being a handmaid is awful, there’s a solidarity there I think? Especially with janine, who featured in the flashbacks. In my eyes, I saw it as June drawing on everything she’d been given to help her through it and her previous birth couldn’t help because it was so medicalised so all she had to draw on was the sort of hypnotic trance like chanting of Aunt Lydia and the Handmaids. It was very primitive and I felt was really well done.
I’m not going to express this very well and I’m not too sure what I’m trying to say exactly, but to me, the birth of Hannah in such a medicalised setting was... I don’t know. I’ve read things before that have said natural births that are most beneficial for the mother are more like Holly’s birth - like the midwife led birth her mother was pushing for. Medical births and giving birth on your back etc are more about managing the women than enabling a ‘good’birth, so perhaps traditionally more for the male doctors that would have been in attendance even though these days it’s more a female led industry? (I mean midwifery.)
Holly’s birth scene almost seemed more like the better birth. My instinct was that it was written as being better. That would imply though that this was s good thing? I don’t know... maybe it’s the ultimate representation of June taking back control. In a wider sense, the message being that women need to be listened to and heard more.
I hope that makes sense, I can’t quite to the heart of what I mean properly.