The Handmaid’s Tale (UK pace, so no spoilers from the US/Israel/Aus please)

[Ivy40]

This is a new thread where we can refer to the original book, published in 1985 (including the epilogue). Everyone is welcome to speculate on how the writers will get us from the book (end of series 1) to the epilogue (we’re assuming this will be series 10). Plus any other interesting plot developments that you have noticed.

No spoilers from the US/Israel/Aus etc please, as we in the UK are 2-3 episodes behind. We don’t want to KNOW what happens next, we just enjoy speculating and enjoy the plot development.

The basics:
Margaret Atwood wrote the Handmaid’s Tale in the 1980s, it was first published in 1985.

She said that she didn’t use anything that hadn’t happened in real life.

Series 1 finished at the end of the book.

There is an epilogue though.

Hulu have said that there will be 10 series.

We are assuming that series 10 will be the epilogue.

That means that Hulu have a lot of creative licence in series 2-9, as long as what they create leads to what we know is the epilogue.

Margaret Atwood is a consultant writer on the tv series.

The Testaments are being released in September 2019, written by Margaret Atwood. Set 15 years ahead of the ending in the original book and will be the stories of 4 different narrators, not June’s story. MA said that she based the Handmaid’s Tale on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, so we’re expecting “A Wife”s Tale”, “A Martha’s Tale” etc.

I’ve just started re-watching it from Series 1. I hadn’t realised that the woman who tries to steal June’s Hannah in the hospital after she had just had her is in Gilead. Who is she? Didn’t she murder a hospital worker?

Hi Hashtag,

Hannah is born pre Gilead when it’s still the USA but in the build up to the overthrow of the US government and takeover by Gilead. If you watch the flashbacks closely, you’ll notice various things that hint at what’s to come.

One of the things that was a catalyst for the creation of Gilead was a fertility crisis. This wasn’t just a decline in pregnancies, it was an increase in still births and the woman who tried to steal baby Hannah had just had a still born. In the book they call the still burns Shredders.

I don’t know if the woman who tried to steal Hannah murdered the hospital worker though.

Sorry I thought you said you’d just started watching it rather than rewatching it!

Well, based on the trailer I’ve just seen, I’m looking forward to tonight’s episode!

I’m pondering the power structure again and was thinking along the same lines - they might have offered Commander roles to people they need such as doctors and certain military specialists, if they converted to the Gilead religion. He may have converted to survive, even if he doesn’t really believe in it. Probably many others like him.

What is the religion?

They walked around an empty Baptist house a family had lived in, in Washington, so not that!

@heatedrollers

I think it’s a bastardised version of the Old Testament. So based on a puritanical version of Christianity but bastardised to suit their own aims - controlling women.

I the US they have a few conservative Christian groups, but they all seem to have their roots in Southern Baptist type churches & nearly all of them seem to dislike the Catholic Church.
You can fall down the rabbit whole of Steve Anderson, The Rodrigues Family, the Duggar Family, The Transformed Wife and loads more. They all present differently, some are a lot more appealing but they are all horrible people with hideous & dangerous views. Check out freejinger or the fundie forum on Reddit.

Louis Theroux has done a couple of docs on conservative/fundamentalist groups in the US. Worth a watch on iPlayer.

excited already!

www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a28660744/the-family-netflix-true-crime/?utm_campaign=socialflowFBCOS&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-media&fbclid=IwAR15_yRPB8a-0_eLwPiiUZvP06vmh76C5IAX6bITPXM2-YrEvEEJ1sJbJE4

Has anyone seen this yet? It’s been described as a kind of prologue to THT.

Thanks Skaife. I’ve just added it to my post THT list.

We will see episode 13 on Sunday 13th August and the Testaments comes out on Tuesday 10th September. Once I’ve finished the book I don’t know what I’ll do with myself until April/May 2020!

Meant last episode on Sunday 31st August!

Nothing to do with THT but Years and Years is good, in a dystopian future way. It’s on iPlayer. Maybe we could recommend a few series to each other, after episode 13, to keep ourselves occupied until series 4 comes out!

June is being raped but so are Commander and Eleanor Lawrence. This is horrific. I feel for all of them, Eleanor in particular as she’s so vulnerable. Fred looks really excited about it though, awful, awful man.

Best one liner in the series - June to Fred “at least it wasn’t you”.

Lots more looks of disgust from Serena to Fred. She hates him. He’s too arrogant and drunk on power to notice though. I think she’s planning an escape with that satellite phone, she’s just waiting for Mark Tuello to organise it. The fall out of her treason will have repercussions for Fred (given that his handmaid committed suicide, the next one escaped, the econowife was executed for adultery, he lost a baby, wife commits treason by escaping - he’s not running a successful Gilead household). My guess that he ends up on the wall (backed up by him being killed in a purge in the book).

Do we have a timeline now? Did it say that Hannah was born in 2009, Nicole/Holly in 2018. So based on June being sent to the Waterfords in 2017, having done 2 years at another Commanders plus the escape attempt and training at the Red Centre, we can assume Gilead started in 2014 and what we see on the tv show is set now. So series 1 was in 2017, series 2 in 2018 and series 3 is now.

Bless June for lying about Caleb to Janine. Unless Janine gets out or Gilead falls, it’s unlikely she’ll ever know the truth.

Assuming they didn’t have time to grab a turkey baster from the kitchen, with all those people in the house watching. How horrific, having a doctor examine you post rape, to check that you’ve been raped properly.

Bit confused about Serena showing Fred the phone though. If she’s planning a secret escape.

Interview with Joe Fiennes from the UK Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/aug/12/joseph-fiennes-ive-done-my-bit-for-society-ive-illustrated-the-patheticness-of-misogyny?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Just watching now this is horrific I feel ill

At least it wasn't you...
We are gonna need a bigger boat ..... yessss June x

Even Aunt Lydia was uncomfortable with the rape and the doctor afterwards. Hopefully that brought it home the awfulness of what they were doing.
The phone I wonder if it's a set up if he takes it and phones then could she report him to Gilead say he is planning on defecting.
She can't go to Canada and get Holly that would just be too awful

Could the phone be the 'contraband' mentioned in the epilogue? (We're allowed to mention the book on this thread I believe/hope.)

I really like the way they have done this series - lots of loooooong episodes with not much happening, then, boom, boom, boom. I imagine that's how life is for people living in oppressive regimes.

I can't wait until Sunday now I have just preordered Testaments as well is it evil of me to wish the last month of the summer holidays to hurry up so i can get my book .