the handmaid's tale, internalised sexism and forgiveness
s6 is finally here!
-[Spoilers ahead]-
The Handmaid’s Tale has returned to television with its final season! Praise be!
The show’s first new episode in two years threw a grenade, in my opinion - I couldn’t believe that June saved Serena Joy’s hide.
As a Handmaid’s Tale watcher, it’s hard not to actively wish the character of Serena Joy harm. She created the idea of Gilead to begin with, regularly facilitated June being raped, denied June access to her own child, and treated most fellow women with abject cruelty throughout the series. Yet in the final season’s first episode, June showed her old mistress mercy. She helped her escape being ‘torn apart’ by angry Gilead survivors, stopping the train they were all travelling on to allow Serena to jump out to safety.
That kind of mercy is almost unthinkable, given what June went through. But, as June put it during that scene, revenge doesn’t necessarily grant a person peace.
I wondered what The Handmaid’s Tale’s script was trying to ‘say’ by having June make that choice. After all, June took part in killing Serena’s husband, the Commander - but she chose to save Serena the same fate. Was this to show that women’s roles in upholding sexist institutions are complex? That their choices when benefiting from such systems are more limited and difficult, compared to men’s? Was it to suggest that the other side of revenge - refusing to indulge in it - is healthier for the soul? Or was it simply a way to show that loyalties can be complex, given that Serena both hurt June and made some efforts to repair that hurt?
I’m not sure - maybe all of the above - but it made good television. It was certainly a more interesting choice than June simply leaving her to the wolves.
When a woman like Serena is given pride of place in a sexist institution, it’s somewhat understandable that she would internalise that system’s sexism and choose to benefit from it. The alternative choice would mean being treated as sub-human, like the Handmaids, Jezebels and Unwomen - or killed. Though many places in the real world aren’t as bad for women as Gilead is, this particular predicament is real.
Heavily religious and/or conservative women often choose to denigrate fellow women who make different choices to them. They’ve even advocated for their punishment and death. In some Islamic countries, there have been groups similar to the ‘Aunts’ in The Handmaid’s tale, whose jobs involved reporting other women’s transgressions, suppressing dissent and punishing women who violated laws (such as dressing incorrectly, or leaving the house alone).
didn’t make this stuff up, she just masterfully crafted it into a new shape.Conservative politics regularly position liberal women and feminists as a threat to the ‘family order’. Conservative politicians will claim their policies are designed to protect women - when they actually kill women, leave them less access to healthcare, and result in fewer laws protecting women from DV and gendered violence.
Yet women who truly embrace the conservative lifestyle, like Serena Joy, often find themselves regretting their decision when it leads to their own oppression by husbands and support systems. They often find themselves cut off from their communities when they choose to escape, or even punished. In The Handmaid’s Tale television show, this was mirrored in Serena’s case, when her finger was cut off when she advocated for women to read and write.
Though June didn’t know it would be the case when she released her, Serena’s escape from the train led her to become a poster child for New Bethlehem - Gilead’s new, liberal colony. We’re yet to see how this pans out in the show, but so far, New Bethlehem does sounds better for women than Gilead. This begets the question - when conservative women want to renege on their previous ideologies and speak out against them, should we be grateful?
I think so. Sexism is an especially difficult beast to ideologically divorce oneself from, given how deeply it permeates our society - and some women are even raised from birth in religions that position women as second-class citizens. It’s a part of being human to learn as one goes along, and make mistakes along the way.
Often, a person talking about what they’ve learned from an oppressive regime can make a stronger case than someone who simply saw through it to begin with. The fight against oppressive regimes benefits from defectors. Defectors can help to explain the structures of these regimes, and raise awareness of their harms.
Serena Joy is a particularly controversial example of such a defector (and I’m not entirely convinced yet that she is a genuine one - perhaps she will soon go back to her old ways). Perhaps, though, it can be argued that she’s less useful dead, than alive and speaking out against Gilead’s evils.