"Some women can't handle the requirements of their position."
The Handmaid's Tale isn't just the story of a dystopian future;
it's also an abstract, symbolic way of talking about the present.
Season 2 of the show, based on Margaret Atwood's novel
makes it all the more brutal to imagine
Gilead's militant theocracy based on sex slavery
coming to pass in the future.
And of course there's another important discussion to be had
about horrific abuses of women that are going on right now
in our world.
But outside of those questions of more literal parallels --
we can also read The Handmaid's Tale as allegory
for how gender relationships have long been codified in Western society.
Atwood, a Canadian author who published the novel in 1985,
was on some level reflecting the society she saw around her,
and the show has updated the story
to reflect underlying gender and class relationships
in our world today.
What kind of deeper points is it making about our present?
"The perfect gift.
A girl trapped in a box.
She only dances when someone else opens the lid.
When someone else winds her up."
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The color-coded women of Gilead correspond to types
that women tend to be sorted into in our society.
The clash between the wives and handmaids
reflects the longstanding madonna-whore complex,
which separates women into two categories:
virtuous but sexless, or sexy but sinful.
The complex was named by Sigmund Freud,
but splitting women into sacred madonnas and degraded prostitutes
has been around at least since the dawn of Judeo-Christian literature and
art.
The Commanders in The Handmaid's Tale have made the Madonna-whore complex literal
through the Virgin-Mary blue wives and the Scarlet Red handmaids.
One category inspires affection and admiration, but not desire;
the other is desired, but degraded and despised.
The official rhetoric of Gilead denies that the handmaids are concubines.
"We aren't concubines.
We're two-legged wombs."
but the Commanders tend to coerce their handmaids into illicit affairs,
feeling the need to associate these Red Women with acts the Commanders see as "dirty" --
"She's not well."
"I was well enough to suck your [BLEEP]."
or with very stereotypically sexy signifiers,
like red lipstick, shaving legs, nightclubs and showing skin.
By our society's standards of beauty,
the handmaids aren't more attractive than the wives,
who are played by Hollywood-beautiful actresses.
But the men have put the Handmaids into this category of "sex object,"
while they've desexualized the Wives.
"Don't."
In our culture, many socially accepted ideals of attractiveness
are believed to stem from perceived signifiers
of fertility and reproductive health.
Gilead shows a heightened version of this --
the society is so obsessed with reproduction
that many men appear to only see fertility itself as attractive.
"Look at you.
My special girls.
So beautiful."
Meanwhile, the Wives reflect problems with how our society pigeonholes married women
and especially mothers.
At the end of the birth ritual, the wife steps in for the handmaid.
This could symbolically represent the way that a woman immediately changes
in society's eyes once she gives birth.
The fertile, sexualized woman is cast aside,
and the "mother" is now viewed as an entirely different person.
"You should hear Naomi Putnam.
She goes on and on about how her baby keeps her awake at night.
To complain about such a miracle.
She should appreciate every moment."
Modeled on the Virgin Mary, the wives become mothers without having sex.
And this could reflect the way that mothers in our society
are traditionally seen as pure and sexless.
Interestingly, the Commanders seem to allow more intellectual activity
from the Handmaids than from their Wives,
even though one of the Wives' main duties is supposed to be companionship.
The Commander's first flirtations with Offred begin through playing Scrabble,
while he refuses to let Serena play with him.
"Do you want to play?"
"Love to.
But I have work to do.
And, in any case, you know the law."
"Yes, I do."
But the moderate mental freedom that Fred allows Offred
stems from the degree to which wit plays a pleasurable role
in flirtation,
"Maybe I should let you win again."
and sex may invite emotional confidences.
"How was your trip?"
"Stressful.
I was in Mexico.
To coordinate trade delegation.
A lot of difficult personalities.
You have no idea."
The type of reading material Fred actually gives Offred --
a beauty magazine -- is a clue to just how much
mental activity he wants from her.
"Ten ways to tell how he feels about you.
Number one: He brings you small gifts."
"What have I learned?"
He encourages Offred to express herself,
but by that he means to perform his image of the flirtatious "bad girl."
"I'll have to be more careful."
"What's the fun in that?"
When he tells Offred,
"You don't have to be quiet here.
You can be free."
the irony of course is that she's not enjoying this at all
and is hardly holding herself back from expressing pleasure.
Meanwhile when she expresses any true aspects of herself,
this displeases him because it destroys the illusion
that she is a plaything who only wants to worship and amuse him.
So in their relationship we see all the hallmarks
of what it means to view someone as a "sex object"
and how limiting that truly is.
Women who are not a mother/wife or a sex object
wear a khaki green that blends into their surroundings,
symbolizing that these women are invisible to the man
at the center of this structure.
And that reflects the way that our society does tend to marginalize
women
who are past childbearing age or not deemed sexually desirable.
Meanwhile the aunts in brown take on a more masculine role,
getting respect in official situations only through becoming completely defeminized.
Aunt Lydia, who struggles with harming the girls
she does secretly love,
represents those women who feel they must betray their sex
or not act like a woman in order to hold power.
All women in the show are seen, and color-coded,
in relation to the powerful Commander, who doesn't see women as whole people.
Instead, he sees women only as their function in relation to him.
"Everybody answers to God."
"And you answer to me."
And, to maximize efficiency, he uses multiple women to provide
what he needs from the female gender.
This kind of thinking --
separating women into categories and reducing them to functions --
is a long-standing problem we can clearly link
to gender imbalances in our society today.
The Gilead structure doesn't actually benefit most men --
only a few men in the ruling elite.
This whole structure exists to make a very small number of prominent men
feel important.
And this is also true in actual societies where women are more oppressed.
Regular men -- like Nick or Luke -- are more free when women are also free.
"Doesn't she look beautiful?"
"Yes, sir."
The Commanders with their systems of exploitation
are able to come to power by feeding on fertility panic.
Before their takeover, we see that American society
was becoming paranoid over reproduction and the health of children.
"Can I go be with my daughter?"
"Did you medicate Hannah this morning to lower her fever?"
"Uh! she was just a little warm so I gave her some Tylenol."
"Did you medicate her to bypass the school's fever policy?"
And Gilead demonstrates that when a society becomes so obsessed with reproduction
above all else,
women especially but almost all citizens become less free.
Citizens have more freedom in societies that don't sacrifice everything else
for the sake of childbearing --
societies that culturally accept lifestyles including things like delayed marriage,
same-sex partnerships, a work-life balance for mothers,
and so on.
These scenes showing the rise of Gilead are highlighting that there's a direct link
between more reproductive choice and more freedom for everyone.
Gilead pits women against each other --
"Her fault."
but it's not as if this kind of conflict really appears so foreign to us.
"It's taking forever."
"Is it breech, dear?
Did you hear that word?"
"No, ma'am."
If we strip away the dystopian context, there are a number familiar things
we recognize about this scene:
"Would you like a cookie, dear?"
"You shouldn't spoil them.
Sugar is bad for them."
higher class women condescend to the lower-class woman
as if she's mentally inferior to them, treating her like a child.
"Aw, isn't she well-behaved?"
They criticize her sexual purity because, despite their privilege and power over her,
they also feel threatened by her youth and fertility.
"Little whores, all of them."
As the story goes on,
we can see that class is just as much of a divide as gender.
"I'm clean now.
I got a safe place to sleep every night and I have people who are nice to me.
And I want to keep it that way."
As Offred bonds together with her fellow handmaids,
this story subtly implores women to help each other
and at least not to add to each other's burdens.
"Friends don't stone their friends to death."
But we don't really see that kind of bonding happening much across class lines --
higher-class women willingly participate in the oppression of the lower-class women
for their own benefit.
"She bit you?"
"Mm hm.
You know how they get.
I'm just counting the days
until Angela's weaned and that girl is out of my house."
Which sadly feels accurate to viewers.
On the political level, The Handmaid's Tale warns us
to be vigilant against the small, gradual taking away of our rights,
and the cloaking of evil things in virtuous-sounding language.
"You are sentenced to redemption."
On the personal level, the show is asking us
to look a little closer at our own behavior,
and ask how we might fit into the structures of our society,
in which the phenomena we're talking about here
are less extreme but still very much present.
We should do the hard work of examining how we relate to others
and whether we're supporting oppressive power dynamics
more than we realize.
Whether the story might be speaking to a man who puts women into categories;
a woman who doesn't help other women;
or a person of privilege who thinks of others as less than...
the message is that bad things happen when we don't treat all people
as whole individuals worthy of respect and compassion.
Regardless of how you read The Handmaid's Tale --
as a possible future, a literal fictional nightmare
or an exaggeration of class and gender relationships
in Western society --
the story urges us to be brave and keep hope alive,
even when we feel powerless to change what we don't like in the world.
We can't always win, but it's still worth it to be kind,
to stand up for ourselves, and to do the right thing.
This is how we stay human.
"It's not worth it."
"Yeah.
It is."
Hey guys, it's Susannah and Debra here.
Thank you so much for watching.
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