An Obsession of Handmaids
I have been enthralled by The Handmaid’s Tale series on Hulu. During the pandemic I re-watched the first 3 seasons, with the utmost anticipation for season 4, which has premiered this week. It didn’t occur to me to write about why I am so entrenched in this story, until I read an admirable review by Lorraine Ali in The LA Times, titled “‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is far from perfect. Here’s why I’m not giving up on it yet”.
I can’t imagine why people would leave this show, give up on the story, or not be committed to the journeys and struggles of the expertly developed characters. While I disagreed with some of the viewpoints, that Ali asserted, I found one point heartbreakingly illuminating:
…the show…captures the trauma of a country at war from the viewpoint of those we rarely see on the news in real-life combat zones: women. They suffer the worst indignities, often behind closed doors, which I know from my relatives who went through multiple foreign invasions, a brutal dictatorship, religious persecution and destabilization in Baghdad.
Yes, I truncated the part about her sticking with the show, but the vantage point of women and their suffering in combat zones, is what’s so striking about this story. It’s also why I fell in love with the novel The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, The Nazi Officer’s Wife, by Edith Hahn Beer, and D-Day Girls, by Sarah Rose.
Ali’s personal experience with this reality and the history of the hidden hardships women bear in oppressive societies, makes it hit home. My heart goes out to her and her family and oppressed women around the world today, too often hidden and dismissed.
For me, I grew up in a small, mostly white town in central NY. I was one of 3 families who were Jewish. It didn’t matter that I was also 1/2 Catholic, because I was any part Jewish. I had swastikas on my lockers and desks at school. My classmates knew I was a latchkey kid, and was often home alone at night. They would prank my house, saying they were going to come kill me.
I spent a lot of time wondering what I would have done, if I had lived in Europe before and leading up to the Holocaust. Reading The Nazi Officer’s Wife really helped me to picture what life was like in Europe, before WWII. Nothing happened overnight. It was slow, creeping, and insidious. I wondered, would I wear the gold star? Would I hide? Would I try to escape? Would I submit? Would I try to fight?
This brings up the guilt of shame. Is it shameful to hide who I am, or is it self-preservation? Is it a moral imperative to fight, or is it prideful vanity, and foolish martyrdom?
This is what I turn over and over in my head, watching The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s not just the superb cast, the fantastic writing, the incredibly artful filming, the use of color and lack of color, the emotionally triggering soundtrack. It’s the small, little things. Right at the onset of the series, it’s made clear by June’s narrative that the little, small things mean everything.
Underneath the symbolism is the motive. The choices each character makes and why they make them. Was it out of a moral imperative? Was it out of self-interest? Was it in the pursuit of proving faith? To themselves, to God, to those who might be watching? Did they have a choice?
I get that some might see June as being portrayed to be a Harriet Tubman figure, but I see her wrestling with that. She wants to fight, but she doesn’t necessarily want to lead, and she sees that most of her friends in this impossible situation just want to be free. From the journey she’s been on, it was partly about survival, but always in service to her daughter. The rage she has built up over the brutalization she, her friends and family have endured, is metastasized into a need for her to resist and burn this mother f*ker to the ground.
The problem is, that any time she makes a concerted step in that direction, someone she cares about is hurt. It’s either directly by her actions, by them following her, or by the agents of Gilead punishing her through their pain. Gilead will blame her for the pain and death her friends and those around her experience, but so too will her friends. When she falters in her resolve, she blames herself too. Her fault. Her fault. Her fault.
Because I grew up with white privilege, yet also seeing outside that bubble to the reality that America is full of nazis, racists, and white supremacy, I had no trouble seeing how close we are to the razors edge of this story’s trajectory. Watching this story unfold, I wonder where I would land, if I would fight, how I would mitigate harm to those I cared about, and whether I could prevent any of it from happening.
The reaction I see to this show is that it’s dark, brutal, depressing, which of course part of the story. But there is also an integral factor of humanity. It’s not central to the dark reality of this world, but rather little, small, brave acts that create chasms in the society. They are like bolts of lightning in a dark night.
June begins as submissive and subdued in the start, but slowly the oppression that is pushed upon her boils to a breaking point. There are two ways the characters to respond to this pressure. They fight, or they give up. In an authoritarian society, to resist is to risk death. So by fighting or by giving up, the result will be the same.
Even if June gets out, which by some of the previews it looks like she does, will she ever be free of Gilead? Just as she told Serena “You will never be free of me”, and just as Fred tells Luke “Gilead has changed her, I changed her”, she has been irrevocably altered. It’s hard to envision that she will ever be able to exist as someone who is not always choosing between fighting or giving up.
In season 3 Joseph asks June “What do you know about how much pain a person can take?” to which she responds “Everything.” The question is not how much pain, but for how long. How long can you fight, before you give in, and give up? How much fight would be in you, and for how long?
