Women Can Do That?

Season One, Episode Ten: “Night”

One of my favorite shots in this very excellent episode is during the hearing of Warren Putnam for the “sin of lust and covetousness.” Commander Waterford, who has enjoyed the same sins as his fellow at the front of the room, wants just to move on: “Who amongst us hasn’t made mistakes?” he shrugs as he starts to pack up his papers. “He’s a strong defender of the faith.” But, upon hearing from the man presiding that Putnam’s wife came to him to “ask for the harshest possible punishment” because “she fears for his immortal soul” (Really? Hmmm), Waterford does an incredulous and then uncomfortable take that suggests “Huh? A woman can do that?” Soon, he is making nice to his wife, who had recently, in some great lines, challenged him on his sins with his handmaid (“[The baby’s] not yours. You’re weak, and God would never let you pass on that weakness.”). On their encounter after the trial, the Commander says to her, “I want to apologize. I did some cruel things to you, and I’m sorry.” Yeah, right. Dude just wants to keep his damn hands.

One of my other favorite scenes, of course, is the handmaids’ rebellion. This time, it’s Aunt Lydia who can’t believe what the women—those whom she had helped torture, bully, and bullshit into supposed submission to the almighty regime--can do . They band together in solidarity and refuse to murder one of their own, despite this Big Bad blowing her whistle and yelling, “Girls! Girls! Girls!” “You are to do your duty!” But, they won’t. And, the first one challenging the order is the second Ofglen, who had once told an angry Offred that her life in Gilead is much better than her life as an addicted prostitute in the time before. She thought the handmaids were to be protected in Gilead. When she discovered that was incorrect, she speaks out. Offred begins the dropping of the stones and the chant of “I’m sorry, Aunt Lydia,” the perfect counterpoint to the flashback from the beginning of the episode at the Red Center when they were taught to say that to abject themselves. Now, they say it to assert themselves and resist her. Women can do that?

Women—those with viable ovaries, those with housecleaning/cooking skills, those with backs to lie on and vaginas to be penetrated at Jezebel’s, those with wedding rings that connect them to Commanders—were to be both central to and utterly peripheral in this new nation. With its need for population expansion and its patriarchal vision, Gilead’s founders (including at least one woman) twisted biblical stories to construct rationales for their human rights nightmare. Human biology requires women for procreation, of course, and patriarchy doesn’t work if the patriarchs have no one to lord themselves over. But, women were also deemed so inferior that they were to be beyond the circumference of anything of meaning in the new country. (Somehow, Serena Joy didn’t get--or refused to see--that as she worked with Fred and the others to bring about her city on a hill.)

This comes out very clearly in Commander Putnam’s confession. He tells the panel that “I rent the sacred covenant that exists between myself and my country, my brothers, and God Almighty.” There was a time, in the United States to which these men delivered the death blow, that Warren’s actions would have been deemed a rending of the marriage covenant between him and his wife. But, now those compacts that matter are between the male citizen and his government, his “brothers,” and his male god. One cannot sin against a woman when women are not deemed fully human, are only there for the physical services they can provide to men. So, Warren is not undergoing surgery to remove his hands as punishment for his faithlessness to his wedding vows, nor for his cruel treatment of Janine. He is punished for not keeping his compact with his fellow commanders.

The man in charge of the hearing seems to really care about the strict rules set up with Gilead. For him, this punishment might really be for acting on lust. But, for Fred Waterford, and presumably the many others who also use the women at Jezebel’s and perhaps their own handmaids, he is punished for ripping back the veil on the whole pious charade. He’s punished for getting caught. And, he was caught because his handmaid wouldn’t keep quiet about his sexual demands on her, about the fake promises with which he bought her--the promises to take her back to the time before, when such a thing as a “real family” existed. Janine informed the group of people congregated at the bridge that Warren Putnam knew that Gilead was not really what people outside the Commanders’ circle wanted; he acknowledged that the idea that Gilead was the world made into a better place was a myth. That truly broke the covenant with his new country.

But Warren Putnam isn’t the only one who knew his handmaid yearned for the time before and could act on that desire, that memory; Serena Joy knows that as well. She knows it when she walks in on Nick kneeling before the seated Offred with his hand on her belly, holding the place where his baby will grow. She knows that when Fred tells her, “we’ll be a family,” he’s telling a story. That story can only be enacted through violence—the violence of kidnapping and attempting to socialize women into the handmaid role, the violence of ritual rape, the violence of stealing a woman’s baby, the violence of sentencing a woman who resists giving the baby up to death by stoning. And Serena Joy knows that if she is to prevent Offred and Nick from staking a claim to the child that might be born that she has to inflict more violence. So, she takes Offred to see Hannah, leaves her locked in the car to watch her pink-robed child with a Commander’s Wife “mother” and Serena Joy, only able to pound the window and shriek without being heard. Serena Joy might not have the power of a Commander that she would like, but she has power over her handmaid, and she will exert it to ensure that “As long as my baby is safe, so is yours.” She has the power to re-define family.

That was the most painful scene to watch, but the final re-definition of family we saw negotiated was a happy one. Moira makes it to the refugee center in Canada and is walked around the resources available to her kindly, but in a way that overwhelms her. When her case worker asks if she has any family there, she shakes her head no. So, when she walks down the hall to see Luke, she can’t believe it. How could he have found her? He tells her she was on his list, so they let him know she’d arrived. “List? Of family?” she asks, amazed. And falls into his arms, weeping. Family is re-figured. And, Moira, we can hope, can be safe within it.

All of these scenes serve to show the complexities of the feminism of The Handmaid’s Tale, the book written by Margaret Atwood and the television series. It is not—as many of feminism’s detractors claim--a simple case of male-bashing. There are good men: Luke, probably Nick (while his role in Offred’s departure at the end of this episode and the end of the book is written ambiguously, there are good reasons to trust him, as he urges Offred to do; in the show his caring for Offred/June comes out more explicitly than in the novel), the man at the refugee center in Canada, among others from previous episodes. The feminism is also not a simple binary of women (good)/men (bad), a vision that some radical and essentialist feminisms expressed, more in the past. Here we see women with very different perspectives on women’s role and the ideology of gender. There is no movement of women banding together against the men. There is a movement of women who believe in women’s rights--many of the handmaids, some of the Marthas—rising up against other women who use their power to oppress many women—the Aunts, the Wives.

Offred alludes to this “army” of united handmaids when she tells us, “It’s their own fault. They should never have given us uniforms if they didn’t want us to be an army.” The oppression and the rebellion are illustrated in one individual household in the conflict between Serena Joy and Offred, who in this episode explicitly talks back. When Serena is so happy the pregnancy test was positive, she kneels by her handmaid and says, “He’s answered our prayers.” Through her tears, Offred says “You think I prayed for this? You think I prayed to bring a baby into this house?” Later her truth-telling is even harsher. After having to watch her daughter, without being able to talk with her, to hold her, Offred shrieks at Serena: “You are fucking evil! You know that? You are a goddamned, mother-fucking monster!” The gloves are off between them in this episode. It’s women with one ideology (Serena and Lydia) v. the handmaids, who are helped by some men. The feminism is in the ideals of the right of self-determination for women and the need of women who hold those ideals to join together in resistance, not in the sexed body parts of individuals holding certain ideals.

We’ll have to wait awhile for the next installment, but I’m very much looking forward to where Miller and team will take us in Season Two.