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Serena Joy In The Handmaid's Tale

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As the Commanders spouse, Serena Joy is the most intense female nearness in the day by day life in Gilead. Offred can watch her in her social part as one of the Wives yet in addition nearby other people in her own home and she shows up as something beyond an individual from a class of progressive system. Not at all like alternate Wives she is alluded to by her own name, yet she is elderly and childless and in this way should consent to having a handmaid in her own particular home as she can't deliver youngsters herself. She plainly disdains Offred as an indication of her powerlessness to have youngsters and as an infringement of the holiness of marriage. Ironicly we learn she was already a ultra-preservationist voice on local approaches and …show more content…

However even there she must be helped by her significant other's chauffer. In spite of her obviously docile status as a Wife, there is a cruel durability and manliness about Serena Joy. She needs gentility, which compares her significant other and maybe weakness to control or flexibility by Offred for hand creams, magazines, and snippets of data. Serena Joy, dissimilar to her significant other, has no shortcoming of 'nature's standards' and thusly no defenselessness. It is incomprehensible for anybody to recognize what she is considering. In Serena's cigarette smoking and utilization of slang we see confirm for this sturdiness. It is at her recommendation that Offred lay down with Nick to wind up noticeably pregnant. Serena Joy speaks to two parts of Gileadean culture, the part of devoted Wife as an advantaged status, and additionally a turned plot in disloyalty and the extremes that individuals will embrace in ready to consider. This is seemingly a technique for survival for maybe urgent ladies, pushed to this extraordinary by powerlessness to imagine and the social structure, which she amusingly added to

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The quote above was taken out of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. For the most part, the speaker is Aunt Lydia, who is talking to the Handmaid’s. However, near the end of the passage, the narrator Offred adds her own thoughts on Lydia’s words, which are more directed towards herself; “She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way.” The passage takes place in a flashback of the narrator’s, when she was located at the Rachel and Leah Centre, an establishment that provides formal training on the societal roles of the Handmaid’s.

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557 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout her essay Brady used sarcasm and outlandish claims to incite a strong emotional reaction from her readers. I too was shocked by her requirements for a wife and the fact that women in that time period were expected to follow these requirements. Brady has done an excellent job of appealing to the readers using pathos while explaining how absurd the expectations of wives

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1244 Words | 5 Pages

Offred, being a Handmaid herself, is desperate to have a child because of the fear instilled of not surviving without this act of service. During her monthly check-up with her doctor, Offred states her troubling options when she expresses in her mind, “Give me children, or else I die.” (Atwood 68). Infusing the horror of ceasing to exist ensures that Offred and the other Handmaids will understand that they can not go against the regime and must have a child with their Commander if it is possible with their fertility. Relatively, the doctors of Gilead are suffering with torment because of a life-changing choice they could make for the wellness of their patients.

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871 Words | 4 Pages

The American science fiction and fantasy author Richard Grant once said that “the value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.” In both The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the main protagonists search for their identities through the context of their daily lives. In correlation with the preceding quotation, in The Awakening, after a vacation opens her eyes to all that she has been missing in her life, she becomes desperate to find herself outside of the mother-woman while in The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator must decide which parts of her identity she wants to hold on to and who she is in the trying times of the Gileadean society. The two novels demonstrate the journey of these women

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1341 Words | 6 Pages

(83). But when the Gilead was made and she was forced to stay home “She stays in her home, but it does not seem to agree with her.” (84). Serena Joy who was once a star and active speaker fell to the oppression towards female in the time of the Gilead. Her personality changed as well, one would think she is a loyal to her husband but offered Offred to have sex with Nick.

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810 Words | 4 Pages

In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred goes through many changes within her experience in Gilead. These changes include losing her job, being unable to read and being unable to have anything of value. Offred, alongside with many other women has been deemed as a handmaid. As a handmaid, the fertile women of Gilead are used to produced children for the infertile women and families. A handmaid 's life within this society contained of things such as the Ceremony where Offred would lie on her back, “fully clothed except for the healthy white cotton underdrawers.”

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678 Words | 3 Pages

This phrase resonates with Offred because in her past life women were free and now the culture is no longer the way it was but has reformed to be under the power of men and it’s kinda hopeful for offred because her mother is right there is a culture not at all what any women would want but their gender has some power. Offred and her good friend Ofglen both are part of the underground system to free themselves. When Ofglen saw the truck coming for her she made the decision to commit suicide. “ She is a flag on a hilltop, showing what can still be done: we too can be saved.” (Atwood 287)

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1410 Words | 6 Pages

It seems the older Wives are seeking to hang onto their attractiveness and fertility by decorating themselves with flowers and tending gardens. Serena Joy seems to enjoy mutilating the flowers ; flowers being the symbol for the Handmaids. This shows her hatred for the Handmaids . What the Handmaid’s never get to experience is freedom as they are supposed to blindly follow the rules set for them. In the text, the Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police.

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801 Words | 4 Pages

Furthermore, it is nonexistent to think or say that the men are the sterile ones. As a sign of reassurance, Serena gives Offred a picture of her daughter. She can still get in trouble, for she tells Offred, “ I have to return it, before they know it’s missing” (Atwood 228). Serena is risking herself, considering she could be in danger if caught with a picture of someone’s child, not being able to say it’s Offred’s. It’s insane how Serena Joy, being the least in danger, still commits rebellious acts as a way to get what she

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981 Words | 4 Pages

In The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the Republic of Gilead actively represses women by forcing them into very narrowly defined, ultra-conservative gender roles. This totalitarian government strips women of all rights and protections, and imposes severe punishments for defiance. Pollution and disease had caused severe infertility in this society, drastically reducing birth rates. In an effort to reverse a drastic population decline, this thoroughly misogynistic and power-hungry regime, takes full control over the human reproductive process. Furthermore, the leadership uses various dehumanizing methods to achieve complete subservience of women to men.

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783 Words | 4 Pages

“What it really means is that she is in control of the process and thus the product. If any.” (109). The society of Gilead wants to make sure that the child is the Commander’s wife’s child as much as possible, and they believe that by having Serena Joy hold the hands of Offred, then that is possible. In this way, Offred, and all of the other Handmaid’s are sexually dehumanized.

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794 Words | 4 Pages

Heroism and its Aberrancies Humanity’s fixation with the concept of gallant champions and their aptness to salvage a civilization from its cataclysmic predicaments subsists within the written works of diverse cultures and varying epochs. For instance, Classical Greek literature depicts a hero as a valiant warrior who reveres the deities of Olympus and upholds justice regardless of the perils as noted by Homer's Odyssey; however, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Sun contemporary interpretation of the conception of heroism portrays a selfless valor through the manifestation of Mariam. Nonetheless, in his novel Our Twisted Hero, an allegory of South Korean dictatorship and a struggle for democracy, author Yi Munyol shatters previous notions

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996 Words | 4 Pages

Handmaid’s whom are the fertile women in the Gilead society, are stripped from all freedom and rights, banned from knowing any form of literature and have to be submissive to men, allowing their bodies to be sexually used to produce children. In contrast, women who are not fertile such as Wives have their freedom taken away too as they are confined to doing assigned jobs around the house. In contrast, the Aunts and the Commanders are shown to have the highest rankings in the Gileadean society. They are powerful figures, with privileges such as the Aunts being allowed to read and write and the Commanders being permitted to get married and have a handmaid's assigned to

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1122 Words | 5 Pages

Serena may have weaponized sex against Offred, but she still values it. In the beginning of the novel she defines her relationship with the Commander as, “I’m his mistress... Outside woman” saying that it is her duty to “provide what is otherwise lacking” and calling it an “ignominious position” (Atwood 164). By showing the shame Offred feels about her ignominious position in society, it shows that Serena’s oppression and hate has changed Offred’s opinions on intimacy and sex. Another change within Offred is her expression of emotion with that person.

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1141 Words | 5 Pages

In this frightening society, women are not allowed to speak freely, therefore, the handmaids learn how to lip-read, and to whisper at one another while they are at the Red Center (where handmaids are trained for their mission), as their only way to communicate with another person, and to maintain even a minimum of human contact in a society that has amputated their ability to feel as a normal human being. Even though this is pure fiction, sadly some common threads between Gilead and our society can be found. For instance, in some South Asian countries, women’s rights are non-existent, they are treated

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