The Handmaid’s Tale Hits Margaret Atwood’s Sweet Spot: Power Dynamics Between Women

Welcome back, Offred.

Chained to a bed in the Red Center, June (Elisabeth Moss) is given a choice. Be June. Stay chained to the bed until the baby is born, and then be executed. Or be Offred and go back to the Waterfords’ house. It’s not much of a choice.

Does anyone currently have the ability to beat Elisabeth Moss in a hateful-stare competition? I am thinking no.

“Other Women” is a very, very complicated episode, though its beginning is straightforward. Here is where we get into the very heart of Margaret Atwood’s sweet spot: power dynamics between women. Because Gilead might be a place where women are not allowed to work, or read and write, or have their own bank accounts, but if you think that’s as simple as “patriarchy,” you’d be very much mistaken. Gilead’s not only a patriarchy. It’s also a bat-shit crazy matriarchy where the alpha position is always shifting. Commander Waterford’s not a “patriarch,” not even literally: Offred’s baby doesn’t have his DNA.

The Handmaids and the Marthas are servants of the Wives. And even the Wives answer to the Aunts. And holy shit, it’s really getting hard to tell to what extent Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) is actually sadistic, or chafing against the constraints of her forced role as much as the young women she abuses, or some mixture of things, but there’s a tip of a huge iceberg coming into view here. The oscillations from stern to simpering are starting to seem so weird. Is there a human being in there? Is she pious? Does she believe in Gilead? Does she think the Commanders and Wives are as insane as the Handmaids do? It’s becoming difficult to tell.

But in the end, even in a coerced and horrifying situation, a pregnant woman cannot be touched. Not that Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) doesn’t slam Offred into a wall and put a hand to her windpipe for leaving; she does. And yes, Aunt Lydia seems to have settled in for a monitoring visit and is helping Offred to bathe “down there” (priceless facial expression), feeding her gag-inducing green smoothies and forcing her to sit through Serena’s hideous baby shower (“You’re absolutely glowing!” exclaim all the infertile Wives. To Serena.) As she sits through the shower (and as the men shoot clay pigeons in honor of “life”), Ofglen II (Tatiawna Jones) walks by without speaking. Alma (Nina Kiri) says they cut out her tongue for speaking up for Janine. Offred looks at the burn scars on Alma’s wrist. “it wasn’t your fault,” Alma says. “Not that part.” Offred looks stricken, but no time, there’s a binding ceremony with chanting and prayer and a circle of Wives and Handmaids around Serena and Offred as their hands are bound in silk cords. It would actually be kind of beautiful if there were consent involved. As the ceremony progresses Offred remembers being confronted by Luke’s (O-T Fagbenle) wife, Annie, who calls her a selfish bitch and a fucking whore for not leaving her husband alone. Luke orders her to leave June alone, but June knows there’s something about this situation that isn’t right.

Then, at the end of the shower, Offred remarks that she’d gotten so many gifts at her own baby shower that she and Luke had given half of them away, and Serena loses it and decks Rita (Amanda Brugel), knocking her to the ground. Lydia takes Offred to the Wall, where the body of the delivery truck driver who’d tried to help her is hanging.