Serena Joy: A Perfect Character (Work in Progress)
- Todd
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
I accidentally hit publish instead of save, so my one reader a month can just follow my process, I guess:
Nuance, nuance, nuance.
Author (in the Before) and trad wife to Commander Fred Waterford.
Literally wrote the book on Gilead.
Petitioned for the stripping of women's rights, including the right to read her own books.
Blamed women for the declining birth rate, thought lack of traditional, Christian values were to blame.
Understood that fertility could be used as a motivator/common ground for fear among the people.
Believed in her cause and thought she was willing to give up everything for it.
She's an incredibly powerful woman, an amazing speaker. She has such gravitas and charisma.
And we watch pieces of herself get watered down bit by bit as she quickly loses any power among the Commanders of Gilead (prior to the war).
First, she isn't allowed to speak during their meetings, can't offer ideas, then her husband puts her in that traditional wifely role that she herself petitioned for. She's to focus on her home, tending to the garden, and knitting, nothing more.
Basically going through a breakdown the entire series.
Desperately wants to be a mother and is shot in the stomach by a protester, rendered infertile after one of her speaking events during the Before.
Gets beat by her husband and he calls it being firm.
Says he'd been too lenient with her and needs to show her discipline.
"We all have our roles to play. Serena needed to be reminded of hers."
Feels powerless in the world she helped create and abuses those beneath her.
Helps her husband to violently rape June and is complicit in every single other rape that happens to June and the other woman in Gilead.
Testifies that she believes all the children of Gilead should be able to read the Bible and gets her finger cut off for reading, pushes her in a new direction:
Gives up "her" daughter, Nichole, to try to get her out of the world she created, wants her to have a better life.
Burns her house down after finally becoming semi-disillusioned with Gilead.
She's such a complex character.
In a single scene, you'll watch her heart get broken and maybe even feel for her, but then she'll instantly redirect that pain onto the next person.
Hurt people hurt people, right? This bitch does that well.
After losing her finger, "her" baby, and her house, she stays with her mother.
Her mother is the type to need her daughter to be perfect, to be able to show her off to people.
Calls Serena spoiled and dramatic because she even dares question her marriage and the horrible things that her and Fred have done and also because she has emotions.
Her mom is a cunt, fr.
Perfect example of fighting to disenfranchise others and then being upset when they finally come for your family and your rights.
She's fine dehumanizing other women, but doesn't understand why she is getting treated as less than.
She's the Women for Trump type:
Doesn't realize how negatively these things her and her party are striving for will affect her, her children and her family, until it's too late.
Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi - upholding the patriarchy at their own detriment.
Have to add: this show absolutely does the book justice.
It takes its liberties where the book ended.
The book leaves more to the viewer's imagination, while the show forces you to watch every atrocity, see exactly what the future entails.
Note that Margaret Atwood specifically used examples in her book that have happened in history to real people, real women.
There's a scene where June quotes Margaret Atwood:
“Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. - - "They are afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.
Margaret Atwood's famous quote ("men are afraid that women will laugh at them, women are afraid that men will kill them") in its original form. Source: 'Writing The Male Character' (1982), p. 413 in "Second Words – Selected Critical Prose 1960-1982" (2018)”
“Someone once said, ‘Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them’”
June: Season 2, Episode 8.
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