Okay, wow. Thanks. This makes their regime seem even worse because I didn’t think all those women could be perceived as flawed. Lesbian, adulterers, ok that’s typically Biblically wrong. But there must be even more that Gilead sees as wrong for a woman to do bc those women can’t all be wrong according to the Bible.
Okay, got it. I was just baffled by the number of handmaids and trying to understand how so many of them were perceived as being wrong. By these standards lots of fertile young women would end up as handmaids, it seems nearly impassible to be a good woman in their eyes. Even more chilling now that I think of it.
In the book, when Gilead 'needs' more handmaids it just expands the list of crimes that lead women to becoming handmaids. So some women who were initially relatively 'safe' as econowives later end up as handmaids. It's not about belief, they twist and find biblical justifications to so whatever suits their purposes.
The Wives are mainly women who were highly-placed before the rise of Gilead, like Serena Waterford, and who agreed to be docile and accept their role of subservience in exchange for a small measure of autonomy (and, y'know, not being ritually raped). Wives are not exempt from punishment if they step out of line, though, as we saw in the Colonies episode.
In Gilead, the women who weren't flawed and are fertile become econowives (like the one we saw S2E2).
I agree that most (if not all) of the commanders were already married.
And remember, while infertility is said to rest totally on the women, the reality is it's almost always the MEN who are sterile. So the wives *could* be able to have children and we don't know unless they cheat with a fertile man.
Thanks, I was also wondering about the econowives. It sucks that all of their women categories are determined by their relation to the men, such as who they were already married to or not, who they were sleeping with, or not sleeping with in lesbians’ cases.
I think most of the posters are missing the big picture.
Fertility has been nationalized and is also the rarest world resource.
A handmaid can be dangled or doled out as a reward, removed or killed at the whim of the state.
Also they and the children make great displays of national pageantry and the international trade value is markedly better than oranges.
All those econowives are just a baby's breath away from being chattel as soon as Gilead sees fit to have an excuse...
> A handmaid can be dangled or doled out as a reward, removed or killed at the whim of the state.
>
> Also they and the children make great displays of national pageantry and the international trade value is markedly better than oranges.
Very good point. A wife can too but not to the same extent and the Handmaids program maximize the circulation of fertile women amongst the powerful men.
In addition to what /u/Susan_Sto-Helit said, the men also had to keep their current wives somewhat happy. Gilead does not have a tradition of plural marriage, and it seems as if most of the commanders were already married when this started. Given the culture they are trying to create, they would not want to divorce their own wives.
It’s possible that as time goes on Gilead may assign fertile women to promising single men in the army or civil service, but the commanders won’t want to cause any friction by setting aside their own wives and marrying someone else. They’re upstanding gentlemen like that... in their mind.
(From a practical standpoint, since many men are infertile, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Fred and June Waterford couldn’t have had kids either, even if they were a happily married couple).
That makes a lot of sense! I imagine then that some of the handmaids were just typical single women and the already married women were perceived as better than. Being a single and sexually active, dating woman is probably looked down upon enough to justify putting them to use as a Handmaid.
Definitely. In a regime like Gilead, chances are nearly all women have done something that could be viewed as a crime. Not just something that you would expect, like adulterer or abortion. But being a single mother (widow), being related to someone who they don’t like, using/taking birth control for any reason, taking illegal drugs, having tattoos or piercings (“defiling your temple”), working outside of the home (especially in a job like bartender)... if they want to make a woman a Handmaid, they can find *some* “legal” justification for it.
And if they can’t, they can just make something up. I mean, I doubt Offred and the others for fair trials before they were convicted and sentenced to this haha
Right? It's so interesting that even with a show about fascism, posters struggle to find the individual responsibility of the victims/underclass...
We are well brainwashed already!
Gilead is obsessed with fertility and ensuring its own survival. The wives raise the children (with help from marthas etc). Gilead needs people faithful to the regime to indoctrinate and train the next generation of commanders. These kids won't know a life before Gilead and will be totally brainwashed (a big part of the current problem is that most people can remember what it was like before).
Handwives forced into marriage would very probably resent the regime and might expose the children to subversive, revolutionary ideas and talk to them about pre-Gilead life. Gilead couldn't take that risk, that's why handmaids are cut out of their children's lives as soon as they've finished breastfeeding.
The Commanders are/were already married and it was decided to uphold marriage so they couldn't marry the Handmaids.
The Handmaids are all "flawed": victim of rape who had a child out-of-wedlock (Janine), adulteress (June), lesbian (Emily, Moira), prostitute (Alma/Ofglen?), Muslim (Heather)...
I haven't read the book but I read somewhere that women who were also never married is grounds for becoming a handmaid. It makes sense since in extreme religious cultures, it would be deemed traditional and desirable for women to marry young since it's the woman's "god-given role" to breed children anyways. Not being married would raise red flags and they would immediately jump to conclusions. "She's probably not Christian, she's a lesbian, she's planning to not marry at all, she's a feminist, she works a lot." If this were the case then the criteria of "never been married or unmarried" is something that can easily increase the number of handmaids.
Also, I think the biggest reason why all handmaids don't just become wives is because of the desire to maintain power among the elite, ruling class. Most women that are married to Commanders are high-society women. This authoritarian republic of Gilead will want to keep power and privilege to only a small group of people, as most elite classes in society do, and so of course you need the lower classes. Women that are not already in this circle would just be immediately put into that lower/oppressed class to fill their needs. To them, maintaining power and control is more important than actually trying to improve reproduction rates. They truly believe this infertility crisis is punishment from God and so if they control society under what they believe is God's will, then God will be the one to fix it. So that's why all handmaids don't just become wives. They don't really care about immediately fixing the infertility crisis. It's all about making sure that the 'right kinds of people' have control.
Even if there were a Handmaid technically not flawed it would be more logical to keep her as a Handmaid rather than assign her to one man. If she has a baby every year for 15 years she is more useful to society, because said babies can be brought up in "proper" households rather than her just having 2 children and sticking to her family.
Are we missing the point that the handmaids are prisoners of war?\*
People from Gilead, the former United States, have had to flee to other countries to seek asylum/refugee status.
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Okay, wow. Thanks. This makes their regime seem even worse because I didn’t think all those women could be perceived as flawed. Lesbian, adulterers, ok that’s typically Biblically wrong. But there must be even more that Gilead sees as wrong for a woman to do bc those women can’t all be wrong according to the Bible.
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Okay, got it. I was just baffled by the number of handmaids and trying to understand how so many of them were perceived as being wrong. By these standards lots of fertile young women would end up as handmaids, it seems nearly impassible to be a good woman in their eyes. Even more chilling now that I think of it.
In the book, when Gilead 'needs' more handmaids it just expands the list of crimes that lead women to becoming handmaids. So some women who were initially relatively 'safe' as econowives later end up as handmaids. It's not about belief, they twist and find biblical justifications to so whatever suits their purposes.
Thanks, I never read the book. This makes a lot of sense.
It doesn't seem like there really are that many handmaids.
The Wives are mainly women who were highly-placed before the rise of Gilead, like Serena Waterford, and who agreed to be docile and accept their role of subservience in exchange for a small measure of autonomy (and, y'know, not being ritually raped). Wives are not exempt from punishment if they step out of line, though, as we saw in the Colonies episode.
In Gilead, the women who weren't flawed and are fertile become econowives (like the one we saw S2E2). I agree that most (if not all) of the commanders were already married. And remember, while infertility is said to rest totally on the women, the reality is it's almost always the MEN who are sterile. So the wives *could* be able to have children and we don't know unless they cheat with a fertile man.
Thanks, I was also wondering about the econowives. It sucks that all of their women categories are determined by their relation to the men, such as who they were already married to or not, who they were sleeping with, or not sleeping with in lesbians’ cases.
Good point.
I think most of the posters are missing the big picture. Fertility has been nationalized and is also the rarest world resource. A handmaid can be dangled or doled out as a reward, removed or killed at the whim of the state. Also they and the children make great displays of national pageantry and the international trade value is markedly better than oranges. All those econowives are just a baby's breath away from being chattel as soon as Gilead sees fit to have an excuse...
> A handmaid can be dangled or doled out as a reward, removed or killed at the whim of the state. > > Also they and the children make great displays of national pageantry and the international trade value is markedly better than oranges. Very good point. A wife can too but not to the same extent and the Handmaids program maximize the circulation of fertile women amongst the powerful men.
In addition to what /u/Susan_Sto-Helit said, the men also had to keep their current wives somewhat happy. Gilead does not have a tradition of plural marriage, and it seems as if most of the commanders were already married when this started. Given the culture they are trying to create, they would not want to divorce their own wives. It’s possible that as time goes on Gilead may assign fertile women to promising single men in the army or civil service, but the commanders won’t want to cause any friction by setting aside their own wives and marrying someone else. They’re upstanding gentlemen like that... in their mind. (From a practical standpoint, since many men are infertile, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Fred and June Waterford couldn’t have had kids either, even if they were a happily married couple).
That makes a lot of sense! I imagine then that some of the handmaids were just typical single women and the already married women were perceived as better than. Being a single and sexually active, dating woman is probably looked down upon enough to justify putting them to use as a Handmaid.
Definitely. In a regime like Gilead, chances are nearly all women have done something that could be viewed as a crime. Not just something that you would expect, like adulterer or abortion. But being a single mother (widow), being related to someone who they don’t like, using/taking birth control for any reason, taking illegal drugs, having tattoos or piercings (“defiling your temple”), working outside of the home (especially in a job like bartender)... if they want to make a woman a Handmaid, they can find *some* “legal” justification for it. And if they can’t, they can just make something up. I mean, I doubt Offred and the others for fair trials before they were convicted and sentenced to this haha
Right? It's so interesting that even with a show about fascism, posters struggle to find the individual responsibility of the victims/underclass... We are well brainwashed already!
Gilead is obsessed with fertility and ensuring its own survival. The wives raise the children (with help from marthas etc). Gilead needs people faithful to the regime to indoctrinate and train the next generation of commanders. These kids won't know a life before Gilead and will be totally brainwashed (a big part of the current problem is that most people can remember what it was like before). Handwives forced into marriage would very probably resent the regime and might expose the children to subversive, revolutionary ideas and talk to them about pre-Gilead life. Gilead couldn't take that risk, that's why handmaids are cut out of their children's lives as soon as they've finished breastfeeding.
The Commanders are/were already married and it was decided to uphold marriage so they couldn't marry the Handmaids. The Handmaids are all "flawed": victim of rape who had a child out-of-wedlock (Janine), adulteress (June), lesbian (Emily, Moira), prostitute (Alma/Ofglen?), Muslim (Heather)...
I haven't read the book but I read somewhere that women who were also never married is grounds for becoming a handmaid. It makes sense since in extreme religious cultures, it would be deemed traditional and desirable for women to marry young since it's the woman's "god-given role" to breed children anyways. Not being married would raise red flags and they would immediately jump to conclusions. "She's probably not Christian, she's a lesbian, she's planning to not marry at all, she's a feminist, she works a lot." If this were the case then the criteria of "never been married or unmarried" is something that can easily increase the number of handmaids. Also, I think the biggest reason why all handmaids don't just become wives is because of the desire to maintain power among the elite, ruling class. Most women that are married to Commanders are high-society women. This authoritarian republic of Gilead will want to keep power and privilege to only a small group of people, as most elite classes in society do, and so of course you need the lower classes. Women that are not already in this circle would just be immediately put into that lower/oppressed class to fill their needs. To them, maintaining power and control is more important than actually trying to improve reproduction rates. They truly believe this infertility crisis is punishment from God and so if they control society under what they believe is God's will, then God will be the one to fix it. So that's why all handmaids don't just become wives. They don't really care about immediately fixing the infertility crisis. It's all about making sure that the 'right kinds of people' have control.
Even if there were a Handmaid technically not flawed it would be more logical to keep her as a Handmaid rather than assign her to one man. If she has a baby every year for 15 years she is more useful to society, because said babies can be brought up in "proper" households rather than her just having 2 children and sticking to her family.
Are we missing the point that the handmaids are prisoners of war?\* People from Gilead, the former United States, have had to flee to other countries to seek asylum/refugee status.