Serena Joy

The searchlights are off, which is not usual.

A power failure, or else Serena Joy has arranged it.

Oh, has arranged what? Is this where Nick is going

to come to service her? Probably.

The vigilantes are going to come in with guns a-blaring.

That's what I'm hoping.

I'm just surprised that Serena Joy can arrange a power failure like the searchlights would be off.

Like, does she have that much power? Again, we don't know what's happening with Nick and the Handmaid hooking up, but I know we're getting to the end of the book.

The problems discussed within this novel are much closer than you'd think.

The first major point relating to today's society is the importance of Serena Joy, a main character who, throughout the tale, began her life as an advocate for traditional women's lives and would give public speeches and appeared on television to promote the idea of the domestication of women.

The irony of her character is shown when the life she advocated for was thrust upon her by Gilead, and she is faced with the consequences of her actions and the life of suppression.

She is described as an avid smoker, something she likely uses as an escape to drown her sorrows and boredom, and Atwood also noted Serena pacing upstairs with her cane, which is another evident release of her tedium.

Her character is one very visibly reflected in today's society, specifically in the US as a result of the trad wife crisis and the expansion of the right wing as a result of Trump's presid-presidency.

Names you are possibly familiar with, such as Erika Kirk, Nara Smith, Hannah Neeleman, also known as Ballerina Farm, and Pearl Davis all belong to women in the US who advocate for their own suppression and their own rights to decline through their positions as public speakers, influencers, or wives to powerful men.

Isn't it ironic that they're using their platform to ask for the platform to be removed? Or that they're using their voice to say that they don't want one and using their vote to ask someone to take it away? Serena Joy's regretful reality clearly demonstrates the potential consequences of such activism.

So why do these women insist on demeaning themselves? Offred includes mention that Serena Joy doesn't make powerful speeches anymore.

Um, so-

You know how we also talked about how Serena Joy in that, in that TV show, Serena Joy is exactly what we talked about before, a male-centered female, and she didn't stop being a male-centered female until the choices that her husband and the men were making started to affect her in a not great way.

That's when she was like, "Oh yeah, fuck the patri- patriarchy.

Fuck men.

And I don't know if you're familiar with The Handmaid's Tale, but I was raised to be one of the women in green.

Like I was supposed to be Serena Joy propping up the patriarchy.

And thankfully, I went to a super patriarchal college, which doesn't make any sense.

And I fell in with all of the misfits and a couple rogue feminists there.

Buddy boy, your music for this season, it sounds like Mr. Rogers' trolley when his trolley comes into the neighborhood of make-believe.

Previously, on Bandcamp, Serena Joy walked up the stairs, holding something that wasn't the dinner tray.

Instead, it was a Polaroid photo of the handmaid's daughter.

But there was a catch.

As soon as she handed it to the handmaid to look at, she said, you only get it for 60 seconds, then I'm taking it back.

Serena Joy fits perfectly into this dystopian shit show.

She's almost as bad as the men.

Meanwhile, Jennifer and Dan kept pushing their misinformation campaign about me being Dan's roommate.

But it isn't Cora...

I brought it for you, says Serena Joy.

Serena Joy is bringing the handmaid a tray? What is she doing? I don't know

what's going on here.

I look up and around and get out of my chair and come towards her.

That's a cheap trick right there.

She said she could have a picture.

Now she can have it for a minute? You can only have it for a minute, Serena Joy says, her voice low and conspiratorial.

Yeah.

What you got here, these women, these kids have been brought in for the incoming angels right off the front line, Jennifer.

This group of kids are the future Serena Joys.

Exactly.

That's what I think.

How would she have found out about Janine? The Marthas? Janine's shopping partner? Listening at closed doors to the wives over tea and the wine, spinning their webs.

Will Serena Joy talk about me like that if I do as she wants? Agree to it right away.

Really, she didn't care.

Anything with two legs and a good you-know-what was fine with her.