Thoughts on Resistance
Recently, I started watching The Handmaid’s Tale. If you’re not familiar, it is a 6 season drama (Hulu) based on Margaret Atwood’s novel published in 1985. The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian story set in a totalitarian regime (patriarchal theocracy, to be exact) called the Republic of Gilead, which violently overthrew the United States. Faced with plummeting birth rates and environmental crises, the fundamentalist government strips women of their rights. Fertile women are forced into sexual servitude as "Handmaids" to bear children for the ruling elite. The story follows June, a handmaid in Boston who had proven to be fertile as she had one child before the entrance of Gilead.
Despite its “light and fluffy” premise and rave reviews, I didn’t feel called to watch it until recently. The show was released in 2017, at the start of Trump America where things felt scary but it was just the beginning of our path towards theocracy. It’s now 2026. Nine years later, watching the headlines in our news while watching a “fictional” enactment of very similar actions taken by the Republic of Gilead leadership. It feels eerily familiar.
Friends and I laugh that we all “need to engage with more positive media”. Alas, we keep coming back to stories that are far from positive. I wasn’t sure what compelled me to start watching it recently.
It occurred to me that I’m craving glimmers of hope, love and subtle (or loud) acts of resistance. A nod to hope that things aren’t destined for the horrors we can imagine. Similar to the “true crime girlies” or dystopian fiction addicts, I think many of us are seeking evidence that justice can be served. And that there is room for possibility of a better outcome.
As a single woman, a homeowner, and knowledge worker myself. I would be one of the first enlisted at the mercy of the Republic of Gilead’s laws. Admittedly, I’m nearing the end of Season 3, so I don’t know what’s left of June’s story. But I see why I’m addicted to knowing more. I want to see her, us, prevail.
Some other stories that I’ve devoured recently, of parallel premise:
The Mad Wife by Meagan Church (book)
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (book)
Slewfoot by Brom (book)
To resistance <3