Woman and Pearls

In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, we are introduced to the teachings of Aunt Lydia that she drills into the handmaid’s head. In chapter 19, we see Aunt Lydia expressing to the girls how women are the problem in our society. Especially the women in the “time before”. She would claim that they had too much freedom and didn’t want to follow the words of God. She sees it as her job to save these women from their world of freedom. In chapter 19 on page 114 it says, “A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get. We want you to be valued, girls. She is rich in pauses, which she saves in her mouth. Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit”. When I first read this, I began to break the quote down and analyze this section. Aunt Lydia’s claim of being valued only if you save or protect yourself from being free is a claim I disagreed with. As people, we should oppress ourselves to be treated with mutual respect or to be seen as valuable. I relate to Offred in this moment because many Muslim scholars would make their ideas about Islam and compare Muslim women to candy. The more it’s covered, the more you are willing to go for the candy. But if it is uncovered and has dirt and hair on it, you would not go for the candy. They are trying to say that the Muslim women in Islam who don’t cover up are not valuable compared to those who do cover up. In many religions, modesty falls on women a lot. In Islam, it states both men AND women have to dress modestly but the women are always getting attacked if not. It also raised a question, why are women compared to objects when it comes to trying to compare our value? Personally, as a woman who does cover up for her religion and God, I do not appreciate being compared to being a candy that’s wrapped. As for the women who may not dress like me and follow the same religion, being compared to an unwrapped candy will only push them further away and discourage them. As everyone has their own paths. “Suffer in her adjectives” (114). It’s very easy to take wording from a religious book, make an adjective out of it and the meaning is completely lost. I really liked how this quote showed us how taking the word of God can be manipulated and cause the view on religion to be seen in an oppression view. They may think making it oppressive will have people listen, for example, stripping the handmaids of their freedom of everything. But it only causes more pushback towards those ideas.

In the time before, Offred’s mom would protest for women’s rights, whereas Serena Joy was the opposite and would advocate that women should be traditional wives.“Freedom to choose. Every baby wanted a baby, to recapture our body. Do you believe a woman’s place is on the kitchen table?” (120). This quote resonates with me because women are still fighting for RIGHTS in this country. Just thinking about it is appalling and something we as a country too need to fix immediately. I connected this to Serena Joy because she advocated that women stay home and they should fit the “Traditional Wife” standard. Now with Gilead in place, Serena does absolutely nothing but be a trophy wife without the case. She is simply a woman with the title “wife”. The handmaids, Martha’s, and Econowives have more importance to Gilead than she does. “She wasn’t singing anymore by then, she was making speeches. She was good at it. Her speeches were about the sanctity of the home, and about how women should stay home. Serena Joy didn’t do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was making for the good of all”(14). Serena Joy to me is seen as hypocritical. She was working and giving speeches about how women shouldn’t work and express their voices. She is now in the world she advocated for and is merely a person with a title. She searches for entitlement, for example in the living room before the ceremony. “The sitting room is supposed to be Serena Joy’s territory, he’s supposed to ask permission to enter it.”(86). Despite this claim, he walked in anyway. Serena Joy advocated for her rights to be taken away and now that they are gone, she is scrapping for pieces of entitlement in a world she advocated for

Comparing women to an object to represent their value, women having to fight for their basic rights, and women putting down the rights of their gender, are all under the umbrella of misogyny. It’s a system of women being oppressed no matter the circumstances, whether it’s from a religious lens, women vs women, or in a dystopian world called Gilead.