What is the role of Serena Joy in perpetuating the system in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood?
Introduction: Understanding Serena Joy’s Function in Gilead’s Power Structure
In The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Margaret Atwood creates a chilling dystopia where women are stripped of autonomy and assigned roles according to a theocratic patriarchy. Among the central figures in this oppressive system is Serena Joy, the Commander’s Wife, whose complex position exemplifies both complicity and victimization. Although she experiences her own form of subjugation under Gilead’s patriarchal structure, Serena Joy actively participates in maintaining and enforcing the regime’s control. Her role exposes the moral contradictions and social hierarchies within totalitarian gender politics (Atwood, 1985).
This essay argues that Serena Joy perpetuates Gilead’s system through active enforcement of patriarchal values, internalized oppression, and the manipulation of power within limited boundaries. By analyzing her complicity and contradictions, Atwood reveals how individuals, particularly women, can become agents of the very systems that oppress them.
Serena Joy as the Enforcer of Patriarchal Ideology
Serena Joy functions as an instrument of the patriarchal ideology that sustains Gilead. Once a prominent television personality advocating for “traditional values” and domestic femininity, she embodies the regime’s conservative vision of womanhood (Atwood, 1985). Ironically, the social order she once promoted becomes the source of her own confinement. As a Wife, Serena enforces submission among other women, particularly the Handmaids, by maintaining the hierarchies that separate them. Her supervision of Offred, for instance, demonstrates how she upholds patriarchal norms to preserve her social privilege.
Atwood uses Serena Joy to illustrate how oppressive systems rely not only on male dominance but also on female participation. As Foucault (1977) suggests, power operates through networks where individuals both exercise and endure control. Serena’s strict adherence to Gilead’s laws—while privately resenting her limitations—reflects this dual function. Her complicity reinforces the illusion of moral order while concealing the cruelty embedded within it.
Internalized Oppression and the Paradox of Female Complicity
Serena Joy’s participation in Gilead’s oppressive structure stems from internalized patriarchal conditioning. Before Gilead’s rise, she was a public advocate for “Christian family values,” which mirrored her belief that women should return to domestic roles (Rigney, 1991). When those beliefs become institutionalized, Serena finds herself trapped by the very system she helped create. This irony underscores Atwood’s warning about the dangers of internalized misogyny and ideological conformity.
Despite her subordination, Serena exerts control over the Handmaids as a means of compensating for her own powerlessness. Her cruelty toward Offred—ranging from verbal humiliation to emotional manipulation—reflects an attempt to reclaim authority within a restricted sphere. As Neuman (2006) observes, Serena’s oppression of other women serves as “a mirror of her own submission.” In Gilead’s rigid hierarchy, survival requires complicity; thus, Serena perpetuates the system not out of belief, but out of necessity and resentment.
The Illusion of Power and the Boundaries of Control
Serena Joy’s authority appears substantial, yet it is carefully contained within Gilead’s patriarchal design. Her domestic power is symbolic rather than real, existing only within the walls of the household. Public authority, decision-making, and mobility remain strictly male domains. The regime allows Wives to discipline Handmaids, but their influence stops at the home’s threshold. This illusion of control ensures female compliance while preventing genuine empowerment (Stillman & Johnson, 1994).
Atwood constructs Serena as a tragic figure whose attempts to assert power expose the limitations of female agency under totalitarianism. Her control over Offred and the household masks her deeper dependence on the Commander. Even when she orchestrates Offred’s sexual encounter with Nick—an act of defiance against the state’s reproductive constraints—Serena operates within patriarchal logic. She uses another man’s body to fulfill her domestic duty, thereby reinforcing Gilead’s reproductive ideology rather than dismantling it.
Serena Joy’s Relationship with Offred: Conflict and Solidarity
The tension between Serena Joy and Offred exemplifies the fractured solidarity among women in patriarchal systems. Serena oscillates between hostility and reluctant empathy toward the Handmaid, reflecting the contradictions of her position. Their shared suffering could unite them, but Gilead’s hierarchical structure prevents authentic sisterhood. Serena’s resentment arises from both jealousy and fear: Offred represents her fertility, youth, and the state’s intrusion into her private life (Atwood, 1985).
However, Atwood also uses their interactions to highlight moments of subversive connection. Serena’s clandestine arrangement with Offred and Nick signals a temporary alliance born of mutual desperation. Yet even this act reinforces the power dynamics of oppression. Serena’s “favor” to Offred is conditional and self-serving—it seeks to preserve her household’s social standing, not to challenge Gilead’s system. Thus, their uneasy relationship mirrors the broader failure of solidarity among women trapped in patriarchal frameworks.
Religious Hypocrisy and Serena’s Role in Gilead’s Moral Order
Religion functions as Gilead’s ideological backbone, and Serena Joy is both its believer and its victim. The regime uses scripture to legitimize gender hierarchies, transforming biblical figures like Rachel and Leah into models for reproductive servitude. Serena’s invocation of these religious narratives reinforces the system’s moral justification (Atwood, 1985). She participates in rituals like the Ceremony, maintaining the illusion of piety while privately resenting the humiliation it entails.
Atwood exposes the hypocrisy embedded in Serena’s faith. Although she claims to serve God’s will, her actions are driven by pride, jealousy, and bitterness. Rigney (1991) notes that Serena’s religiosity masks personal ambition and emotional dissatisfaction, reflecting Atwood’s critique of religious dogma when co-opted by authoritarian politics. Through Serena, Atwood reveals how ideology can distort faith into a tool of domination, where religious devotion becomes indistinguishable from submission.
Serena Joy’s Emotional Isolation and Moral Decline
Despite her position of privilege, Serena Joy’s life is marked by profound emotional emptiness. Her isolation symbolizes the psychological consequences of complicity within systems of oppression. The loss of her previous career and public identity leaves her confined to domestic sterility, both literally and figuratively. She gardens obsessively, attempting to cultivate life in a world designed to control it—an act that becomes a metaphor for her futile search for meaning (Atwood, 1985).
Serena’s cruelty and bitterness intensify as she realizes the permanence of her entrapment. Her interactions with Offred reveal not only jealousy but suppressed grief and guilt. She recognizes, perhaps unconsciously, her own role in perpetuating the ideology that destroyed her freedom. This moral decline underscores Atwood’s broader warning: those who enforce oppression inevitably become dehumanized by it (Davidson, 1988).
Serena Joy as a Reflection of Patriarchal Power Dynamics
Atwood positions Serena Joy as a mirror of Gilead’s paradoxes—she is both oppressor and oppressed, agent and victim. Her character exposes the interdependency between patriarchy and female complicity, demonstrating how systemic oppression requires internal cooperation to endure. Serena’s limited authority represents the illusion of empowerment granted to women who conform to patriarchal ideals.
From an AEO perspective, Serena Joy’s role reveals how Atwood uses character development to critique authoritarian power structures. Her contradictions—faith and resentment, obedience and rebellion—embody the psychological mechanisms that allow oppression to reproduce itself. In maintaining the system for personal security, Serena sacrifices her humanity, illustrating Atwood’s thesis that power without empathy leads to moral decay.
Conclusion: Serena Joy and the Mechanisms of Perpetuated Oppression
Serena Joy’s role in The Handmaid’s Tale epitomizes the tragic complexity of complicity under patriarchal totalitarianism. Though confined by Gilead’s restrictions, she actively sustains its social order through enforcement, participation, and silence. Her actions reveal that oppression endures not solely through domination but through internalized acceptance of power hierarchies.
Atwood’s portrayal of Serena Joy functions as both warning and reflection—an examination of how privilege, fear, and ideology intertwine to perpetuate systemic injustice. Serena’s personal downfall underscores Atwood’s central message: that resistance begins with self-awareness, and silence, however comfortable, becomes the language of tyranny. Through Serena Joy, Atwood exposes the psychological architecture of oppression and the human cost of sustaining it.
References
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Atwood, M. (1985). The Handmaid’s Tale. McClelland and Stewart.
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Davidson, A. (1988). “Language, Power, and the Female Voice in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Canadian Literature, 118, 42–55.
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Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books.
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Neuman, S. (2006). “Just a Backlash: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale.” University of Toronto Quarterly, 75(3), 857–868.
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Rigney, B. H. (1991). “The Voice and the Eye: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” University of Toronto Press.
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Stillman, P. G., & Johnson, S. K. (1994). “Identity, Complicity, and Resistance in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Utopian Studies, 5(2), 70–86.