Season 2, Episode 10: ‘The Last Ceremony’
Is “The Handmaid’s Tale” effectively using violence against women to drive home its argument about the horrors of patriarchal extremism, or has it begun to exploit the suffering of its female characters? Although the show remains widely acclaimed, some critics found the brutality of the second season’s early episodes — in which June painstakingly cuts a tracking tag out of her ear and Emily provides a window into the hopelessness of life in the euphemistically named Colonies — gratuitous. “The question is, is it necessary?” Sophie Gilbert asked in an essay for The Atlantic.
I’m still ambivalent about the season’s first five episodes, which zoomed out on the first season’s domestic nightmare to present a panoramic view of the anguish and destruction Gilead had wrought. But the graphic representations of female pain largely receded into the background when Ofglen No. 2 blew up the Rachel and Leah Center and “The Handmaid’s Tale” started tackling more nuanced dilemmas about resistance to and complicity with authoritarian regimes. This week’s harrowing episode, “The Last Ceremony,” moves Gilbert’s question back to the fore.
The pileup of suffering begins in the opening scene, which shows Emily enduring a Ceremony. “One detaches oneself,” Offred intones in a calm voice-over, but the way Emily flinches and winces and snaps her eyes shut reveals that such detachment from one’s own ritualized rape is impossible. When the act is finished, her master collapses. “Get help!” his wife orders Emily. “The chances are better if I lay on my back afterward,” she replies flatly, setting the stage for a moment of catharsis in which she kicks her rapist’s unconscious body and stomps on his crotch.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” is, in a sense, a continuing rape-revenge narrative. The show likes to alternate between scenes of unspeakable violence against women and scenes when those women triumphantly (albeit briefly) reclaim their power; acts as grand as the bombing and as private as Offred’s irreverent self-affirmations qualify. In this week’s episode, the transitions between rape and revenge accelerate to a pace that is almost unbearable.
At the grocery store, Offred feels as if she’s experiencing contractions. But once she is rushed back to the Waterfords’ house, and all the wives and handmaids are assembled to perform Gilead’s bizarre birthing rituals, a doctor diagnoses false labor. Obviously, Offred has no control over when the baby arrives, but that doesn’t stop Serena from punishing her for getting the family’s hopes up. She chooses that day to announce that she is going to have Offred assigned to another district. This may not be purely an act of malice: I get the sense that Serena scared herself by identifying so deeply with her handmaid while Waterford was in the hospital. For reasons of self-preservation, residual commitment to Gilead’s ideals or both, she has decided not to subvert her husband further — and she won’t let Offred persuade her otherwise.
Of course, Serena’s intentions don’t change the outcome for Offred, who attempts to capitalize on the news by begging Waterford to reassign her to the district…
