Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Serena Joy
- Character
- She is often portrayed as angry, bitter and speaks to Offred "irratably" showing her dislike for Offred.
This could be due to jealousy as Offred is more sexually intimate than she is with the Commander - "I
want to see as little of you as possible"
- She keeps the garden and it is her way of taking control of nature.
It is a way of asserting power, though only small, it is something
to give her a reason to be. It is also something to care for as she
has no children
- The possessive pronoun in "my husband" shows how she
is possesive of what she has and we is obviously scared
that Offred will take what is hers
- Appearance
- "permanent look of surprise, or outrage,
or inquisitiveness" shows how Serena Joy
is constantly high with emotion, possibly
suggesting she is quite an erratic character
- Her clothes are described as being a "hostile blue", "a
blue that shuts you out". Blue is the colour of the
wives, but the adjective "hostile" shows her
threatening and intimidating behaviour towards Offred
- Her "chin, clenched like a fist"
shows her uptight and proper
appearance - presents her as
sour and het up
- She wears a light blue
veil - links to Muslim
religion and
subjugation of women
- Body Language
- When having sex, Offred describes how "she is in control of the
process", "the rings of her left hand cut into my fingers". This
shows how Gilead uses women to oppress other women and it
shows how Serena JOy longs to retain power over anything she
can
- "longed to slap my
face" shows her
hostile and
threatening body
language
- Life before
Gilead
- TV star, but
Gilead took
away her
fame and
destroyed
this life
- After describing Serena Joy's job on TV in "Growing Souls Gospel
Hour" Offred damningly says "So it is worse that I thought"
showing the transformation between pre-Gilead and Gilead is far
worse than she ever imagined because a free, successful,
independent women is now subjugated in a household by the
Commander. Links to fantasy genre as it is a violation of what is
possible in the real world and causes the reader to think about
their society
- Role in
Gilead
- Wives have no particular use in society as
they don't have a child
- "Maybe it's something to keep the wives busy, to
give them a sense of purpose" shows how the role of
the wives is trivial