Serena Joy

Serena Joy, the Commander's Wife, is one of the most complex and tragic figures in Gilead: a woman who helped create the system that now imprisons her, a former celebrity whose voice has been silenced, and a figure of both cruelty and pathos. Once the singing star of the "Growing Souls Gospel Hour" and later a fiery political speaker advocating for women's return to the home, she has become a bitter, arthritic woman who spends her days knitting elaborate scarves for the Angels and tending her garden, while her husband's Handmaid, Offred, lies between her legs during the monthly Ceremony meant to produce the child she cannot bear herself.

Identity and Background

Serena Joy was not always the faded, limping figure Offred encounters. Offred first saw her on television as a child, watching the "Growing Souls Gospel Hour" on Sunday mornings while her mother slept in. Serena Joy was the lead soprano, "ash blond, petite, with a snub nose and huge blue eyes" which she would turn upwards during hymns, able to "smile and cry at the same time, one tear or two sliding gracefully down her cheek, as if on cue." Later, she abandoned singing for political activism, making speeches "about the sanctity of the home, about how women should stay home"—a message she herself did not follow, presenting her own public career as "a sacrifice she was making for the good of all." Offred recalls watching her on the late-night news with Luke, both in their robes, observing her "sprayed hair and her hysteria, and the tears she could still produce at will, and the mascara blackening her cheeks." Luke found her funny; Offred only pretended to agree, finding her "a little frightening" because "she was in earnest." Someone once tried to shoot her and missed, killing her secretary instead; another bomb was planted in her car but exploded too early, leading some to suspect she had planted it herself for sympathy. Her real name, Offred remembers reading in a news magazine profile, was "Pain."

Life in Gilead and Relationship with Offred

In Gilead, Serena Joy has become speechless, confined to her home, and Offred observes that "it doesn't seem to agree with her." She wonders, "How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word." When Offred first arrived at the house, Serena Joy met her at the front door, blocking the entrance to make her feel unwelcome. She told Offred bluntly, "I want to see as little of you as possible," and warned her, "if I get trouble, I'll give trouble back." Offred initially hoped to find a motherly figure in her, but quickly realized they would never like each other. Serena Joy's face has "sunk in upon itself," and Offred thinks of towns built on underground rivers where whole streets disappear overnight. She does not acknowledge Offred's presence, but Offred can sense her knowledge "like a smell; something gone sour, like old milk." Aunt Lydia warned the Handmaids that it is not the husbands but the Wives they must watch out for, telling them to try to pity the Wives, who are "defeated women." Serena Joy's hatred is palpable during the Ceremony, where she grips Offred's hands so hard that her rings cut into Offred's fingers, and afterwards she orders Offred to "get up and get out" with loathing in her voice, "as if the touch of my flesh sickens and contaminates her."

The Commander and the Household

Serena Joy's marriage to the Commander is hollow and distant. She tells Offred on their first meeting, "As for my husband, he's just that. My husband. I want that to be perfectly clear. Till death do us part. It's final." The Commander, in turn, tells Offred that his wife "wouldn't understand" the magazines he shows Offred, adding, "She won't talk to me much anymore. We don't seem to have much in common, these days." Serena Joy spends her evenings knitting "Angel scarves" with elaborate patterns—fir trees, eagles, stiff humanoid figures of boys and girls—which Offred suspects are never sent to the front but unraveled and re-knitted, just something to keep the Wives busy. She has a garden she tends, kneeling on a cushion with her cane beside her, snipping off seedpods with shears. Offred watches her and thinks, "Saint Serena, on her knees, doing penance." The household runs on a strict hierarchy: Serena Joy controls the sitting room, the Commander knocks for permission to enter, and the Marthas and Handmaid move through the back of the house.

Change and Ending

Despite her cruelty, Serena Joy is capable of unexpected gestures. She offers Offred a cigarette and a match, telling her to find a match in the kitchen and adding roguishly, "Only the one though. We don't want to ruin your health!" More significantly, she proposes that Offred try to conceive with another man—specifically Nick—and offers, in exchange, a photograph of Offred's daughter. "I would help you," she says. "I would make sure nothing went wrong." This moment of collusion reveals her desperation for a child, a desire that overrides even her jealousy. But when she discovers Offred's secret visits to the Commander's study and the lipstick-stained cloak, her fury is absolute. She confronts Offred on the steps, throwing down the purple sequined costume and calling her a slut, predicting she will end up like the previous Handmaid. Yet even in her rage, there is a note of personal betrayal: "You could have left me something." When the black van comes for Offred, Serena Joy stands in the hallway, incredulous, and when the Eyes claim Offred for "violation of state secrets," she spits, "Bitch. After all he did for you."

Thematic Significance

Serena Joy embodies the central irony of Gilead: the women who helped build the patriarchal state are among its most oppressed inhabitants. She advocated for women to stay home, and now she is trapped there, her voice silenced, her body aged and arthritic, her only power the petty cruelty she can exercise over the Handmaid. She is a figure of both villainy and tragedy, a woman who wanted power and got it in a form that destroyed her. Offred's final image of her is of a woman whose face is "sinking in upon itself," like a town collapsing into a mine, and whose knowledge of Offred's presence is "like a smell; something gone sour, like old milk." She is a ghost of her former self, a warning about the cost of complicity, and a reminder that in Gilead, no woman—not even a Wife—is truly free.