The handmaids tale sex

Skip navigation! Story from TV Shows. Elena Nicolaou. The first scene was the mass wedding. In the episode, Nick Max Minghella consummates his marriage with Eden Sydney Sweeney , the vehemently pious year-old he was forced to marry during the Prayvaganza ceremony.

Textual Analysis. By: Nora Uhrich. Sexual coercion operates on two levels; it is both institutionalized and internalized. The reader enters a world where the patriarchal system has become entirely ingrained, to the point that its abuses are nearly invisible to the characters. Essentially, becoming pregnant is their only source of power. One of the first hints as to the purpose of a handmaid is presented to us when Offred is in the grocery store and sees Ofwarren, another handmaid, who is very far along in her pregnancy. The need to become pregnant has been so programmed into her mind that she becomes envious of the other woman.

The Ceremony is a highly ritualized sexual act that high-ranking men such as Commanders or Angels , their Wives and Handmaids undergo to conceive children. During the Ceremony itself, everyone remains mostly clothed. It is designed to be as clinical and non-sensual as possible, as the purpose of the Ceremony is not sexual pleasure or intimacy, but the conceiving of children.

The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment of the new order. The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a supposed rapist actually a member of the resistance.