I
still haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale,
but the TV series has definitely had its ups and downs. Some truly spectacular,
unnerving, heavy stuff, and some that’s unfortunately sloppy and
poorly-conceived. However, for me, Emily is an aspect of the show that’s always
strong, and my only complaint where she’s concerned is that I often wish we
have more of her than we get (Emily-related spoilers.)
When
we first meet her, she’s known as Ofglen, a fellow Handmaid and June’s walking
partner. June is equal parts disgusted by and wary of Ofglen, who she thinks is
an absolute Gilead true believer. She exchanges ritualistic propaganda slogans
with Ofglen, afraid that the Handmaid might inform on her, while all the while
she wonders how any woman could actually believe in Gilead’s oppressive regime.
But
of course, Ofglen/Emily isn’t a true believer any more than June is. After we
get that initial reveal, that along with not drinking the Gilead Kool-aid,
Emily is actively involved with the resistance movement, I went back and
rewatched her first scenes, and all the signs are there. Although she says the
“appropriate” words and pretends to be a good little Handmaid right along with
June, it’s written all over her face and in her voice that 1) she knows it’s
nothing but repugnant propaganda and 2) she’s afraid of June figuring out how
she feels about it.
So
now, not a true believer. In addition to being female (therefore a target of
Gilead’s subjugation no matter what) and fertile (therefore prime Handmaid
material,) Emily is also a lesbian. Her wife is Canadian and their son has dual
citizenship, so when things started to crumble, they were able to escape, but
Emily was kept back under new laws that refused to recognize their marriage.
Being a “gender traitor” is particularly despised in Gilead, but while others
caught in “sin” are killed and strung up on the wall, Emily’s fertility is too
valuable to Gilead for them to execute her, at least not quickly. When she’s
found having a relationship with a Martha, Emily is subjected to female genital
mutilation to “control” her “urges,” then shortly thereafter sent back to a
Commander’s home.
This
is the experience that breaks Emily. She tries to keep her head down and avoid
further retribution, but she can’t manage to do that. She’s boiling over with
rage and shame at what’s been done to her, and she slips into a “nothing to
lose” mentality that can never be reigned in for long. It admittedly stretches
credibility that she’s able to survive in Gilead so long – as much as Gilead needs
Handmaids, it needs control more, and anyone without Regular Cast Member Plot
Armor would have been killed several times over – but she absolutely suffers
for it. After she snaps and kills a Guardian, she’s sent to the Colonies, where
she’s forced to clean up radioactive waste in a prison labor camp and expects
to undergo a drawn-out, agonizing death. But an explosion in Gilead results in
an urgent need for more Handmaids, and Emily and others are brought back again.
From
there, it’s a series of Commanders, incidents, and narrow misses until, after a
desperate attack on Aunt Lydia, Emily’s current Commander helps her escape.
This last season has shown Emily as a refugee in Canada, trying to figure out
how to recover what she can of her old life with her family. But even in
relative safety, it’s not just Emily’s past trauma and physical mutilation that
continues to pain and threaten her: because she escaped with a Commander’s
baby, she becomes embroiled in an international incident whereby Gilead attempts
to “negotiate” with Canada for the return of “Baby Nicole,” and there’s a
question of whether “known criminals” from Gilead should be subject to
extradition. Just as Emily gets out of the viper’s nest, they want to pull her
back in.
Through
it all, Emily survives, sometimes fighting with everything she has and
sometimes just drifting downstream as she gives into exhaustion and
hopelessness. Her reactions to what happens to her aren’t always “smart” or
“logical,” and she doesn’t always act in her best interests, but even if some
of the twists of her plots feel implausible, her part within them never does.
She always feels believable as a woman under intense strain and torture just
doing what she can at each moment, whatever that might be.
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