Lydia's tears insinuate that she feels pressured by her belief in God's will to complete this awful task. Thankfully, rebellious
An ashamed and embarrassed Lydia smashed her mirror, crying to herself. She decided to report Noelle to the authorities, citing Ryan's unhealthy diet and his unwashed clothes. She also voiced her disapproval over Noelle's dating life, and the fact that she was not religious.
After publicly beating Janine, Lydia excuses herself from the company of the commanders, their wives and all the other witnesses in attendance. Alone in a quiet corner of the Putnam household, Lydia cries to herself, overwhelmed with the enormity of her own actions.
Aunt Lydia had mercilessly beaten Janine in front of guests because Janine overstepped boundaries and asked if she could move back in - and give the baby a sibling. In what appeared to be a complete loss of control, June was forced to intervene and stop Aunt Lydia.
During her time at the Red Center, which is where the handmaids receive training, Janine confronts Aunt Lydia with some vulgar language and is punished by having her right eye removed.
She truly values Janine's sacrifices in the name of God to become a better Handmaid and is visibly frustrated that vanity is preventing others from seeing her the same way. Lydia sees Janine as a good girl who is unfairly judged and misunderstood.
The childbirth scene is primal and intimate and prompts the women to confess their secrets: June tells Serena that she didn't kill her when she had the chance because she simply didn't want to, and Serena realizes she has been forced into essentially being a handmaid in the Wheelers house and begs June to take her baby ...
Her first, a son, died in a car accident after they were separated in Gilead. Her second child, Charlotte, whom she gave birth to for the Putnam family as a handmaid, has remained in her orbit but out of reach.
After Janine becomes a Handmaid, she takes the name Ofwarren. She has a baby, which makes her the envy of all the other Handmaids in the area, but the baby later turns out to be deformed—an “Unbaby”—and there are rumors that her doctor fathered the child.
Angela Putnam (named Charlotte by her birth mother) is the biological baby daughter of Commander Warren Putnam and his Handmaid Janine Lindo, who named her baby Charlotte before she was reassigned. Her daughter is now raised as the legal daughter of Commander Putnam and his wife Naomi.
In theory, the rings are removed so she can drink and eat. In reality, even Gilead wouldn't do this - they need the women at peak health. Can't risk someone choking on phlegm or suffocating because you want to keep her quiet.
In secret, Aunt Lydia despises Gilead and becomes a mole supplying critical information to the Mayday resistance organization.
But it's Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) — an “Aunt” whose role it is to keep Handmaids subservient — who crystallizes one of the show's most trenchant observations: the ways women, particularly white women, are complicit in patriarchal structures in order to hold onto what little power they're afforded.
It drives her to report Noelle to authorities for being an unfit mother—a decision that spurs Ryan to be separated from her. Dowd, though, doesn't think Lydia herself understands that her sexual rejection and her sudden desire to shield Ryan from Noelle might be connected. “She just thinks, I gave her too many chances.
The fact that June has been willing to overlook all of these past transgressions and forge a friendship with Serena speaks far more about her own state of mind than it does that of Mrs Waterford: she is clearly a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
Aunt Lydia's asserts that Handmaids should always use the front door as befits their honored status. This subtly indoctrinates the Handmaids into thinking their lives are better and more worthwhile than before, one of many examples of Aunt Lydia's master manipulation.
Baby Angela's illness is a metaphor for the sickness in Gilead that stems from separating baby from its mother. It's not a real medical condition but a nice allegorical one. Yes, babies can get sick from being seperated from their mother.
Unbaby, or shredder, is the term used in the Republic of Gilead to describe infants that are suffering from birth defects or physical deformities. These die shortly after birth due to their defects. They are usually taken away to be disposed of.
Right off the bat, it's clear she's very different than Nick's first wife, Eden (Sydney Sweeney). She's a bit older, for starters, and she walks with a severe limp due to her congenital hip dysplasia, something that's seen as highly unusual for Gilead.
It is implied that some Wives are capable of bearing children, but most are older women and thus have difficulty conceiving (or their husbands are infertile), which is also hampered by widespread infertility. As a result, Wives have to 'share' their husbands with Handmaids, in order to get a child.
But what's the cause? In The Handmaid's Tale, infertility is linked to another one of Gilead's prominent problems: pollution. As revealed in the season 1 episode "A Woman's Place," inorganic farming and radioactivity are to blame for declining fertility.
Rather than being married to Commanders, Econowives are fertile women who are married off to Gilead's more ordinary men. As well as being expected to have children, Econowives are expected to take care of their households, and they aren't assigned Marthas to help them.
Williams and Alexis Ohanian shared their pregnancy publicly at the Met Gala. Serena Williams announced her second pregnancy publicly at the 2023 Met Gala. Now, she is sharing a behind-the-scenes look at how she and her husband Alexis Ohanian told their daughter, Olympia.
Serena Helped Create Gilead
It is important to note that Serena did not come up with the handmaid system itself or any other of Gilead's social stratifications, merely the idea that if women shifted their priority to making a home rather than working, as a solution to the declining birth rates in America.
Noah Waterford is a character in The Handmaid's Tale. He is the son of Serena Waterford and Fred Waterford.