Gilead Lives On: How Envy Divides Modern Women
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale weaponizes envy. It pulses beneath the red-cloaked silence of the Handmaids and flickers in the cold apathy of the Wives. It is a strategic tool used and enforced by the patriarchal regime they live in. The Wives scorn the Handmaids even as they depend on them, envying their fertility and the twisted role the Handmaids play in their marriages. The Handmaids are a constant reminder of the Wives’ greatest shortcoming: infertility.
“She doesn’t speak to me unless she can’t avoid it. I am a reproach to her; and a necessity.” (Atwood)
Offred (Handmaid) on Serena Joy (Wife)
On the other hand, the Handmaids, stripped of their autonomy and identity, envy the Wives’ proximity to power, their access to comfort, and their illusion of control within a brutally patriarchal system. They divide the women to conquer them. Through this seething envy, this oppressive system is strategically maintained and self-preserving. Envy of fertility, envy of privilege, envy of perceived morality‚ The Handmaid’s Tale addresses a tension that feels eerily familiar in today’s political landscape.
Like Gilead, modern America benefits when women are put against each other. As liberal and conservative women argue over gender roles and political loyalty on YouTube sets, true systemic injustices, such as the overturning of federally protected access to reproductive healthcare, remain unchanged. Conservative women may envy the perceived autonomy liberal women embody, while liberal women may find themselves envying conservative women’s ability to thrive within patriarchal norms. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the Wives appear to operate easily inside a system designed to oppress them. While their power is performative and conditional upon their subservience to their husbands, they sit perched in pristine sitting rooms, carrying the illusion of authority and grace. To the Handmaids, that illusion can be enviable.
Just like this, liberal women envy conservative women. From picture-perfect family lives to polished femininity, conservative women often project an image of contentment and uncomplicated order. In contrast, liberal women are often tasked with constantly questioning, resisting, and redefining the roles they’re expected to fill, an empowering process but also an emotionally exhausting one. By being liberal, women inherently refuse to accept the world around them, leading to lower reported life satisfaction than when compared to their conservative peers. Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, attributes this to the fact that “conservative women tend to have the sense that they are not, in any way, the victim of larger structural realities or forces.” and that they are “less likely to catastrophize about public events and concerns.” as compared to liberal women. (Heckman; Parks; Wilcox) The image of the conservative woman—secure, satisfied, and celebrated for her obedience—can be quietly seductive, even with the knowledge that this comfort often stems from conformity, limited autonomy, or sometimes a lack of critical education or empowerment. The simplicity of accepting the world as it is rather than what it should be becomes an enviable escape.
Conservative women, on the other hand, employ a very different type of vitriol. They not only envy liberal women’s autonomy, but mask their bitterness with a sense of superiority. Conservative women scrutinize liberal women for deviating from tradition but quietly admire them for doing what they themselves could and would never do: the strength to openly defy the patriarchy. Conservative women have been taught that the only way to exist within a male-centered society is to conform and cooperate. When operating under the patriarchy, they know that male validation is the only path to survival.
As a result, they present their conformity as virtue. They push the notion that they are more respectable and feminine as compared to their liberal counterparts. But underneath the false superiority lies a longing for the freedom they often criticise.
On TikTok, the “tradwife” aesthetic glamorizes traditional gender roles. What previously occurred through oppression and male-centeredness has emerged as a new form of empowerment. Women stay at home, cook hot homemade meals for their families, and emphasize the aspects of fulfillment and choice that come with their lifestyles. But can these two ideologies really coexist? Would this lifestyle hold the same appeal if it weren’t shaped, even subtly, by roots in sexism and misogyny? This question tugs at liberal women’s envy, which is why it is inherently different than the envy they receive. They understand that the oppression conservative women endure is not worth the temporary comfort that may come with appeasing men, whether they be the misogynistic husbands or the tyrannical lawmakers.
Regardless of which side you may be on, being a woman in today’s political and cultural scene means giving up something. Whether it’s comfort for consciousness or freedom for familiarity, womanhood is marked by impossible choices. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t warn us of a distant dystopia, it mirrors the subtle wars between women. In both worlds, resentment and envy are seeded by a system that thrives when we turn on one another.