An Army of Me: Representations of Intersubjectivity, Relational Ethics, and Political Resistance in The Handmaid's Tale

Viewers of the Hulu hit series The Handmaid's Tale immediately sense a pivotal change in the main character, Offred, after she finds an inscription at the bottom of her closet. Prior to the discovery of this inscription, Mrs. Waterford, the household wife, had punished Offred by secluding her in her room for weeks; during this confinement, she finds the Latin inscription that translates as, “Don't let the bastards grind you down.” The imperative to resist, and the act of resistance by writing in a world where women are not allowed an education, appears to breathe new life into Offred.

The neo-realism of Offred's dystopian society in Gilead's version of America, along with the personal accounts of trauma that Offred suffers, are details from Margaret Atwood's bestselling novel of the same name. The most notable quality of the show, however, is the manipulation of formal elements in its cinematography, which creates an unstable reality. When meaning after trauma is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations, the show encourages the viewer's active participation in generating the narrative and engages their response to experiences of trauma.

In this article, I show how certain formal aspects of the show—such as its use of slow motion and narrative form, particularly in relation to its themes of trauma and personhood—illustrate recent shifts in the development of psychoanalysis and moral theory. I argue that Offred's trauma, obedience, and most successful forms of resistance to her extremely patriarchal society visualize recent shifts from Freudian drive theory in psychoanalysis to intersubjective approaches that challenge traditional cultural values of psychic mastery and individuated self-sufficiency. I locate specific scenes and events in which Offred's character is depicted as most successful at navigating her oppressive reality through empathetic flashback memories.

In contrast to depictions of defense mechanisms in Freudian ego-psychology, I consider