Serena Joy In 'The Handmaid's Tale'

While the flowers suggest facets of Offred’s life that have been lost or destroyed, the way the image of the garden changes throughout her narrative suggests a glimmer of hope. The garden is, as we know it, a space that is used for growing flowers and, in the novel, it is Serena Joy who is the primary overseer of their house’s garden in the beginning:

This garden is the domain of the Commander’s Wife. Looking out through my shatter proof window, I’ve often seen her in it. Many of the Wives have such gardens, it’s something for them to order and maintain care for…I once had a garden. I can remember the smell of the turned earth, the plump shapes of bulbs held in the hands, fullness, the dry rustle of seeds through the fingers. (Atwood

Offred further makes this connection by talking about the garden she once had and ,in her nostalgic reminiscing of it, she uses language that invokes birth— the plump bulbs are like babies you hold in your arms, and the mention of seeds conjures up an image of fertility. As Serena Joy is the established forewoman of the garden, she effectively controls this very maternal space, a space of fertility and birth, of which Offred provides the “seeds” for. From Offred’s perspective, a point of view that still remembers the time before and what it was like to be a mother, the garden is “subversive”, as if it is a space where something is trying to be silenced of buried. This too, relates to Offred’s loss of motherhood when the Republic took over for, now, her relationship to child bearing is complicated by the fact that though she still remains fertile and is expected to produce a child, the actual act of mothering is taken from her. While the garden is a place of fertility, the subversiveness of it comes from what is

While Offred acknowledges that there is a significant desecration of a woman’s natural rights within Gilead, she suggests that maybe not all is lost and maybe the woman’s fertileness can still save her. This possibility of hope, as it is accessed via the space the garden provides, is mentioned again and again: “I pray where I am, sitting by the window, looking out through the curtain at the empty garden. I don’t even close my eyes. Out there or inside my head, it’s an equal darkness. Or light”. (Atwood 194). As Offred looks out into the garden, she finds herself trying to find reconciliation between the devastation the garden has brought her under Serena Joy’s overseeing with the potential for something more that has yet to be discovered. The resistance and determination that this garden seems to represent as Offred continues her narrative is emphasized towards the end as she looks out her windows, awaiting her fate: “I feel serene, at peace, pervaded with indifference. Don’t let the bastards grind you