<em>The Handmaid's Tale</em> Treats Guilt as an Epidemic
At the end of the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, the excellent show now streaming on Hulu, the handmaids of Gilead gather in a grove for a ceremony that goes by an ominous name: the Salvaging. The women file together, in twos, in their red robes, to a series of red pillows that have been laid out in neat lines on the ground. They kneel. From a stage that has been set for the occasion, Aunt Lydia, the woman who is by turns their captor and their mentor, informs them of the reason for the gathering. She summons a prisoner to the stage. The man, Aunt Lydia says, raped a handmaid. The girl had been pregnant. The baby was lost. “This disgusting creature has given us no choice,” she says, glowering at the convict. “Am I correct, girls?”
“Yes, Aunt Lydia,” they reply.
The ceremony begins. “You may come forward and form a circle,” Aunt Lydia tells them. “You all know the rules … when I blow the whistle, what you do is up to you. Until I blow it again.”
The handmaids slowly surround the kneeling man, whose hands are bound, whose lip is bust, whose eyes are defiant and scared.
