“The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.”
This line from Atwood’s THT novel has been etched into me ever since I first read it.
It’s messy. Romantic. Rooted in theology, philosophy, desire. It’s a contradiction — just like the book. And it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever read about love.
Because it doesn’t speak to fairy tale love.
Or safe love.
Or easy love.
It speaks to the kind of love that lives in the ruins with you.
The kind that changes you.
That doesn’t need to be pure to be real.
That doesn’t need to be public to be true.
This quote — this entire passage — is the thesis of THT.
Atwood was never writing about "happily ever after."
She was writing about how people stay human inside systems designed to hollow them out.
And June? She survives not because she becomes cold or perfect or self-righteous.
She survives because she remembers how to want.
Because she lets herself love, even when it’s dangerous, even when it’s wrong, even when it makes no sense.
“We were waiting, always, for the incarnation.”
Not a fantasy. Not a savior. Not a symbol.
A real man. Flawed. Quiet. Bleeding. Complicit. And the incarnation of love in the darkest place imaginable.
Loving him didn’t save June from pain.
But it kept her whole. It tethered her to the part of herself Gilead couldn’t take.
I didn’t need a happy ending.
I didn’t need sunshine and closure and a white picket fence.
But what I did need was an ending that was earned.
What I needed was:
A woman who doesn’t walk away from the love that sustained her.
A man who doesn’t get reduced to a ghost in the machine.
A story that understands that messy, complicated, gut-wrenching love is not weakness — it’s humanity.
Instead, the show told us:
That loving someone like Nick — someone flawed, dangerous, but loyal — is a mistake.
That June’s survival means detachment.
That the “real world” doesn’t have room for complex love, only correct, simple love.
It told us that traditional love — clean, sanctioned, externally approved — is the kind worth fighting for.
That the love that fits neatly into boxes, that doesn’t challenge the status quo, that doesn’t ask hard questions — is the one that wins.
But that’s not The Handmaid’s Tale.
That’s not the story Atwood wrote.
This story was never about choosing the man with the cleanest résumé.
It was about breaking the rules — all of them.
About surviving in ways you’re not supposed to.
About loving in ways the system can’t predict, and therefore can’t control.
Nick and June were never traditional. They were never safe.
But they were true.
And they were dangerous to Gilead precisely because their love didn’t follow the rules.
Because it wasn’t handed to them — they built it. They bled for it.
So when the show decided that love like that had to be sacrificed for something simpler, more acceptable, more palatable — it didn’t just abandon Nick and June.
It abandoned the point.
But that’s not the book.
And that’s not The Testaments, either — where love and loyalty still survive in the background, where the human heart remains a factor.
So yeah, I’m disheartened.
Not because Nick and June didn’t get a romantic ending.
But because the writers refused to give them a narratively honest one.
Because they pretended this story was never about love — when it always, always was.
Atwood understood that choosing to love someone who is difficult, complicated, flawed — especially when you are too — is one of the most radical things a person can do.
It’s not blind. It’s not passive. It’s a conscious, daily act of seeing someone fully and still saying: yes, you. Especially when the world tells you that love is dangerous. Or selfish. Or futile. And that love —not the violence, not the vengeance — is what ultimately broke Gilead.
And that, to me, is what real feminism is about.
Not perfection. Not purity. Not moral absolutes.
Choice.
The power to decide who you love, how you love, and what you’re willing to risk for it.
To say: this is mine, and I choose it — even if it’s messy. Even if the world tells you not to.
You own it. Out loud.
And that’s what hurts the most: June never got to make that choice.
Not fully. Not freely.
The show skirted it, deflected it, passed it off in glances and silence.
And in doing that, it robbed her of what should’ve been the most radical act of all — choosing the flawed, complicated love that made her feel alive.
And that’s why I’ll never accept a version of this story that treats love as weakness.
That frames complexity as failure.
That suggests safety is more noble than honesty.
That tells us simple is more righteous than real.
Because love isn’t less valuable when it’s complicated.
It’s more.
And choosing it anyway? That’s the most radical thing she ever did.
dededos
blakekathryn
areudirty
janainaart
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
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