What Is June's Daughter Being Trained For On The Handmaid's Tale?

Since the very first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, June’s major mission has been to get out of Gilead — and to take her daughter, Hannah, with her.

Although June had a chance to escape on the season 2 finale, she realized she couldn’t leave Hannah behind, and now, in The Handmaid's Tale season 3, she’s all about getting Hannah back, which is a bit of a challenge, since Hannah is living with a new family now. But does this mean that June’s daughter will become a Handmaid herself when she’s older?

Although children are sacred in Gilead, the show hasn’t gone into too much detail about what their futures look like, although they all certainly seem to be training to do something.

At this point, it doesn’t seem like Hannah (or the other girls like her) would become Handmaids. Handmaids are women who have sinned, and they’ve been given the role to make amends for their sins, since their fertility makes them useful. Unless Hannah becomes guilty of doing something bad in the eyes of the Sons of Jacob, it doesn’t seem like that’s the path she’s on.

The goal of having so many children is obviously to repopulate the country — and it seems their society is hoping that means women who are fertile. Radioactive activity and farming methods are what caused the widespread infertility in the first place, and Gilead’s already trying to remedy that by farming organically and Colony workers digging to get rid of the contaminated soil. Hannah may or may not be fertile, since she was alive during the radioactivity, but in theory, the baby girls born more recently may actually be fertile themselves, thus eliminating the need for Handmaids in the first place. Then again, this is Gilead, and if the role of Handmaid helps the Commanders continue to manipulate women, so the concept could stick around anyway.

It seems most likely that Hannah and the other girls are being groomed to be wives and mothers someday, although their place in society will probably be determined by who they marry (since, unfortunately, men have all the power in Gilead). If Hannah can manage to marry a Commander, she’d fill the role of being a Commander’s wife. If not, she could end up becoming an Econowife, falling into one of the lowest ranks of people.

In the end, it’s hard to say for sure what will happen to Hannah — or if the society will crumble long before she’s an adult — but hopefully, June will be able to rescue her (and herself) before we have to find out.