An Analysis of Symbols and Motifs in "The Handmaiden": A Dickensian tale of true love seen from a feminist and anti-colonialist lens:

(also thank you to my betas @LADYH1DEKO, @offbrandwagner and @juIesvaughnn )

I. Gloves/Hands: A recurring motif, It reveals class relationships where labor is performed by the hands. Sookhee, being a poor thief, is a skilled manual worker. (revealing the class difference between her and Hideko). It is also a double entendre for their sexual relations.

In Sookhee’s scene as she learns her tasks as a handmaid, Hideko pulls out drawers of gloves before a reading. These gloves highlight both the class difference between Sookhee and Hideko, yet simultaneously show Hideko’s reservations towards Sookhee.

The use of hands within the Handmaiden is a symbol of contact and intimacy between Hideko and Sookhee. In one of their more intimate scenes, Sookhee grabs Hideko by the face to tell her that Hideko’s mother loved her, allowing them to emotionally connect for the first time.

Hands similarly re-occur as a sexual metaphor as she dresses Hideko.

As Hideko reads to the audience, she is asked to wear these gloves when handling the books. While this may reveal the delicacy of the books, it may also imply that the books’ content is inherently dirty, and by wearing gloves she is protecting herself from their perversity.

II. The Library Scene:

“The daughter of a legendary thief, who sewed winter coats out of stolen purses. Herself a thief, pickpocket, swindler. My saviour who came to tear my life apart. My Tamako. My Sookhee.”

Sookhee performs labor in the service of Hideko by tearing the library apart: in some ways, she does tear apart Hideko’s miserable life, saving her and regifting her a happier one.

The phrase “sewed winter coats out of stolen purses” implies rebirth and new life. As coats are used for protection against the winter chill, it is connoted that Sookhee wishes to protect Hideko by destroying her old life and creating a less harsh future for her.

On the boat, Sookhee grabs Hideko’s gloves and with Fujiwara’s wedding ring and a mustache, throws it off of the boat. This shows the end of Hideko and Sookhee having to keep their love a secret and are finally allowed to connect with one another.

The glove, a symbol of class difference and colonialism is tossed away with the ring and the mustache (both being constructs of masculinity and patriarchy) portraying their freedom from the perverse unwanted desires of men who grope them and violently fantasize about them.

In the final scene, Count Fujiwara has his fingers cut off of his hand by Hideko’s Uncle, revealing an end to his unwanted violent sexual advances toward Hideko. His lack of connection to Hideko is contrasted to the girls’ consummation scene where their love can come to light.

III. Love at first sight:

Count Fujiwara states: “I look at women’s eyes. Only the eyes. They turn their gaze away, but then they always look back. It’s a kind of silent dialogue… I met Hideko’s eyes by chance but she didn’t look away. Indeed it was I who shifted my gaze.”

However, during Sookhee and Hideko’s first meeting, Sookhee mentions being astounded by Hideko’s beauty as she gazes at her. In this scene, Hideko blushes and turns away instead of holding eye contact, implying the use of the “love at first sight” trope.

IV. The Cherry Tree // Choking

The cherry tree on which Hideko’s mother and aunt hanged themselves is brought with Hideko from Japan, a recurring representation of death and a general bad omen in Hideko’s life.

This tree represents the fetishization of the Japanese culture by Uncle Kouzuki, uprooted and violently planted by colonialist sentiment during the occupation of Korea. He goes on to describe Korea as “soft, slow, and dull” where Japan is beautiful.

As Hideko goes to frustratedly hang herself on that same tree, Sookhee saves her once more, and Hideko thwarts her likely fate of ending up like her aunt.

It also displays the patriarchal values intrinsic to the culture, the asphyxiation representing the suffocation of women being forced to conform to gender roles and remain submissive.

The idea of choking directly correlates to the voices women have in society. She (much like her aunt) is not allowed to use her own voice. Before Sookhee saves her from hanging herself, her voice is controlled entirely by her Uncle Kouzuki for his readings.

She also often repeats the same things her aunt used to say before her.

Park Chan-Wook himself compares Hideko’s reading scens to “gang rape,” stating that the men all violate Hideko by fantasizing about her, and disfiguring Hideko’s voice to place themselves within her reading.

Count Fujiwara’s fantasy with Juliette is graphically depicted to us. During this fantasy, he states that he will “give anything in the world” for one night with “Juliette” and the fantasy ends with Juliette’s lover being choked to death.

“Juliette” holds significance within de Sade literature. Hideko’s readings are described as “Sade-sque.” The novel “Juliette” is about a nymphomaniac woman who meets a fellow femme fatale, Clairwil, who tortures and murders men as revenge for male brutality towards women.

In a later scene, where Hideko seduces Count Fujiwara with a poisoned drink, play-acting the role of the femme-fatale “Juliette,” he says the same thing, that he would “give anything in the world” for one night with her. Therefore, Fujiwara’s fantasies foreshadow his own death.

Hideko's revenge comes full circle when her uncle and Fujiwara die from mercury poisoning. Thus, the two men have also become, “soft, slow and dull,” ironically, much like the depiction of Korea that Kouzuki was determined to escape.

V. Literacy

“Do you suppose a girl is sitting here? That girl is lost! Do you think she has arms and legs, with flesh and cloth upon them? She has only bones, stripped white! She is as white as a page of paper! She is a book, from which the words have peeled and drifted!”

In the context of The Handmaiden, the library (and literacy in general) is understood to be a bourgeois colonialist tool and thus represents the patriarchal oppression of women under these ideals.

The library in itself is connoted as a place of evil, where Hideko is often abused and has no control over. She is forced to dress herself like a doll for her readings fully under the supervision of her perverted uncle.

There is a snake placed at the doorway of the library, a bad omen that symbolizes the evil that lurks within. The uncle’s tongue is painted black with ink, and he is compared to the snake as a venomous villain, adulterating Hideko with his perverse desires.

The library, we later find, is stocked with pornography, depicting how the vulnerable - especially women - are often cast aside in the intellectual and artistic spheres that men dominate.

The depiction of a naked woman within the cigarette is a depiction of the evils of hypersexualizing women. Count Fujiwara’s inhalation of the toxic fumes from the cigarette foreshadows that his death will be brought about by his objectification of women.

This motif is similarly introduced with Count Fujiwara, who is brought to tutor Hideko in the arts, representing how women’s education is essentially provided to make her more desirable to her Uncle (and men of that era) rather than any desire she has to learn the arts herself.

In the library scene, Sookhee, an illiterate country girl (the opposite of Hideko, brought up in seclusion, oppression and male domination) saves Hideko by destroying this library and all it symbolizes.

So, in conclusion: