I can believe the little girl has suppressed her memories until she SAW her dad. Then it would be like waking from a dream.
its true that in much of history women did not have bank accounts or many rights. And yet, it was never gilead. Some women always worked: housemaids, cooks, dairy maids, nurses... widows owned property. And so on. Women talked back to husbands who certainly had no right to mutilate them.
it’s puzzling in a way that Serena wojld ever have wanted a seeming Saudi existence.