By Jacob Miller-
Praise be! After 34 years of waiting, Margaret Atwood has delivered The Testaments, a sequel to her seminal novel The Handmaid’s Tale. But woe! How closely does American life today resemble the Republic of Gilead? The Handmaid’s Tale reflected our scariest fears as it described life in Gilead, a theocracy with some characteristics uncannily like American society. The Testaments explores more of Gilead—how the republic was founded, who enforces the authoritarian regime, and the daily life of the Gilead elite—while following a majestically-crafted plotline.
The Testaments is set 15 years after The Handmaid’s Tale’s cliff-hanger conclusion: Offred enters a car, either finding freedom or punishment. The novel weaves together the testimonies of Agnes, a girl raised in Gilead, and Nicole, a girl raised in Canada who finds herself at the center of Gilead politics, with the memoir of Aunt Lydia, one of the founding members of the new republic. Through a confluence of factors, these three heroines find themselves united, attempting to topple Gilead’s theocracy.
The conspicuous timing of Atwood’s new book indicates that her novel is a rebuke of Trumpian America. The Handmaid’s Tale, which warns against the dangers of Evangelical Christianity, was published during the 1980s against the backdrop of the prominent Evangelical Christianity movement. Her sequel comes at a time when abortion clinics—squeezed without access to Title X funds—are closing and when the fate of Roe v. Wade—the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision guaranteeing women’s right to an abortion—remains uncertain. Atwood herself stated that she began writing The Testaments during the 2016 election, due to Evangelical Christian support for then-candidate Donald Trump.
Atwood’s thinly veiled attacks on the Trump administration are interspersed throughout the book. At one point, an aunt drafts a plan to stem Gilead’s emigration problem and proposes—yes, you guessed it—that the republic declare a national emergency. She also describes Gilead’s environmentally unfriendly policies. These contrived criticisms of American society detract from the novel’s timelessness. The Handmaid’s Tale is powerful because it still resonates in 2019; The Testaments may enjoy shorter-lived relevance.
But other critiques of the United States in 2019 are incorporated much more naturally. The “Wall”—a fixture of The Handmaid’s Tale in the 1980s—takes on new symbolism in 2019. Government enemies and criminals are hanged on the red brick Wall to be displayed publicly in the center of town. The Wall as a symbol of division, oppression, and authoritarian fear mongering, which commented on the Berlin Wall in the 80s, resonates more today than it did three decades ago.
The Testaments also responds to the modern #MeToo movement. Rape and sexual assault allegations against Gilead’s elite are dismissed, echoing Jeffrey Epstein’s repeated evasion of justice, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court despite multiple sexual assault allegations, and President Bill Clinton’s avoidance of blame for the numerous allegations levied against him. Gilead society is also accustomed to blaming the victim of sexual assaults, leading Nicole to question Agnes about the ethics of slut-shaming and victim-blaming.
Margaret Atwood also broaches the abortion debate well. At one point in the novel, a handmaid dies during pregnancy because abortions in Gilead are not allowed, even when the mother’s life is endangered. This belief still exists among the Evangelical Christians who advocate tougher abortion regulation.
In a Q&A with the author published alongside The Testaments, Atwood answered why she decided to write a sequel: “It seemed time to wonder what Gilead might have felt like to someone growing up in it, to someone entering it from outside, and to someone enacting it. It also seemed time to wonder how it might end.” Is that the purpose of this book? Is it a guide to ending a morally corrupt society?
The Handmaid’s Tale’s mastery lay in its simplicity and its dreary description of daily life in a dystopian society. Apart from her nightly ceremonies and her daily outings to the market, Offred was left with nothing to do but rest and describe the gloom of Gilead. The plot in The Handmaid’s Tale was minimal, so Offred’s memoirs capture the feeling of isolation caused by Gilead’s theocratic regime. The Handmaid’s Tale’s elegant writing and provocative reflections about human nature are not present in The Testaments. Instead, The Testaments’ appeal is plot-based; it does not contain the depressing soliloquies that made The Handmaid’s Tale a chilling read.
Despite this, Gilead’s realism does not suffer in Atwood’s sequel. Lydia’s memoir includes a vivid description of the destruction of the United States and the rise of Gilead. The account sounds eerily possible and expounds on the historical storyline established in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Atwood also draws on history as inspiration for Gilead’s power-amassing scheme. The Bible is inaccessible to the masses, much as it was during Medieval society. Like the Middle Ages when the Pope offered the sole interpretation of Bible—even sometimes offering incorrect Biblical interpretations—the Gilead elite determine how the Bible is interpreted and sometimes misinterpret Biblical stories for their own political convenience.
The realism of Gilead is further manifested in Lydia’s description of her ascent to power, which echoes gang hazings: she was forced to commit heinous crimes to prove her loyalty to the dystopian republic.
The Testaments most noticeably diverges from The Handmaid’s Tale’s with its optimistic tone employed throughout the novel. The Handmaid’s Tale told a depressing story about a dystopian society with no end in sight. The narrator was violated every day, and—until the last few pages—did not see any opportunity for redemption. But The Testaments is much more upbeat. Its narrators are three female voices of dissent and defiance. It is not a tale of victimhood; it is a testimony of bravery and courage. Atwood’s criticism of today’s society is apparent, but so is her hope for the future.
The Testaments develops its characters well and examines self-sacrifice for the nobler good as well as self-preservation. All the characters are multifaceted and grapple with their relationship with Gilead. At one point, Aunt Lydia questions her moral strength to complete her treacherous plan. At another, Agnes feels conflicted about abandoning the country she calls home. Agnes and Nicole’s interactions explore a complex tension that results from growing up in markedly different societies. Although they sometimes vehemently disagree with each other, they learn to understand the other’s perspective. The path to justice is difficult for every character and is marked by self-sacrifice, physical hardship, and emotional turmoil. Maybe Atwood has a message for us too?
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