In the 34 years since Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale, the seminal dystopian novel has become a cultural phenomenon. Its scarlet-cloaked protagonist, brought to vivid life by Elisabeth Moss in the TV adaptation that began in 2017, is an instantly recognisable symbol of feminist protest, with women all over the world adopting the costume to campaign for their rights.
Last week,its eagerly awaited sequelThe Testamentswas released, inviting readers to enter once more the terrifying religious autocracy of Gilead – in which fertile women are subjected to ritualised rape and forced to bear children for the ruling class. The literary release of the year was met with rapturous praise from critics and fans of the 79-year-old Canadian author’s work; hundreds queued for hours to see her at the midnight launch in London. Before it was even published, it had received a place on the Booker Prize shortlist, with its judges (who received early copies) describing it as a ‘savage and beautiful novel’ that ‘speaks to us today, all around the world, with particular conviction and power’.
The Testaments is set 15 years after the final scene of The Handmaid’s Tale, which was published in 1985. It finally provides answers to the questions readers have been asking since: what happens to the narrator Offred, the baby she is carrying and her elder daughter, who was torn away from her to be raised by another family?
Of course, viewers of the acclaimed Channel 4 drama have seen a version of what unfolds after the closing chapter of the book, when Offred steps into a van and an uncertain future. But now, finally, we learn the intentions of its author. The compelling story features three narrators – Baby Nicole, now 16 and living under another name; Agnes, Offred’s elder daughter, still in Gilead and facing marriage the moment she hits puberty; and Aunt Lydia, the sadistic overseer of Gilead’s Handmaid system. It explores how the regime’s rulers came to be so morally compromised and, intriguingly, whether even its most seemingly faithful adherents might be planting the seeds of its ultimate destruction. There’s also a new group called the Pearl Girls, who dress in silvery gowns and act as missionaries, trying to attract converts to Gilead in Canada.
'Instead of moving away from Gilead, we've moved towards it'
Speaking for the first time about the book on its launch day at the British Library in London, Atwood said fans had been begging her to write a sequel since The Handmaid’s Tale first came out. ‘They wanted a continuation of Offred’s voice and there was no way I could recreate that,’ she said. ‘But as time went on, and instead of moving further away from Gilead, we moved towards it – particularly in theUS – I re-examined that position. She added, ‘We know from The Handmaid’s Tale that Gilead vanishes... So, how did it collapse? I was interested in exploring that and also what it would be like for the second generation.
Not long ago, the world depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale felt comfortingly distant from our own. Recently, however, the novel has begun to feel eerily prescient in some respects. In the US, abortion rights threaten to be overturned, while images of children being torn from their parents’ arms at the US-Mexico border bear striking similarities to Gilead. Remarkably, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred even refers to ‘false news’. With reports of accelerating climate change, and politicians increasingly using divisive language to stir hatred, 2019 feels like the ideal time to revisit her dystopia.
The novelist began working on the sequel in 2015, the year before Bruce Miller’s TV adaptation began filming. ‘I’d thought about it over the years, but I started thinking about it more in the run-up to the 2016 US election,’ she said. Like many others, she sees parallels between events in the US since and Gilead’s absolute control of female reproduction. ‘What these restrictive laws about women’s bodies are claiming is that the state owns your body,’ she said, describing attacks on abortion rights as ‘enforced childbirth’. She added, ‘For a society claiming to value individual freedom, I would say to them, you evidently don’t think those freedoms extend to women.’
She and Miller conferred on plot developments in the TV version to ensure it did not contradict the book and vice versa. Elements from The Testaments are likely to be woven into future seasons, just as parts of the show have crept into the book, such as Offred’s baby being called Nicole (a name Atwood says was her idea to begin with). Despite horrifying aspects, though, The Testaments is ultimately a hopeful novel, filled with female resistance against oppression. ‘These regimes have a tendency not to last,’ said Atwood. ‘It’s clear in the book that Gilead is over and has crumbled from within.
For fans hoping it won’t be the author’s last foray into Gilead, she offers another glimmer of optimism: ‘Never say never.’ Praise be.
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