I will admit, I was a little trepidatious at first. I generally am not a fan of sequels published long after the fact, and see them as usually being far inferior to their progenitors. However, I was lucky enough to see an interview with Margaret Atwood hosted live from London at a local theater. In it, I heard some excerpts read from the book, and an altogether too brief talk with the author about her work and her decisions for writing it after so many years.
Naturally of course, many of them had to do with the current politics in the United States, but they were also influenced by the advent of the Me Too movement, and campaigns for women's rights the world over. It was also because the Handmaid has become a surprisingly popular and effective method of protest. Showing up at pro-Choice rallies, and standing as a silent testament to the suffering women will endure when the rights to their bodies are taken away by men. In that case, how could she not write a sequel to explore more of the world of Gilead?
The Testaments is very different from the original. The original, which told the story through one narrator's view which often included hazy recollections, is now told through three distinct perspectives. They are alternatively called: The Ardua Hall Holograph, Witness 369A and Witness 369B. Each has their own names, but as with the case of identity in much of Atwood's work, those prove to be fluid and I won't spoil anything by using the various identities and pseudonyms characters operate under, save one.
Using three different perspectives to tell the story set in Gilead is, in my opinion, genius. Though only one of the narrators is an adult, all three convey a different set of ideas, cultural upbringings and motivations. Each is quite understandable, sympathetic, and ultimately engaging in keeping you interested in the outcome of these in-universe historical documents.
The one character whose name I will reveal, is that the Ardua Hall Holograph is one of the villains from the first book, the erstwhile leader of the Aunts, the women who control other women in Gilead, Aunt Lydia. Hers is a shocking story, one which shows an amazing insight into what creates an authoritarian regime, what one must do to survive in one, and how one can be brought down. In doing this Atwood effectively wields empathy like a cudgel, as no doubt those who had read the original book or watched the television series felt they could never like or sympathize with a woman who engaged in the wholesale abuse of other women. The story of Aunt Lydia shows this not to be true.
It is a fascinating tale of how indoctrination and reshaping a narrative is used to control and coerce subject populations in authoritarian regimes. We see the start of Gilead, and a great deal of the brutality used to begin the control of women as seen in The Handmaid's Tale. What is fascinating is that, other than the specific roles of Aunts, Handmaid's, Wives, ect, Atwood has drawn almost entirely on real historical precedent for how awful regimes are established and keep power.
As a small aside, this can almost be seen as a snub against those who insist "it can't happen here" or that the United States is somehow immune to the power of authoritarian instigators. Indeed, such an idea has been snubbed as far back as the 1930s in a very literal way. A good message to take from this book, and its predecessors then, are that our democratic rights must be guarded very carefully. Hence the powerful, silent symbolism of the Handmaid.
