The Testaments by Margaret Atwood with a reread of The Handmaid's Tale

With some time created by sheltering at home, I picked up The Testaments finally to read. After about a chapter, I realized that since it had been eons since I had read The Handmaid's Tale, that I had better reread it. It is very enlightening to revisit an incredible book that was written in 1985. My first read was a result of a wonderful woman and mentor giving it to the members of a pastoral nominating committee for a church in our previous hometown. She insisted that, before we make a decision, that all read it. This was very difficult for some of the men on the committee, but since they respected her, the did it. Needless to say, it made for some heated conversation and debate over the roles women played in the world. The Handmaid's Tale (THT) is a dystopian novel that takes place in Gilead where the women are subjugated to men in a patriarchal society. The ending, "Historical Notes,"  leaves the reader in the air as to what really happened to the protagonist of the story, Offred. For many years, Atwood had been urged by her fans to write a sequel to the novel. She resisted for thirty-four until she wrote and published The Testaments. 

Set in Gilead fifteen years after The Handmaid's Tale, the novel is narrated by three females: Aunt Lydia, who was one of the most powerful and cruel of the Aunts from THT, Daisy, a young girl living in Canada, and Agnes, a child who has grown up in Gilead. Through their eyes the reader gains insight into the workings of Mayday, a resistance movement against Gilead, The Eyes, and the Pearl Sisters. Aunt Lydia hints at a movement to overthrow the Gilead regime as she writes her memoirs as the Arudua Hall holograph. 

Meanwhile, Daisy relates her story as a "witness" testimony. Her parents, Melanie and Neil, who we come to find out are adoptive parents, are killed in an explosion at their business. Daisy is taken in by Ada, who works for Mayday. She learns her true identity and is "returned" to Gilead and assumes the name Jade, a young woman, who will be trained to be an Aunt and critical to the coup that is being planned. 

Agnes has spent her life in Gilead, raised in an elite family, by her mother, Tabitha, and father Commander Kyle. After her mother dies, her father remarries Paula, the so epitome of the wicked step-mother. She is promised to be wed to a notorious Commander Judd, but convinces Aunt Lydia that this is not in her best interest to wed. 

The story that is told by these three narrators reveals more about the horrors of a society that has subjugated women to mere handmaids. However, the most frightening thought, as in THT, is that one sees it in our own society. Reading it, I sent many quotes to my daughter, who is an Atwood devotee and scholar. Have we not in thirty-five years grown to dispel so much of the prevailing Gilead philosophy? NO, we haven't!

We were custodians of an invaluable treasure that existed, unseen, inside us; we were precious flowers that had to be kept safely inside glass houses, or else we would be ambushed and our petals would be torn off and our treasure would be stolen and we would be ripped apart and trampled by the ravenous men who might lurk around any corner, out there in the wide sharp-edged sin-ridden world.

Women have more value than just their bodies and this indoctrination is merely a scare tactic.  

Would you like someone at our Calm and Balm clinic to consult?" Perhaps not just yet," he said. "Most likely it is imaginary, as so many of these female complaints prove to be."

How many women deal with this on a day-to-day basis? And this

It was always a cruelty to promise them equality...Simply by their nature they can never achieve it. We have already begun the merciful task of lowering their expectations.  

 Finally, as in The Handmaid's Tale, "The Thirteenth Symposium," sheds light on the fate of Gilead, Aunt Lydia, Offred, and the realization that the narrators of the historical documents are taken seriously. 
 
Atwood is a master of prose, thought, and insight into our society. She has written, what seemed to a fact thirty-four years ago and what we are seeing as a reality today - the sexual assault of women. Her writing is eloquent and elegant and The Testaments, as The Handmaid's Tale will be worth a reread in the not so distant future. WOW!!