Margaret Atwood: Return to Gilead

Thirty-four years after its original publication, The Handmaid’s Tale continues to captivate readers around the world. Now, Margaret Atwood has released the long-awaited sequel to this best-selling novel, The Testaments.

A Look Back at the Handmaid's Tail

The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the near-future dystopian Republic of Gilead, where an extremist patriarchal religious group called the Sons of Jacob has taken control of the U.S. government and established a totalitarian theocracy. Under their rule, all women have been relegated to just a few specific roles within the new society. One such role, the Handmaids, are women who are used solely as reproductive vessels for high-ranking officers and their wives.

The novel follows the story of one handmaid, June/Offred, as she struggles to survive under the new extremist government and deliberates attempting to escape to outlying rebel territories that may have not yet fallen to the Sons of Jacob.

[SPOILER ALERT] The end of The Handmaid’s Tale leaves the reader trapped in ambiguity as Offred leaves the compound in a van, signalling that she has either been rescued or betrayed by her clandestine love interest, Nick Blaine. [End spoiler]

“I would really love to know what happens but I’m not sure we’re going to find that out,” says Munro Books’ Event Coordinator Jessica Paul. “The [new] book makes no mention of June/Offred at all, so it’s hard to know if we’ll actually get her story concluded or not in the future.”

‘TERRIFYING AND EXHILARATING’

Though it is unclear whether readers will learn what became of Offred, we do know that the sequel will not keep pace with Hulu’s hit TV show based on Atwood’s classic. The show has already surpassed Atwood’s original material and The Testaments shows that Atwood is going in a different direction.

The Testaments centers on the accounts of three women still living in Gilead, 15 years after Atwood last left off in The Handmaid’s Tale.

The Testaments has won the Booker Prize for 2019, and its judges were some of the only people to have laid eyes on the new novel before it was released. The Booker judges released a statement to the press saying only that the book was “terrifying and exhilarating.”

THE NEW GUY FAWKES MASK

The Testaments’ release could not have come at a more relevant time. The success of the television series, along with the turbulent global political climate, has seen the handmaid’s uniform taken up by political activists and feminist organizers around the world. The red cloak and white bonnet has appeared in protests in Argentina, Ireland, the United States and elsewhere, and has quickly become a cross-cultural symbol of resistance. An op-ed in Wired has even deemed the handmaid’s uniform “the Guy Fawkes mask of 2019.” (The Guy Fawkes mask is an anti-establishment symbol that has recently become a recognizable trademark of the online hacktivist group Anonymous).

The uniform was donned by pro-choice protesters in Ireland during the March 2018 referendum to overturn its eighth amendment, which granted equal rights to life to both mother and unborn child. A letter penned by Atwood was even read in front of the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2017 by women’s rights protesters, also clad in the iconic cloak and bonnet.

Perhaps most notably, the handmaid’s uniform has appeared in countless protests in the United States in recent years. Activists in the U.S. have employed the handmaid’s uniform in opposition to now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh’s confirmation hearing, as well as in demonstrations in Alabama where earlier this year the state’s Senate passed Bill 25-6, which effectively outlawed access to abortion services state-wide and set the stage for a challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

“It was a bit like what happened to George Orwell’s 1984. We are just in that particular phase of history where democracy is swinging back away from us and some of the progress we’ve seen is eroding, particularly in the U.S., where women’s access to abortion is very quickly being taken from us,” says Leslie Hurtig, artistic director at Vancouver Writers Festival. “[Atwood] worried about that and wrote about that a long time ago, [warning us] to never rest too much on our laurels because you never know when a new figure will be in power who will turn the tide. She speaks very well to that.”

In a discussion hosted by Twitter in Toronto last year, Atwood spoke on the political significance of The Handmaid’s Tale, saying, “You write a book like that hoping that it will not come true. ‘Here is a possible future. You are possibly heading towards it. Is that where you want to live?’

“I thought it would diminish, that it would become less true. Instead it became more true.”

FROM CANADIAN LITERATURE TO A GLOBAL STAGE

With more than 50 published works and counting, Atwood has long been hailed as a Canadian literary treasure. With a now global platform, many readers are hoping that, despite her growing fame, she will be able to stay true to the writing style they love.

“I just hope that she’s able to keep the same writing and the same voice that she had since the first book,” says Book Warehouse Manager Mary-Ann Yazedian. “I just wonder if she’s going to manage to really keep the characters the way that we really love them.”

Yazedian adds that, since the popularity of the TV show, she’s seen a notable uptick in customers coming in for Atwood’s novels.

With the increased international attention the series has brought to her writing, Paul hopes that Atwood’s fame will provide opportunities for more Canadian authors to be thrust into the global spotlight.

“I would hope that people who have been introduced to Canadian literature through [Atwood] would then look to others, because there’s so many fantastic Canadian writers. I think Canadian literature has its presence out there across the world now, but there’s still yet more to be discovered.”

According to Hurtig, this is likely far from the last we’ll hear from Atwood.

“I will be curious to know if this is her protest song, if this is her way of speaking out to a broad audience about what is going on right now,” says Hurtig. “She’s incredibly political, she’s incredibly passionate, and she always has been. She’s never been one to shy away from speaking up and sharing her thoughts, and I think this is more of that. She can’t help but keep writing. It’s who she is. She’s not one to retire.”