The Testaments - M. Atwood

goffmanon
23 sept. 2023
5 min de lecture

Alternative title: an instrumental literary work that encourages its readership to ponder over sociological issues.

The Handmaid's Tale : "A risky venture" ¹

If you haven't heard of Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian novel, then stop reading this article, rush to the library and read it immediately. In a totalitarian America where the Constitution is replaced by Puritanism, Offred is taught about her role as a Handmaid, to wit, offer her body to be raped to eventually give her child to the Waterford Commander and his barren wife. In addition to offering a captivating plot, Atwood's brilliant novel frightens its readers by emphasising the power of a theocratic dictatorship that enslaves fertile women with the now-rare ability to have babies, reducing them to nothing more than breeders.

“ We are two-legged wombs, that's all”

- Offred (p.176)

The novel also unsettles the readers with its authentic background material. The frightening aspect of The Handmaid's Tale's genesis is indeed Atwood's golden rule whereby she would not put "any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the 'nightmare' of history". Her meticulous record of historical events had me question, and more specifically condemn the history of mankind. My naivety led me to believe Atwood had fictionalised some of the events in order to add drama. This small sense of comfort that women are forced to have babies could never happen in the real world was destroyed when I discovered Romanian president Nicolae Ceaușescu wanted women to have at least four babies so the country would increase its national wealth. Your reading experience thereafter shifts from a remarkable and entertaining dystopia to a moral engagement to think about our civil and human rights as individuals.

Providing a plethora of dichotomies (authority/submission, men/women, imprisonment/freedom), The Handmaid's Tale strengthens a feeling of oppression by not only gradually neutralising the identity of an individual by hiding their face and body from the world; but by annihilating any hope to retrieve their voice. In the repressive Republic of Gilead, any form of freedom represents a danger and is immediately suppressed: "unwomen" (infertile women, widows, feminists) are sent to clean toxic waste, members of the LGBTQIA+ community are hanged, etc. Silence is mandatory. Hope is forbidden. Numbness is necessary to survive.

The Testaments: survival of the fittest

"Could The Testaments live up to The Handmaid's Tale?" was the question I asked myself before read the long-awaited sequel. Well, the answer is simple: multivocal narrative.

Published thirty-four years after The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments is set fifteen years after Offred's ambiguous arrest by the Eyes. However the narrator is no longer Offred but three female characters related to her: ruthless Aunt Lydia, shy and sensitive Agnes ("Witness 369A"), and outspoken Daisy/Nicole ("Witness 369B"). Gilead is rotting from within. The Founders of Gilead are plotting against one another: Aunts against Aunts, Commanders against Commanders, Wives against Wives, thus paving the way for double agents such as Aunt Lydia to send "destroying angels" with information of paramount importance to Canada, waiting for Gilead's collapse.

These three overlapping narratives alternate to give us a 360-degree understanding of Gilead and its state apparatus as one narrator has been brought up by the Gileadean system, one who has grown up outside of it, and one who has written its Puritan laws and played an instrumental role as the oppressor. In opposition to The Handmaid's claustrophobic first-person narrative, this dialogical approach enables the reader to breathe and travel through time (before, during and after Gilead's collapse) and space (in Gilead and Canada). Interestingly The Testaments succeeds in offering a less oppressive and more optimistic plot inasmuch as the promise of freedom prevails. For starters, if you compare the covers of both novels, and more particularly the dominant colours, you can notice Atwood moved from the violent red to the colour of rebirth and new beginnings, to wit, apple-green. Moreover, the most intriguing narrator Aunt Lydia gradually details the corruptions pervading Gilead and how fragile the regime can crumble when secrets exposed.

“ As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes”

- Professor Crescent Moon (p.407)

Here lies the most striking difference between The Handmaid's Tale and its sequel: truth is restored. In their confessional narratives, the two young Agnes and Daisy are told their understanding of society and their vision of life —whether in Gilead or in Canada— are just an illusion and a lie:

- the indoctrinated Agnes realises the Bible has been rewritten in a more Gileadean-convenient manner in order to justify their dictatorial administration,

- while resourceful Daisy learns a surprising twist of her life as the daughter of owners of a used-clothing shop which has been a deception, a ploy to mislead Gileadean authorities.

Even in the novel's epilogue, truth transcends time as Professor Pieixoto —who doubted Offred's authentic testimony in The Handmaid's Tale's epilogue— now acknowledges the legitimacy of all the female's testaments. Even as a remote reader of the tales of victims of war, torture and abuse, the Professor comprehends the power of words and their impact on future generations.

In an address for Amnesty International, Atwood explains that "the writer is an observer, a witness, and such observations are the air he breathes.” She indeed affirms that writing “is also a witnessing”² of history. Historical record is the ultimate weapon to fight tyranny. Acts of hope reside in one's recording of abuse (Offred), in a brave and unburdening holograph (Lydia), or simple post-trauma interviews (Agnes & Daisy). Atwood's characters convey the message whereby the simple act of writing can be incredibly liberating while extremely dangerous to totalitarian regimes. Through testaments, voices can be retrieved, shared and displayed as valuable tokens of human history.

Reading Atwood's works is always an unforgettable experience. It is a smooth ride, there is no effort required. I oftentimes say the greater the story, the less I want to finish it; because I don't want to be stripped away from the world the author has created. For The Testaments, I read the last ten pages in three evenings. That is the power of Atwood's writing skills on me. The Testaments (and The Handmaid's Tale) may as well be read as literary manifestos as their impact is such that one must reflect on their own understanding of society.