An Inside Job

“The Testaments,” by Margaret Atwood, 2019

This is the long-awaited sequel to Atwood’s 1985 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”  Between the rampant misogyny embedded in U.S. capitalist culture now exemplified by Trump, and the parallel Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Atwood was bound to do a follow-up.  This book is nothing like the flawed Hulu series, and for that we can be thankful.   It is far better.

 

Bit of a SPOILER ALERT

The story is presented as a series of testimonies, narrations and ‘holographs’ long after the fall of the religious theocracy of Gilead.  The 'testament' title might be a play on the Bible of course, indicating this is a newer testament.  The focus is not on the central character of Atwood’s first book, Offred, as in the Hulu series, but instead employs a large twist.  A certain person within the power structure of Gilead has access to information which can reveal the massive corruption and depravity among Gilead’s religious elite.  Hypocrisy is just a euphemism for their behavior, a hypocrisy we've seen among religious types for years. She has information about the real impact of women’s oppression on girls and women in a theocratic male-chauvinist state, from suicide, murder to sexual abuse - information that has been suppressed by Gilead.  That person is Aunt Lydia, who was one of the vicious disciplinarians in the first book. 

Atwood focuses on how women’s initiative does not die even when being forced to be part of an oppressive state apparatus.  As such, Atwood does not focus on a rebellion of the majority, or the initiatives of the Marthas, econowives and econohusbands, Handmaid’s, slave workers or others, but on a former judge, now the head of the Aunts.  It is ‘revolution from above,’ by scandal and exposure, not by mass action and politics.  Lydia is aided by several young Aunts who have a personal stake in the outcome to ‘help women.’  Baby Nicole, who was spirited away from Gilead to safety in Canada originally, also plays a role, as she has grown up. 

Gilead is isolated on the world stage, its economy in tatters, having lost part of the U.S. through civil war, with a ruling class that is consumed by in-fighting.  (Sound familiar?) The political economy of Gilead is invisible though, as it is not clear who is growing the food, maintaining the infrastructure or making anything, though there is one fishing boat in evidence. This is a personal story above all, similar to many dystopian fantasies which never explain certain basic things like origins or economics.  However, Gilead is not a fantasy, as there are obvious parallels with present right-wing political Christianity and political Islam, with political Hinduism and political Judaism not far behind. 

Atwood’s main point is that the oppression of women is central to certain conservative religious ideologies, born of ancient holy patriarchies.  An attempt to bring them back into the present will only fail, as the inevitable fall of Gilead makes clear.  According to Atwood, this happens through the courageous acts of women themselves.

Other reviews on the topic of women and religion, use blog search box, upper left:  “The Handmaid’s Tale,” (book and TV series); “Rise of the ‘Nones,’” “God is Not Great,” “Libertarian Atheism versus Liberal Religionism,” “Female Genital Mutilation,” “Annihilation of Caste,” “Jude the Obscure,” “Really, Rape, Still?”  “Marxism and the Oppression of Women,” “Feminists and Feminists,” “Fortunes of Feminism,” “Stitched Up – the Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion,” “Socialist Feminism,” “Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.”  

The Kulture Kommissar

October 20, 2019