The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 2019 Nan A. Talese/Doubleday: NY
Because I read The Testaments while news poured in from China, South Korea, and Japan about Corona Virus, the fictional elements of the book were more abstract and less frightening than were the scary realities around me. The dystopian society Atwood describes was one “remove” from a very compelling contemporary reality. And yet, I could see parallels between the book and our current reality. In both, widespread scarcity plus unbridled power and tight media control in the hands of a few created a dystopian society or a society devolving into one.
In The Testaments, like the book The Handmaid’s Tale, environmental pollution has caused sterility in 99% of the population. Powerful men exercised control over the media, education, and all others (specifically, women) by engaging religion in its narrowest and most rigid forms. Never mind that narrow, rigid religious views have created some of the most evil empires in human history; they work “well” for the purposes of simplifying every issue to its crudest, stupidest elements and controlling others.
There are at least two categories of women living under Gilead’s reign of terror: those who support the system (most Wives and Aunts) and those abused by it (The Handmaids and any other disrespected, cast off females). The Wives and Aunts who comply bought the whole line of propaganda and are pleased to be attached to powerful men. They are strident and self-righteous in their support for the ways of Gilead; any deviation or challenge threatens their own precarious situations. Other females who dare to challenge the rigid gender roles are the MOST threatening. The Wives cannot entertain or tolerate any doubt because they have a tiger by the tail and will be devoured if they let go. Aunts are also tied to the system – they are often brutal in their indoctrination of the Handmaids, vicious in their treatment of the girls under them, and cutthroat with each other. In a closed and narrow system, the women who support Gilead use constant machinations to claw away for power and to stay in favor. Aunt Lydia is the rare exception who sees and lives in “both sides” of the treacherous divide; a double agent. Intelligent, sly and adept at complex, political intrigue, Aunt Lydia wrote her story even though (or because) she knows THEY would come for her.
I observed the arc of my own perspectives in relation to my reading material. While The Testaments did not frighten or upset me as deeply as The Hand Maid’s Tale had done, neither caused me the angst and worry that stories of spies and double agents did. As a child of about 10 years old, I remember reading a neighbor kid’s “Mad Magazine” with its cartoon feature “Spy vs Spy”. That scared me.*
*I’m not quite sure why Paul was allowed to have a publication with that level of wry “sophisticated” humor, but our parents were fairly progressive (or benignly neglectful) and we had lots of time to run free outdoors and between houses. He seemed unfazed by the terror that multiple layers of spy intrigue held for me. Mind you, this is a kid who jumped out of a second story window at his home in Levittown, Long Island, to see if he would break his leg. He did. I became a sedentary, boring academic who has never broken a leg – it’s just that I believed early in the forces of mass and gravity.
I was shaken by the idea that knowing what was true and right can be hard. I had heard some of Daddy’s stories from WW2 when he worked in London for the US Army Signal Corps on Operation Overlord (D-day) taking phone calls from the French Resistance in German-occupied France. I was raised believing that ordinary people might have to make very important choices in ambiguous circumstances and under stress. I was scared by that.
We are all embedded in a complex society where individual choices matter but . . . maybe not as much as we’d like. We can seek to make good choices (like voting for the best possible candidate and tracking the work s/he does) and to practice the habits needed to protect ourselves (like hand washing and self-isolation) but many choices are not under our control. I disagree with both of Atwood’s works that religion is wrong; I agree with her that it can be badly perverted and used for terrible wrong. Used rightly, the Christian message is very clear about seeking wisdom, engaging respect for others, and investing self in a loving community.
Susan Olmstead Wang 