Re-reading Margaret Atwood.

Recently I’ve re-read both The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. This past summer I read The Testaments, pretty quickly and every once in a while I like to re-read The Handmaid’s Tale, so I got a lightly used copy online and re-read them both in succession. Spoilers follow.

Sometimes, personally think it is good to re-read and revisit a book. 

The Handmaid’s Tale has been having a sort of second renaissance and the edition I bought is the original illustration from the original edition’s cover but with a tag saying it is now a Hulu series, and Atwood wrote an interesting introduction about revisiting the novel so many  years later. 

To note, Atwood does not confirm that Offred’s real name is June, that is a kind of theory that evolved from readers because of the women saying their names in a whisper to each other at night at the Red Center.  

If you are a watcher of the Hulu series, apparently she made a cameo in one of the early episodes, so look for her. And apparently the producers swapped out June for a different name. 

The Handmaid’s Tale was so jarring when I first read it, it still is in different ways and with most re-reads you find different things about the book.  When I first read it I felt like it was such a severe open end, less so now — setting aside theories about The Testaments, which I’ll get to further on but in the narrative.

What happened to Offred at the end of the first book was unclear, was she being arrested for real or was it the resistance May Day coming to get her?  At the symposium narrative at the end, they are going over a journal that was found concealed in a wall, and made via tapes/ancient technology trying to piece together times from that weird piece of Gilead history.

In retrospect, one (1) I’m wondering why Offred/June had the tape on her in the first place and two (2) I guess it’s safe to say since “the tape” survived and was not destroyed. So in theory, likely Offred did make it out via May Day.  There is a chance no and a May Day operative embedded in the eyes rescued the tapes — again, that is a far flung theory of mine but a part of me was reading The Testaments hoping that we would find that Offred the narrator of the first book, did survive.

My other realization was I confused the novel and the film the original with Natasha Richardson playing the Offred role.  In the book Offglen, was trying to convince Offred to break into her Commander’s office/study and steal or photograph important documents and plans to figure out his identity in the top tier of Gilead’s regime, saying that May Day would protect her and evacuate her.  Offred is struggling with this, doing something to end this authoritative regime, while fearing for her own safety and sanity.

In the film, she was asked to stab or murder the commander, which she did and then the eyes show up with Nick. The film to note was a little more exposition, you see she is safe and pregnant on other side of the border living with May Day, etc.

However, in the original novel, after attending a “Salvaging” where the handmaidens publicly lynch and pull apart political prisoners or criminals, or those who violated the codes of Gilead, Offglen quite savagely knocks a guy out, and Offred is horrified and Offglen tries to update her discreetly that he was one of May Day operatives, and she was knocking him out for his own good.

Apparently, this was not a good decision for Offglen, perhaps she was already on the radar, and the van was en route for her by the eyes/secret police and she committed suicide — and again, for that too, you had to be committed.  As Offfred the narrator, describes being watched under lock and key to protect viable uteruses from those who tried and previously succeeded.

Offred learns of the death of Offglen, on her next shopping errand where there is a new Offglen, who eventually tells her about the former Offglen’s suicide — again Offred seems both relieved and paralyzed by her fear.  After the Commander’s Wife the former Serena Joy arranged/blessed her to be with Nick she’s gone back to him off her own accord, and now suspects they are pregnant.

Ambivalence about Nick as well haunts her, even with the extra liaisons and confiding to him her real name (again Atwood does not specify what her name was — just that Offred told Nick).   That bond is why she trusted him to go with the “eyes” while the Commander and his Wife were asking questions.

My theory is that May Day via Nick intervened because Nick suspected or somehow knew the real eyes would be visiting soon and with her pregnant– now was the time to go, etc.

Re-reading The Testaments was interesting, there are three (3) narrators here, Aunt Lydia who again per her own survival crafted the whole Handmaiden structure for Gilead and in the process created enemies and a system for the Aunts, which kind of reminded me of the Roman Vestal Virgins or priestesses of Ancient Rome.  The Vestals, could not marry but could study and move around Rome where Roman Wives were shut up in the house.  However, the Vestals, could not consort and if caught the penalty would be death for both the Vestal and her lover.

Most of the original Aunts, were older women not of child-bearing years so this was a: you are with us or against us type situation.  The Aunts, Lydia confides, also managed the bloodlines of Gilead, with such a high rate of babies dying or being born with extreme deformities like two (2) heads due to the toxic environmental conditions, the Aunts were given the task of mitigating what they could by preventing incest or genetic disorders in this elite part of Gilead’s society.

Aunt Lydia threw herself into the pecking order, and even surpassed the original lady at the table making a true enemy with securing her own power with the guy in charge, Commander Judd.  Atwood does not detail how Lydia connected with May Day, but I wonder if it was from the very first — being plucked from group holding, tortured/tested and then offered a respite.  It seems weirdly random or perhaps intended for Judd give her the “forced opportunity,” she did whole heartedly accept.

While crafting the Handmaiden requirements for Gilead she also interwove opportunities for communicating with May Day apparently through a mission program called The Pearl Girls — it was a long game over many years, and not really a crystal clear reveal. Young Aunt Missionaries sent across the border to try to recruit young, healthy fertile women to Gilead to serve either as wives or Hand Maidens as appropriate.

Younger women in Gilead if they did not feel they could deal with an arranged marriage or nuptial required duties of sleeping with older men, could say they had a calling.  This had to be dramatic and often accompanied by a suicide attempt.  Most families wanted to have their eligible daughters married and having babies or attempting to have them — not in service as an Aunt.

Aunt Lydia gives the credit to Commander Judd the Gilead broker she has dealt with over the years, for the Pearl Girls and also the Campaign to return Baby Nicole.  Lydia keeps tabs and Judd is a guy that seems to have a taste for younger wives and no problem moving onto the next if they, don’t have a healthy baby and he is bored and wants a replacement — Lydia has been accommodating him to equalize her power, since the bodies are piling up.

The Baby Nicole campaign is tied to a Handmaiden that escaped Gilead pregnant.  Now how this all happened is vague except Baby Nicole is famous and Gilead fanatically wants her back as return of a national symbol. Sort of made me think of Elian Gonzalez being returned to Cuba.

The two (2) other  younger women characters /narrator in The Testaments, are Daisy and Agnes.

Daisy is living not in Gilead but in what was former Toronto with her parents who try to convince her not to attend a protest but attend she does. Days later her life is upended, when a family friend Ada picks her up from school and tells her that, her parents Melanie and Neil are dead, their business/office bombed and they have to go on the run.  Daisy then abruptly learns she was adopted and she is indeed the iconic Baby Nicole.

Agnes is a young woman living in Gilead, her childhood was somewhat disjointed but she loved her mother Tabitha who told her a story of finding children in a forest and rescuing Agnes — which sort of makes sense in that she has some residual memories of running in a forest with a woman.  Tabitha though gets ill and dies.

At school, one of the “Mean Girls” tells Agnes her mother was actually a handmaiden which traumatizes her and also bonds her with Rebecca or Becka who has a similar backstory.

Then her father/Commander re-marries Paula — I’m still trying to figure out if Paula is the Commander’s Wife from the original book.

Gilead is a small society full of blood, lust and lies.

So things move quickly, Paula and the Commander get a Handmaiden who produces a health baby boy but he was breach, so they cut said Handmaiden open to safely remove him and the complication was the Handmaiden died from the c-section.

Agnes is now of age to be married so Paula and the Aunts in charge are setting up matches — all are not good, the worst being a Commander, and in true small world fashion:  it’s Commander Judd.

Becka via suicide attempt is able to enroll as an Aunt, Agnes takes a quick opportunity and pleads her own case.  Because of the match and I presume her real identify of being born via Pre-Gilead parents, Aunt Lydia gets her out of it and into the Aunts.

Daisy soon joins May Day to purposely be recruited by the Pearl Girls, and Agnes who joins later via Aunt Lydia in a series of complicated plot twists and then find out they are actually half sisters via the same mom, and Agnes realizes those running away/forest flash backs were probably with her biological mom.

And Atwood does not exactly clarify so their “mom,” it could be Offred of the first book, or may be its not.  Offred in the first book mourned over the loss of her daughter after being taken, and the Commander’s Wife was able to procure a look at a picture to show her proof her daughter was still alive, in trying to get her to better accept the whole force-have a baby motivation.

To note, Daisy and Agnes are reunited with their mom once they both flee Gilead in a perilous journey back over the border; so that is something but all remains a little vague and open to interpretation.

Both these books made me think a lot about many things. I’m actually passing the set along to an older teen cousin for her birthday — hoping she will ask a lot of questions.  These books definitely I will revisit again at some point.

To note, in The Testaments as part of the fundamental Christian culture of Gilead, all Jews were apparently re-patriated to Israel. Some stayed and went “underground” but when found out were terminated.  Just interesting that Atwood included it in the narrative as the only alternative by the founders of Gilead v. death.