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The Handmaid’s Tale Series is a dystopian novel series by Margaret Atwood, consisting of The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and its sequel, The Testaments (2019). Set in the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, The Handmaid’s Tale follows Offred, a Handmaid forced into reproductive servitude under a patriarchal regime. The novel explores themes of oppression, resistance, and female autonomy. The Testaments, set 15 years later, expands on Gilead’s inner workings through the perspectives of Aunt Lydia and two younger women. The series has won multiple awards and has been adapted into a critically acclaimed TV series.
About The Handmaid’s Tale Series
1. The Handmaid’s Tale (Book 1: The Handmaid’s Tale Series)
Now a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. The Handmaid’s Tale is an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times)
The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population.
The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment’s calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions. The Handmaid’s Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and a tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best.
“Atwood takes many trends which exist today and stretches them to their logical and chilling conclusions . . . An excellent novel about the directions our lives are taking . . . Read it while it’s still allowed.” –Houston Chronicle
Plot summary
After staging an attack killing the president of the United States and most of Congress, a radical political group called the “Sons of Jacob” uses theonomic ideology to launch a revolution. The Constitution is suspended, newspapers are censored, and the United States of America is reformed into a military dictatorship known as the Republic of Gilead. The new regime quickly consolidates its power, overtaking all other religious groups, including Christian denominations.
The regime reorganizes society using a peculiar interpretation of some Old Testament ideas, and a new militarized, hierarchical model of social and religious fanaticism among its newly created social classes. One of the most significant changes is the limitation of women’s rights. Women become the lowest-ranking class and are not allowed to own money or property, or to read and write. Most significantly, women are deprived of control over their own reproductive functions. Though the regime controls most of the country, various rebel groups remain active.
The story is told in first-person narration by a woman named Offred, a criminal guilty of trying to escape to Canada with a forged passport alongside her husband and 5-year-old daughter; she is also considered an adulterer for being married to a divorced man. Her marriage was forcibly dissolved, and her daughter was taken from her. Instead of being sentenced under the Republic of Gilead’s draconian criminal justice system, Offred accepted training to become a “Handmaid” at the Rachel and Leah Centre, an alternative only available to fertile women: environmental pollution and radiation have drastically affected fertility, and she is one of the few remaining women who can conceive. She has been assigned to produce children for the “Commanders”, the ruling class of men, and is made a Handmaid, a role based on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah.
Women are classed socially and follow a strict dress code, ranked highest to lowest: the Commanders’ Wives in sky blue, their unmarried daughters in white, the Handmaids in red with highly visible large white bonnets, the Aunts (who train and indoctrinate the Handmaids) in brown, the Marthas (cooks and maids, possibly unmarried sterile women past child-bearing years) in green, Econowives (the wives of lower-ranking men who handle everything in the domestic sphere) in blue, red and green stripes, and widows in black.
Offred details her life starting with her third assignment as a Handmaid to a Commander. Interspersing narratives of her present-day experiences are flashbacks of her life before and during the beginning of the revolution, including her failed escape, indoctrination by the Aunts, and her friend Moira’s escape from the indoctrination facility. At her new home, she is treated poorly by the Commander’s wife, Serena Joy, a former Christian media personality who supported women’s domesticity and subordinate role well before Gilead was established.
To Offred’s surprise, the Commander asks to see her outside of the “Ceremony”, ritualized rape conducted during the Handmaids’ likely fertile period each month, with the wives present, intended to result in conception. His request to see her in the library is illegal in Gilead, but they meet nevertheless. They mostly play Scrabble and Offred is allowed to ask favors of him, such as information or material items. He asks Offred to kiss him as if she meant it and tells her about his strained relationship with his wife. Finally, he gives her lingerie and takes her to a covert, government-run brothel using Jezebels, women forced into sanctioned sex slavery. Offred unexpectedly encounters an emotionally-broken Moira there, who tells her that those found breaking the law are sent to the “Colonies” to clean up toxic waste or are allowed to work as Jezebels as punishment.
In the days between her visits to the Commander, Offred also learns her shopping partner, a woman called Ofglen, is with the Mayday resistance, an underground network working to overthrow Gilead’s government. Not knowing of Offred’s criminal acts with her husband, Serena begins to suspect that he is infertile, so she arranges for Offred to have sex with Nick, the Commander’s personal servant, who had attempted to talk to her before and shown interest. Serena offers Offred information about her daughter in exchange. She later brings her a photograph of Offred’s daughter which leaves Offred feeling dejected believing she has been erased from her daughter’s life.
After their initial sexual encounter, Offred and Nick begin to meet on their own initiative as well; she discovers that she enjoys these intimate moments despite memories of her husband, and shares potentially dangerous information about her past with him. Offred later tells Nick that she thinks she is pregnant.
Offred hears from a new walking partner that Ofglen has disappeared (reported as a suicide). She contemplates suicide when Serena finds evidence of the illegal relationship with the Commander. Shortly afterward, men arrive at the house wearing uniforms of the secret police, known as the Eyes of God or simply “Eyes”, to take her away. As she is led to a waiting van, Nick tells her to trust him and go with the men. Offred is unsure if Nick or the men are Eyes or secretly members of Mayday, or if they are here to capture her or aid in her escape; she ultimately enters the van. Her future is left uncertain while Serena and the Commander are left bereft in their house, each thinking about the repercussions of Offred’s capture on their lives.
The novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue, described as a partial transcript of an international historical association conference taking place in the year 2195. The male keynote speaker explains that Offred’s narrative was originally recorded on a set of audio cassettes, a technology roughly 200 years out of date at that time, and later transcribed by historians. The speaker appears to be very dismissive of the misogyny of Gilead and interprets the story’s title as a sexist joke. He also comments on the difficulty of authenticating the account, due to how few records have survived from the early years of Gilead’s existence, and speculates on the eventual fates of Offred and her acquaintances.
Read More: (Review-Quotes) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. The Testaments (Book 2: The Handmaid’s Tale Series)
The Testaments is a modern masterpiece, a powerful novel that can be read on its own or as a companion to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale.
“Atwood’s powers are on full display” (Los Angeles Times) in this deeply compelling Booker Prize-winning novel, now updated with additional content that explores the historical sources, ideas, and material that inspired Atwood.
More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.
Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways.
With The Testaments, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.
Plot summary
The novel alternates among the perspectives of three women, presented as portions of a manuscript written by one (the Ardua Hall Holograph) and testimonies by the other two.
Lydia, a divorced judge, is imprisoned with other women in a stadium during the establishment of the Republic of Gilead. After enduring weeks of squalid conditions, torture, and solitary confinement, culminating in coerced participation in an execution, she and a small group of other women are handpicked by Commander Judd and Vidala, a pre-existing supporter of Gilead, to become Aunts—an elite group of women tasked with creating and overseeing the laws and uniforms governing Gilead’s women. The Aunts use Ardua Hall as their headquarters and enjoy certain privileges that include reading “forbidden” texts, such as Cardinal John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua. In secret, Aunt Lydia despises Gilead and becomes a mole supplying critical information to the Mayday resistance organization.
Fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, a girl named Agnes Jemima is growing up in Boston as the adopted daughter of Commander Kyle and his wife Tabitha. Agnes has a loving relationship with Tabitha, who later dies of ill health. Agnes and her classmates Becka and Shunammite attend an elite preparatory school for the daughters of Commanders, where they are taught to run a household, but not to become literate. Once widowed, Commander Kyle marries Paula, the widow of a deceased Commander, who despises Agnes. Desiring a child for herself, she acquires a Handmaid, who successfully conceives but later dies giving birth to a son. Agnes is arranged to be married to Commander Judd, now a high-ranking official in charge of the Eyes and surveilling the population of Gilead.
Learning that she is the daughter of a Handmaid, Agnes manages to escape her arranged marriage by becoming a Supplicant, a prospective Aunt. In that pursuit she joins Becka, whose father—Doctor Grove, a prominent dentist—has been sexually abusing her and his other underage female patients for years. Later, Agnes is anonymously provided with files highlighting the corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of Gilead, specifically evidence of adultery between Commander Kyle and Paula and their plots to murder their respective spouses since divorce is prohibited. She also learns that she is the half-sister of “Baby Nicole”, a girl who was smuggled out of Gilead to Canada by her Handmaid mother when she was young (and whose return the government of Gilead has been demanding).
Meanwhile, a girl named Daisy—several years younger than Agnes—grows up in Toronto’s Queen Street West with her adoptive parents, Neil and Melanie. The couple owns a second-hand clothes shop serving as a front for Mayday to smuggle women out of Gilead. On her 16th birthday, Daisy’s adoptive parents are murdered by undercover Gileadean operatives. Daisy is spirited into hiding by several Mayday operatives, who reveal that Daisy is actually Nicole. The Mayday operatives enlist her in a mission to infiltrate Gilead to obtain valuable intelligence from their mysterious mole. Nicole poses as a street urchin named Jade to be recruited by the Pearl Girls (Gilead missionaries who lure foreign women to Gilead with the promise of a better life), who take her up and bring her into Gilead.
The disguised Nicole is placed under the care of Agnes and Becka, who are now respectively named Aunts Victoria and Immortelle. Aunt Lydia confirms that “Jade” is Nicole through a tattoo and discloses her true identity and parentage to Agnes and Becka. Revealing herself as Mayday’s mole, Aunt Lydia enlists the three young women to smuggle incriminating information about Gilead’s elite into Canada. Nicole is tasked with carrying the files inside a microdot on her cruciform tattoo. Agnes and Nicole are to enter Canada disguised as Pearl Girls, with Nicole impersonating Becka. The real Becka, disguised as Jade, is to remain at the Hall and provide a diversion once Nicole is found missing. Forced to hasten their plans when Commander Judd learns about Nicole’s presence and intends to marry her, Agnes and Nicole set out early, where they hospitalise Aunt Vidala in the process. They travel by bus and on foot, then by boat along the Penobscot River. This boat takes them to a larger vessel which brings them into Canadian waters. Agnes and Nicole manage to reach Campobello Island by an inflatable and are picked up by a Mayday team. Meanwhile, Aunt Lydia, to buy Agnes and Nicole some more time and to secure her own position at Ardua Hall, tells Aunt Elizabeth that Aunt Vidala accused her of attacking her, expecting Elizabeth to kill Vidala.
Using the information inside Nicole’s microdot, the Canadian media leaks scandalous information about Gilead’s elite, which leads to a purge that in turn causes a military coup, bringing about the collapse of Gilead and the subsequent restoration of the United States. Agnes and Nicole are reunited with their mother. Becka dies while hiding in a cistern to perpetuate the ruse that “Jade” had run off with a plumber. Lydia, the author of the Ardua Hall Holograph, closes her story by describing her plan to commit suicide with a morphine overdose before she can be questioned and executed.
The novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue, described as a partial transcript at the Thirteenth Symposium on Gileadean Studies in 2197, presented by Professor James Darcy Pieixoto. He talks about the challenges in verifying the authenticity of the Ardua Hall Holograph and the two witness transcripts by Agnes and Nicole. He also speculates that Agnes and Nicole’s Handmaid mother could be Offred of the previous book, though he himself admits to not being sure. He concludes by mentioning the statue that was made commemorating Becka for her actions, its dedication having been attended by Agnes and Nicole, their husbands and children, their mother and their respective fathers.
Read More: (Review-Quotes) The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
About the Author (Margaret Atwood)
Margaret Atwood (Margaret Eleanor Atwood, born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, and literary critic. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children’s books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General’s Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
Atwood’s works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and “power politics”. Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age.
Margaret Atwood is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers’ Trust of Canada. She is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College, Toronto. She is the inventor of the LongPen device and associated technologies that facilitate remote robotic writing of documents.
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