This time around, though, something’s not quite right in Gilead. And women are still blamed for inciting male rape.Īlthough the sustainable birth rate has increased a bit, there is still a need for Handmaids, fertile women who are essentially raped every month by their “Commander,” who is the head of the household and holds a position in the government. Those with notions of independence from pre-Gilead days are still herded into the regime’s “re-education camps,” presided over by the cattle-prod-wielding “Aunts”-infertile women tasked with destroying the psyches of these prisoners. Women are still locked into Old Testament strictures they aren’t allowed to read, write, hold a job, or drive a car. (The Republic of Gilead, for those unfamiliar with the story, is the theocratic state that has overthrown the US government). Set fifteen years after the van door slammed shut on Handmaid’s protagonist Offred, the new novel shows a Gilead still standing. The title is The Testaments, but it could just as easily have been called “How Theocracies Perish.”

That is the theme of Margaret Atwood’s long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. During the torture session conducted by the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien in George Orwell’s 1984, the doomed Winston Smith, on being told how powerful and eternal the regime is, says through broken teeth: “Something will defeat you … evil cannot sustain itself.”

The testaments movie rating