The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s six-season TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed 1985 novel, was an emblem of anti-Donald Trump resistance during his first presidential administration. As for what its sequel series, The Testaments, loosely based on Atwood’s 2019 best-seller of the same name, will represent for audiences during Trump’s second term, “that’s not up to me,” the 86-year-old author tells TIME. “Readers and viewers will make up their own minds about what it represents.”
The Testaments TV show puts a YA spin on the young women’s sphere of this hyperpatriarchal society, following the wide-eyed Agnes (One Battle After Another’s Chase Infiniti) as she navigates high school, burgeoning hormones, and arranged marriages alongside her friends, which include recent Gilead transplant Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a vengeful Canadian teen with ties to June.
Below, Atwood discusses the show's themes of rebellion and what it says about trad wives.
Ann Dowd and Chase Infiniti in 'The Testaments' —Courtesy of HuluAtwood: There is a lot of literature on resistance movements and people who are active in them. One of the big stories of the 20th century—and it’s probably going to be one of the big stories of the 21st century—is double agents or people working from within to bring down a corrupt regime. That’s Aunt Lydia, that’s what she became.
Oh, “this is good.” “That’s bad.” It’s rarely completely true. Most of us live in that in-between area. It’s also true that the good that people think they’re doing can have very adverse effects.
Oh yeah. But when you say “trad wife,” you’re not talking about women in the 19th century. If you were a farmer, you had to have a wife. You could not run that thing without somebody doing the cooking, gardening, keeping the chickens, the quilting. These were fairly marginal operations. You needed somebody who knew how to use up every leftover, repurpose any form of cloth. That’s very far from what people thinking that they are trad wives now are doing.
Well, it’s a little bit like Marie Antoinette playing at being a milkmaid. It’s not really a milkmaid. Although trad wives do a certain amount of this and that, they’re by no means a 19th century runner of a household. Most trad wives exist in families with a reason able amount of money. Otherwise, they would not be able to afford to do this.
I don’t know. A lot of the things I did, a sensible person wouldn’t have done. Deciding I was going to be a writer at the age of 16, I mean, that’s not an adult thing. Especially in Canada at a time where there were no visible writers. So where did that come from? I think ignorance is often your friend because if I had known how difficult it could be and what the chances were, I probably wouldn’t have done it.
It can be. Willful ignorance is different from just not knowing stuff. A lot of adolescence is that. You’re trying things out to see if they work. It is not true that you can be anything you want to be. That’s just not true. I could never have been a ballet dancer. I got dizzy on the turns.
Friends and family. One good piece of advice: make younger friends because a lot of your older friends are going to die. They are not going to be with you. If you don’t make younger friends, you’re going to be pretty much alone.
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