Margaret Atwood to publish sequel to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

Margaret Atwood is working on a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the most popular and influential feminist novel ever written.

Her sequel, titled “The Testaments,” opens 15 years after the conclusion of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and is narrated by three women, according to a statement released by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday on Wednesday.

In a note to readers, Atwood wrote, “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”

“The Testaments” will be published on Sept. 10, 2019, with a massive first printing of 500,000 copies.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” has sold 8 million copies in English since it was first published in 1985.

Atwood’s depiction of a violently misogynist society has resonated with a new generation of readers since the election of Donald Trump and the TV adaptation of the novel, which began airing in 2017. (A third season of the TV show, starring Elisabeth Moss and Joseph Fiennes, is currently in production.) For the past two years, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has frequently appeared on the paperback bestseller list, and the red-robed women of the novel and series have become common avatars of feminist protest during the Trump era. Abortion rights activists dressed in red cloaks and white bonnets have marched in Washington and in state capitol buildings around the country.

“...the Handmaid’s Tale...is about a society that exists after some cataclysmic event...leaving all but a handful of women sterile...society..would (and should) take drastic measures...During times of war we have had a draft. ...And we, as a society, accept this as necessary...If we were faced with extinction due to a lack of women who could reproduce, would we not fight to survive?...concept of the Handmaids as something similar to the draft...forced against their will...a service which they might not agree with...But it is one that is necessary to ensure survival...I think it is a reasonably thought through premise...” [sipow, post 11]

“If it was about survival it wouldn’t just be the political elites who have Handmaids.” [semimojo, post 21]

I confess I’ve yet to read _The Handmaid’s Tale_; sipow’s plot summary is thus new to me.

_Implosion_, a science fiction novel by British author D F Jones (HarperCollins; ISBN-10: 0586027939; ISBN-13: 978-0586027936), first published in 1967, looks at the questions from a somewhat different angle. It was a Science Fiction Book Club selection.

_Implosion’s_ plot summary runs thus:

One of the Warsaw Pact nations develops a birth-control drug that renders almost all women infertile - permanently and irreversibly. The Warsaw Pact attacks the UK first, contaminating the water supply. When the intel people figure out what happened & who perpetrated it, the Brits make their own supply of the drug and counterattack the nation that hit them first.

Following the now-commonly-accepted “common sense” logic of weapon developments, word leaks out, along with the drug recipe. Eventually, every country makes their own drug, attacks their adversaries, or gets attacked. Neutral countries are hit by accident or through “collateral damage”, drugs get spilled or stolen, the entire environment becomes contaminated. The population of the planet is ultimately rendered infertile, mostly.

Of greater interest is the domestic policy the UK government pursues: all fertile women are rounded up, sequestered in what amounts to a bunch of Gulag-Archipelago work camps , and are forced to bear child after child after child. Girls born to these “breeding women” are found to be fertile, so the hope of societal resurgence exists. Aside from the forced breeding, and being held captive, conditions in the hospitals are not onerous: drably utilitarian and somewhat impersonal, rather than fearfully oppressive and laced with privation.

Sequestered in the hospitals for decade upon decade, the fertile women are kept docile by the propaganda line that - since they are so obviously important to national survival - they are granted special privileges, rations in greater quantity containing better nutrition, and many minor luxuries that the general population outside hospital walls enjoys no longer.

The populace submits to these drastic measures, agreeing - apparently - that the dire nature of the emergency justifies any and all violations of (prior) law, custom, tradition, privacy, or autonomy. Including the complete negation of any family ties and personal, private-party child-rearing.

The novel ends confusingly, as many British novels have.

Some three or so generations on, it is discovered that as a group, the women in the “breeding hospitals” are birthing more and more boys with each cycle; it is determined by methods of “science” (undisclosed to the reader) that the sex ratio will eventually reach all boys and no girls and stay that way. Fertility is over.

Every character finishes up glaring at every other character, or thunderstruck at the news; the implication lies there that the outcome should have been obvious from the beginning, but I still cannot say why.

Whether _The Handmaid’s Tale_ or _Implosion_ are either feasible, plausible, or accurate is not a question I can answer. Fifty years or more after I first read _Implosion_, I have more doubts than ever that any of us really know:

- what goes on in the deepest, darkest recesses of every human mind;

- what constitutes a stable, workable society;

- how we ought to structure and apply our efforts so that our society will survive, remain stable, and continue into the long term.

“...During times of war we have had a draft...men...sent to their death...If we were faced with extinction due to a lack of women who could reproduce, would we not fight to survive?...the concept of the Handmaids as something similar to the draft...forced against their will to train for a service which they might not agree with. One which they might find horrendous. But...necessary to ensure survival...” [sipow, post 14]

“Children of Men by PD James has a similar plot point...we started using the birth control before anyone really knew if it would have implications generations after down the road...you can say the same for a lot of things...” [ransomed, post 25]

A draft, and forced breeding, are similar in that they involve compulsory servitude. Beyond that, the similarities diminish.

A draft, and all it implies, involves the chance of violence, wounds, and death; pregnancy, birthing, and child-rearing do not (at least, not from a traditional American viewpoint; activists inveighing against “rape culture” disagree and are quite noisy about it).

Military service can involve all manner of horrors, privations, miseries, squalor, violence, and death. But - with occasional exceptions - there is always a chance that any given soldier will survive a clash of arms. “The 600” British light cavalry troopers who charged the (wrong) Russian artillery battery at Balaclava on 25 October 1854 sustained losses of 118 killed, 178 wounded, and 60 taken prisoner; despite this mauling they accomplished their mission, reaching the Russian guns and preventing the battery’s retreat. The last British survivor lived until 1927.

Forced child-bearing like that contemplated in “The Handmaid’s Tale_, or while being held prisoner in the “breeding hospitals” of _Implosion_’ involves lower amounts of obvious violence but the chances of injury and death as consequences of pregnancy are never zero. Additionally, it’s a fundamental belief (in American society anyway) that anyone held captive against their will (no matter the circumstances) is being subjected to a form of spiritual violence which can do serious mental/spiritual harm of a permanent nature. None of which begins to explore the violation of personhood that would happen to a woman required to be impregnated against her will, then bear the resulting child - no matter what dire need of society she was jawboned about. The spiritual and psychological injuries thus caused are still being researched and analyzed.

And any woman thus caught in any such program of mandated breeding would have less hope of escape or survival than a solider in combat. The chance that she could escape is far smaller; and there’s no chance at all that she could stop the program administrators and lackeys doing things to her body that she cannot control and does not want. Those of us who are men, or women who haven’t birthed nor reared children, can only dimly perceive the depths of the indignity thus perpetrated.

I must plead ignorance concerning the plot of _Children of Men_, having never read it. The film - what I’ve seen of it - is less than clear on why the “last child” dies, and conveys next to nothing on the woman who is pregnant. Why is infertility so widespread? Who impregnated her? What does she want? What will happen next?

Humans have a long history of doing something, watching it not work out, then struggling with consequences. But only recently - since the mid-18th century, really - have such errors come into the public consciousness in any detectable fashion. And only since the outset of World War Two has there been any formalized academic study or systematized scientific research into the problems. Curiously, the findings, conclusions, and estimates thus compiled are attacked by people from all walks of life and from all points on the political .

“Why would a woman in such a program have less of a chance of survival than a soldier in conflict. It would be quite the opposite in fact.
In such times, a fertile woman would be a valuable resource and would be protected. Of course there is going to be a mental/emotional/spiritual cost...” [sipow, post 29]

There’s a misconception here, of what the military is and does.

Civilians rarely give the military a thought unless a war occurs. Even then, most of them think in terms of footsoldiers toting small arms. The latter is strongly preferred by Americans, who believe our independence was secured by citizen soldiers. That was only partly true in the 1780s, and “the militia” has come to mean less and less in the total military picture, ever since.

The armed services don’t fight every day of the week. In between conflict, there are years, even generations, when not much happens. The regular military has used these slow moments to regroup, retrain, research, develop new stuff and procedures, theorize about what’s next.

The central aspect of military service for the organized professional military is the organization, not the war. This has become increasingly true since World War One, as industrial production and technological advances brought more mechanization and more specialization to the armed forces. Organizations - infantry divisions, armored squadrons, air wings, ships’ crews - train and equip, go forth to battle, then come home to clean up the mess and make sense of what happened. Individuals may perish, but the outfit lives on. The war may be over, but the outfit has gone home to get ready for the next one.

And even during full-scale conflict, many members of the military aren’t directly exposed to the shooting. During World War Two - revered as a high point by many on the Right - there were six soldiers behind the lines for every front-line trigger-puller: supply clerks, radio operators, construction crews, mess sergeants, airlifter crews, merchant seamen. And clerk-typists to keep the paperwork straight.

Guess what? Many had been drafted. Most lived, but the disruption visited on their lives was no less than that of anyone else. And perhaps less invasive, less disruptive than the (fictional) situations imagined in _The Handmaid’s Tale_ or _Implosion_.

I confess I have no idea how real women of today would react to the kind of national-level program theorized in such works of fiction, but I find the forced-breeding concept to be at least as invasive, as injurious to the sense of self and just as big a violation of personal liberties as any draft, or any concept of universal military service (which we’ve never instituted, totally). The Nazi Germans, who fussed more over population dynamics and racial “purity” than any other nation of those days, did not go so far; they encouraged and rewarded large numbers of births to suitable parents, and slyly let the SS and other favored groups of males sire “Aryan” children as often as possible. They also stole children from families if they looked Aryan enough. But they did not institute “breeding hospitals” filled with fertile women.

There is no misconception on my part. I never claimed that everyone in the military is involved in combat, nor that it is a regular part of daily life in the military. All of that is quite obvious.

The point I am making is that, as a society, we have decided that it is acceptable to force people into military service, and that such service may lead to a disruption of their lives, injury (both mental and physical), and death. That is not to say that everyone drafted will suffer such fates. But it is to say that we are willing to require it of a portion of society.

The story in The Handmaid’s Tale involves a threat potentially worse than any conflict our nation has ever been in. In such times, it is not unreasonable to imagine that society would decide that a small portion of women would need to be forced into service to ensure the survival of the race.

The story is often portrayed as being a tale of the mistreatment of women. I think the threat that their society (and the world as a whole) is facing in that story is minimized and virtually ignored by those who view it in that light.

It talks of cities the size of Boston having had no births in the past six years. Clearly the amount of women capable of having children has become a vanishingly small amount. Facing such a crisis, I would not be surprised that any society would take such drastic action to attempt to survive.

The story is told as if a group took over control and enforced this on women to control them, or to try to improve the genetics of society, or for any other such reason. They did so because humanity was facing extinction. And they did this to a very tiny percentage of women.

“There is no misconception on my part. I never claimed that everyone in the military is involved in combat...obvious.

“...as a society, we have decided that it is acceptable to force people into military service...disruption...injury...death...

“...The Handmaid’s Tale involves a threat potentially worse than any conflict...not unreasonable...a small portion of women would need to be forced into service to ensure the survival of the race...

“...cities the size of Boston having had no births in the past six years. Clearly the amount of women capable of having children has become a vanishingly small amount. Facing such a crisis, I would not be surprised that any society would take such drastic action to attempt to survive.

“...The story is told as if a group took over control and enforced this on women to control them, or to try to improve the genetics of society, or for any other such reason. They did so because humanity was facing extinction. And they did this to a very tiny percentage of women.” [sipow, post 32]

I cannot be surprised at the way modern feminists have taken _The Handmaid’s Tale_ to heart, nor can I fret that they’ve altered the plot arc to suit their notions. The Left behaves that way often. Has anyone heard Margaret Atwood complain that the TV/film treatments haven’t been fair or faithful to her written work?

The other unsurprising aspect is that the feminists, and the Left generally, take it as a statement of dogma that the US and other Western nations already oppress and exploit women in just the way the TV/film treatments depict. Anyone so obsessed with injustice, oppression and exploitation cannot really care what dire situation originally caused it all.

To go back to the top of sipow’s post, I can say that after I spent 29 years in uniform, the only obvious thing to me is that sipow’s understanding of the military is superficial. Let me hasten to add that’s not a specific, isolated criticism; the military establishment is so large, so long-lived, so complex, that everybody - even the most senior uniformed leaders - has made the same mistake at times. Including me. We can never assume we have a firm grasp of what’s going on in each and every situation. Veterans who served one hitch, journalists, and activists of all stripe (pro and anti) know less.

sipow writes as if “the draft” is current policy, that it is superior wisdom before which all arguments, all eventualities, must bow down; that it has ensured success in all prior uses and will inevitably be resorted to in the future.

None of that is true nor self-evident; having lived with the draft as a cadet, and participated in the transformation to the all-volunteer force we now have, I can say that the draft may be nothing more than a wild guess dreamt up in the early Industrial Age: there is no Law of Nature nor Divine Revealed Truth setting its usefulness in concrete, nor gifting success to those who dare use it. “We won WW2 because of our draft” cannot be proven.

Forcing people into the military who do not want to be there may give some people a sense of security, but it is a false sense. The draft was a pain in the neck when it was going on. For good or ill, the United States long ago took the path toward a tech-heavy armed forces: volunteers willing to spend the time and effort required to achieve proficiency are essential. We cannot go back. Draftees are a hindrance, not a help.

The first thing to realize about written works such _The Handmaid’s Tale_ and _Implosion_ is that they are fiction: this immediately weakens any parallels that can be drawn between their speculations and the actual, historical record of the draft. Asserting that “At one time, we drafted men and we won wars, therefore it’s justifiable to force women to bear children against their will if a majority of citizens deem depopulation to be a threat big enough” is flawed.

I can contemplate the depopulation of Boston with great calmness. Same goes for every city I’ve been required to enter.

I have spent my entire life resenting the power that cities hold over rural regions; not even in prior times (before, say, 1940) could it be excused. Today, cities contribute precisely nothing of value. Indeed, they embody an ever-increasing drain on resources, and - considering the way politics is shaping up - we might look on them as a threat.

Just how large a percentage of women must be forced to bear children, before sipow would consider such a policy unacceptable? We conservatives purport to prefer liberty above death; the United States was founded on (among other things) the notion that a majority ought not force its will on a minority, no matter how small nor powerless. “National survival” plays no role in that.

You are getting closer to understanding - but aren’t quite there. You appear to be reading a lot of things into what I have said that simply are not there. Then you tend to lean heavily on those to make your point.

For example, you said “sipow writes as if ‘the draft’ is current policy, that it is superior wisdom before which all arguments, all eventualities, must bow down; that it has ensured success in all prior uses and will inevitably be resorted to in the future.”

I never claimed, hinted or thought any of those things. I merely pointed to it as a decision that had been made in the past. If you can point out to me where I claimed it was current policy, I will gladly post a correction, but I do not believe you will find any such post. Nor will you find any post indicating that I said it was superior wisdom.

You then spend a while discussing this false point, making such statements as “’We won WW2 because of our draft’ cannot be proven.” Once again, I never made any such claim. Nor did I make any such claim remotely close to it.

You want to make it appear as if I am arguing that the draft is some wonderful tool that we should be using. Reality is far from that. Again, I never made such a claim. I realize that it hurts your argument to acknowledge that, but it is the truth.

Regarding your view on cities - in the story, the problem of the lack of births was not limited to cities. It was not a rural vs urban issue. That figure was presented merely to point out the extent of the crisis. Rural areas would be suffering in the same way. Once again, you seem to latch onto a very specific part of what is being said, while managing to entirely miss the overall point.

So back to the point.

You ask the question “Just how large a percentage of women must be forced to bear children, before sipow would consider such a policy unacceptable?” When the alternative is racial extinction, I would say that the allowable percentage is what ever is required. Our directive from God was not to go extinct, it was to be fruitful and multiply.

“You are getting closer to understanding -...You appear to be reading a lot of things into what I have said ...that simply are not there...I never claimed, hinted or thought any of those things... that the draft is some wonderful tool...

“...not a rural vs urban issue. That figure was presented merely to point out the extent of the crisis. Rural areas would be suffering in the same way...

“...Our directive from God was not to go extinct...” [sipow, post 34]

The level of irony increases. I shrink from agreeing with any hint that my understanding has been rising. It’s been slipping, rather, for decades. Or, more precisely, my confidence that I once knew what was going on has been replaced by doubt, in an ever-growing number of specific instances.

I cannot avoid the suspicion that you are being disingenuous. You may not have posted the words I didn’t attribute to you, verbatim, but a great number of our fellow conservative citizens do believe such concepts. Many who post on this forum voice them over and over. Will you now deny the validity of such notions, and your lack of belief?

The notion that rural areas would “suffer” as much as cities if population were to decline doesn’t stand up very well, to any serious scrutiny. If anything, depopulation would make life easier: rural folk today labor under endless demands from urbanites - grow more food, stop polluting with your pickup trucks, welcome illegal aliens, give up guns, don’t cut trees, don’t plow up the sod, don’t kill predators (nor anything else); don’t even disturb puddles. The list grows every day. No urbanites, no diktats.

My mounting dislike of and unease over the historical concept of the military draft, and the forced-breeding policies speculated upon in _The Handmaid’s Tale_ and _Implosion_, arise from the same conceptual place that gave birth to American ideals of personal liberty, and the individual’s relation to society: in sum, that there are some actions that society (often denigrated as “government” in conservative-speak) is never allowed to undertake, and there are some personal liberties that individuals always retain - no matter the supposed scope or urgency of the “emergency” alleged by others.

Does not the concept of a “hospital” that imprisons women and forces them to bear baby after baby after baby - no matter how unlikely, how theoretically remote - strike anyone else as a violation of such ideals, laws, societal organizing principles, and whatnot more profound than any public policy ever implemented?

Strikes me more as something the Left would love. Painful as it is for conservatives to admit, there are plenty of religious believers on the Left. Saying “this imposition on individuals is OK because God commanded it” makes believers on the Right no more worthy.

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