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The Testaments
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The Testaments
The Testaments is a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. It is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1985). The novel is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale. It is narrated by Aunt Lydia, a character from the previous novel; Agnes Jemima, a young woman living in Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada.
The Testaments was a joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Bernardine Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other. It was also voted the Best Fiction novel in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2019, winning by over 50,000 votes.
Streaming service Hulu, which also produced the TV series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, announced in 2022 that it would also adapt The Testaments into its own TV series after The Handmaid's Tale's final season concluded. The adaptation, in which Ann Dowd reprised her role as Aunt Lydia, premiered on April 8, 2026.
Lydia, a divorced judge, is imprisoned with other women in a stadium during the establishment of the Republic of Gilead, an authoritarian theonomic state. 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 resistance organization Mayday.
Fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, 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, a surveillance group.
Learning that she is the daughter of a Handmaid, Agnes escapes 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, and of Commander Judd's murders of his previous wives 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 Gilead has been demanding).
Meanwhile, Daisy — several years younger than Agnes — grows up in Toronto with her parents, Neil and Melanie. The couple owns a second-hand clothing store serving as a front for Mayday to smuggle women out of Gilead. On Daisy's 16th birthday, Neil and Melanie are murdered by undercover Gileadean operatives. Mayday operatives reveal that Neil and Melanie were not her biological parents and that she is actually Nicole. They enlist Daisy in a mission to infiltrate Gilead to obtain valuable intelligence. 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).
The disguised Nicole is placed under the care of Agnes and Becka, now 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 and Becka swapping identities and Becka attending a retreat to provide cover. Forced to hasten their plans when Commander Judd learns about Nicole's presence and intends to marry her, Agnes and Nicole set out early, assaulting Aunt Vidala and sending her to a hospital. They travel to the coast and board a ship that takes them into Canadian waters, from which they are picked up by a Mayday team and reunited with their birth mother. 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 has accused her of the assault, expecting Elizabeth to kill Vidala.
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The Testaments
The Testaments is a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. It is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1985). The novel is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale. It is narrated by Aunt Lydia, a character from the previous novel; Agnes Jemima, a young woman living in Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada.
The Testaments was a joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Bernardine Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other. It was also voted the Best Fiction novel in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2019, winning by over 50,000 votes.
Streaming service Hulu, which also produced the TV series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, announced in 2022 that it would also adapt The Testaments into its own TV series after The Handmaid's Tale's final season concluded. The adaptation, in which Ann Dowd reprised her role as Aunt Lydia, premiered on April 8, 2026.
Lydia, a divorced judge, is imprisoned with other women in a stadium during the establishment of the Republic of Gilead, an authoritarian theonomic state. 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 resistance organization Mayday.
Fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, 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, a surveillance group.
Learning that she is the daughter of a Handmaid, Agnes escapes 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, and of Commander Judd's murders of his previous wives 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 Gilead has been demanding).
Meanwhile, Daisy — several years younger than Agnes — grows up in Toronto with her parents, Neil and Melanie. The couple owns a second-hand clothing store serving as a front for Mayday to smuggle women out of Gilead. On Daisy's 16th birthday, Neil and Melanie are murdered by undercover Gileadean operatives. Mayday operatives reveal that Neil and Melanie were not her biological parents and that she is actually Nicole. They enlist Daisy in a mission to infiltrate Gilead to obtain valuable intelligence. 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).
The disguised Nicole is placed under the care of Agnes and Becka, now 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 and Becka swapping identities and Becka attending a retreat to provide cover. Forced to hasten their plans when Commander Judd learns about Nicole's presence and intends to marry her, Agnes and Nicole set out early, assaulting Aunt Vidala and sending her to a hospital. They travel to the coast and board a ship that takes them into Canadian waters, from which they are picked up by a Mayday team and reunited with their birth mother. 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 has accused her of the assault, expecting Elizabeth to kill Vidala.