Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Testaments, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religious Totalitarianism and Hypocrisy
Gender Roles
Truth, Knowledge, and Power
Shame, Fear, and Repression
Choice
Summary
Analysis
Not long after her Kyle and Paula’s wedding, Agnes hears a disturbing story at school. In their classroom hangs portraits of the Founders: Aunts Lydia, Helena, Elizabeth, and Vidala. Lydia’s portrait is largest and seems fearsome. Vidala announces she will tell the girls one of God’s most important messages to women from the Bible: the story of the Concubine—like a Handmaid—cut into 12 pieces. In the story, a man’s concubine runs away to her father’s home, which is very disobedient, and he travels to retrieve her, graciously accepting her back with no punishment. However, as they are traveling home, sleeping in a strange town, a group of strange men want to have sex with the traveling man and threaten him. The traveler gives them the concubine instead, and they rape her until she dies.
Lydia’s largest portrait again suggests that she is the most powerful even among the Founding Aunts, holding a mythic status in many people’s minds. Vidala uses a real story from the Bible to terrify young girls and repress them through fear. Although this is later revealed to be a misinterpretation of the story’s message, the story is no less horrific for it. By highlighting the gruesome nature of various stories in the Bible, the narrative does not directly condemn Christianity, but does point out that much of its holy book’s contents seems disturbing and highly questionable, especially when used to intimidate or manipulate people.
Themes
Vidala comments that the concubine deserved it for being so troublesome, and that it’s “God’s way of telling us to be content with our lot and not rebel against it.” Later, Agnes will learn that in the rest of the story the man cuts the concubine’s body into 12 pieces and sends it to all the tribes of Israel, and there is a lot of war and kidnapping of women as a result. However, Becka is crying so hard that they do not finish the story. Aunt Vidala is annoyed at the outburst, so Aunt Estée takes her place and tries to console the class by saying that the concubine made a “brave and noble” sacrifice to save her owner, just like a soldier might sacrifice himself for his comrades in war. Becka murmurs to herself that she will never ever get married.
Although Aunt Estée is obviously kinder and gentler than Aunt Vidala, her interpretation of the moral of the story is no less disturbing. Both Vidala’s claim that the assaulted and murdered women deserved such a fate, and Estée’s claim that she bravely sacrificed herself for the sake of a man, serve to depict women as inherently less innocent and less valuable for men. Based on this, it’s clear that Gilead views women as responsible even for terrible crimes that men themselves commit. This demonstrates the manner in which fear and shame may be used to teach young women to fear their own bodies and think very little of their value.
Themes
