Aunt Estée is one of the main teachers at Agnes’s school in Gilead, often teaching alongside Aunt Vidala. Where Aunt Vidala is strict, fierce, and seems to enjoy scaring Agnes and her classmates about the evils of sexuality and punishments for sinners, Aunt Estée is gentler and kinder. Even so, Aunt Estée teaches the same repressive principles as Vidala does, reinforcing women’s repression and the idea of their natural inferiority to men.
Aunt Estée Quotes in The Testaments
The The Testaments quotes below are all either spoken by Aunt Estée or refer to Aunt Estée. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 16
Quotes
Aunt Estee […] always put things in a positive light. That was a talent women had because of their special brains, which were not hard and focused like the brains of men but soft and damp and warm and enveloping, like…like what? [Aunt Estee] didn’t finish the sentence.
Like warmed-up mud in the sun, I thought. That what was inside my head: warmed-up mud.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Aunt Estée Quotes in The Testaments
The The Testaments quotes below are all either spoken by Aunt Estée or refer to Aunt Estée. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 16
Quotes
Aunt Estee […] always put things in a positive light. That was a talent women had because of their special brains, which were not hard and focused like the brains of men but soft and damp and warm and enveloping, like…like what? [Aunt Estee] didn’t finish the sentence.
Like warmed-up mud in the sun, I thought. That what was inside my head: warmed-up mud.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
