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Chapter 12
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
Agnes admits that it is still difficult and painful to recount Tabitha’s death. After she died, they hold a funeral, for which Agnes received a black dress to wear. Afterward, the distinguished attendees return to Commander Kyle’s home for a reception. Among these guests is a widow named Paula, who has a somewhat infamous reputation since her former husband, Commander Saunders, was murdered by their Handmaid, stabbed in the throat with a kitchen skewer. The Handmaid reportedly fled, but was caught, killed, and hung on the Wall for all to see. Paula claimed that the Handmaid spontaneously went insane and killed her husband in the night, but rumor persists that she killed Saunders in the midst of a forbidden tryst. Paula condescendingly pats Agnes on the head at the reception, and Agnes hates her immediately.
Paula is immediately established as a character associated with crime, death, and carnage. The conflicting reports of the circumstances of her husband’s death suggest that information is being intentionally concealed. Agnes’s loss of her mother marks the beginnings of her loss of innocence, as well, where her life will go from relatively happy to dark, foreboding, and miserable. The Handmaid hung on the Wall again symbolically portrays the ruthless power that Gilead exerts over its subjects, especially those as lowly as Handmaids.
Themes
Several months later, Kyle marries Paula and gives her Tabitha’s wedding ring, even though it should have gone to Agnes. Paula and Kyle largely ignore Agnes, and Agnes sulks in misery.
Agnes’s new misery and discontent with her life primes her to eventually take subversive actions against the injustices of Gilead.
Themes
