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Chapter 14
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
A few months later, Commander Kyle gets a Handmaid, whose name becomes Ofkyle, to bear him a child. Shunammite insists, “They’re all sluts anyway, they don’t need real names.” The presence of the Handmaid implies both that Paula, like most women, is infertile, and that she does not recognize Agnes as her own daughter.
Ofkyle’s name—literally “of Kyle”—signifies that Commander Kyle has total ownership of her, suggesting that Ofkyle has no personal agency or right to choose as a Handmaid. Shunammite’s frank disdain for Ofkyle demonstrates that such social prejudice can even infect the minds of children.
Themes
Agnes is nearly “womanly age, as Gilead counted.” Her face is elongating and becoming prettier, her breasts are beginning to grow, and she is starting notice body hair. She is “no longer a precious flower but a much more dangerous creature.” Soon, she knows, she’ll begin to menstruate. Agnes thinks it strange that such blood is considered “polluting” and yet God seems to really like blood in the Bible, especially “having it spilled on altars.” Agnes regards her growing woman’s body as “one big booby trap” and finds herself wishing she didn’t have it.
Agnes’s fear of her growing womanly body demonstrates the painful consequence of using fear and shame to repress a young woman’s sexuality and personal agency. Agnes has been taught for so long to see her body as a dangerous and alluring device that she almost feels as if it is her enemy; she would rather disassociate from it and be rid of it, since then she’d be safe.
Themes
Since Paula rejected Agnes as her own child, her status falls both in her father’s eyes and the eyes of her peers at school. She is largely ignored, though Shunammite still claims to be her friend. However, one day Shunammite gloatingly tells Agnes that she’s discovered a new secret: Tabitha was not Agnes’s real mother. According to Shunammite, Agnes’s real mother was a Handmaid, a “slut” who’d tried to take her across the border through the woods into Canada, but the Angels and the Eyes caught up to her and stole Agnes back.
Once again, Agnes’s fall in social standing amongst her peers reflects the manner in which such social prejudice, enforced by adults, seeps into the learned behavior of children as well. Already feeling at odds with society, the revelation that Agnes’s mother was a Handmaid and a fugitive further sets Agnes at odds against Gilead’s regime, positioning her to rebel against it in the future.
Themes
Agnes doesn’t want to believe the story, but it fits too closely with her own vague memories of being carried through the dark forest and she realizes Shunammite must be telling the truth. This means that Commander Kyle is not even her real father; she belongs to nobody. And if Shunammite knows, then everyone knows—her classmates and the Aunts.
Agnes’s feeling of belonging to no one further reduces her loyalty to the regime and establishes her as a character who could easily act against it, since she would not be betraying a real family or loving community.
Themes
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