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Chapter 24
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 will describe the process of her marriage, which is typical of Gilead’s arranged marriages. The family’s goal is always to marry their daughter as soon as possible, so as to minimize the chance of youthful romance or adultery, which would result in a shameful public stoning.
When Agnes is 13, Paula calls her down to the living room where she, Aunt Vidala, and a new Aunt named Gabbana are waiting for her. They inspect her growing body, her teeth, and her hips while Aunt Gabbana takes notes on a clipboard. The Aunts announce that they will find three candidates for husbands from among the Commander families and will expect a “donation” from Paula. Paula smiles at Agnes and tells her how lucky of a girl she is, but by her “malicious little smirk” Agnes knows Paula is simply getting rid of her in a “socially acceptable manner.”
The circumstances around Agnes’s marriage, between the selecting of proper candidates to the “donation” that Paula must pay, makes Agnes as the bride seem more like a commodity that is being transferred between owners—especially since Paula simply wants to be rid of her—than an independent human being entering into a marital relationship. This fits with the devalued and dehumanized status of women in Gilead.
Themes
Paula announces that Agnes is done going to school, so Agnes spends her days fretting in her room alone. She embroiders a skull into a piece she is working on to represent Paula, though she claims its just a religious motif, like what one finds on the heads of gravestones. Agnes begins to wonder about the Aunts, who know how to read even though they are women—or perhaps they are not women under their clothes, or their brains are “neither male nor female.”
The Aunts, who can obviously read, plan, and calculate just like any man, defy Gilead’s narrow gender roles simply by existing. The fact that Agnes thinks that perhaps they are not true women reveals just how deep her own internalized belief—taught to her from birth—in women’s mental inferiority to men has rooted itself.
Themes
Paula orders the Marthas to start packing all of Agnes’s childhood toys in her room away into cardboard boxes, including the treasured dollhouse. They leave the wife doll in the window, however, but once they are gone, Agnes takes it and throws it across the room.
Paula’s taking of Agnes’s toys reflects the manner in which she is taking away Agnes’s childhood by forcing her to marry young. Agnes’s throwing of the the wife doll across the room suggests that she wants to reject such a role for herself.
Themes
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