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Chapter 3
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 is eight or nine years old. She spends less time with Tabitha, because Tabitha is always in her room “resting” now. Agnes sits in the kitchen with their three Marthas—her family has three because her father is very important—Rosa, Vera, and Zilla. Zilla is the kindest. The Marthas let Agnes help a little when they make bread, but when Agnes asks to make it from scratch they insist that this is not fitting work for a special girl like her to be doing. Once her parents pick a husband for her, she’ll have her own Marthas to make bread for her.
The Marthas’ refusal to let Agnes do work presumed lower than her station suggests that even for women in Agnes’s privileged position, as the upper-class daughter of one of Gilead’s elite, her choice in life are severely limited, not only be societal expectations that she will act in narrow accordance with her gender, but also in narrow accordance with her social class.
Themes
Agnes insists that she doesn’t want a husband, since they seem disgusting, but Zilla reassures her that they’re not all bad, and her parents will make sure to find a wealthy man for her. Making bread does not suit Agnes’s social class and her future Marthas would look down on her for it. Zilla adds that people cannot do everything that they want to do, even if they are a special girl, and sometimes one must do things that they abhor. Agnes cries and runs to Tabitha’s room, crawling into the bed with her. As Tabitha tries to comfort her, Agnes asked if she came from Tabitha’s stomach—a friend at school recently told her that babies come from stomachs. Tabitha does not answer, which scares Agnes.
Once again, the Marthas’ insistence that baking is too low an occupation for Agnes’s social class highlights her lack of choice in all aspects of her life. Zilla’s admonition that sometimes people have to do things they don’t want to suggests that if Agnes conforms Gilead’s mold for women, she will play a largely passive role in her own life, moving through predetermined events that she did not choose for herself. Both as a young girl and later as a grown woman, personal agency is not something afforded to women in Gilead.
Themes
