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Chapter 40
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
Although it takes years of waiting and listening through her microphones, Aunt Lydia finally discovers the story of what happened to Becka. With Lydia secretly listening through a microphone in the wall, Becka tells Agnes about how Dr. Grove sexually abused her when she was four years old. Agnes is horrified, but Becka will not testify—women in Gilead are never believed anyway—and decides that she will simply give her suffering to God. This is not enough for Lydia, especially since she was once a judge.
Becka’s belief that her account of Dr. Grove’s abuse would be simply dismissed nods to the fact that even in modern democratic nations, society is often slow to take any accusations of sexual misconduct seriously, especially when they involve powerful or highly regarded men. By depicting this real-life failing in Gilead, Atwood condemns modern society’s slowness to believe women when they testify to being sexually assaulted.
Themes
Lydia summons Aunt Elizabeth for a meeting and asks if she thinks herself a fox or a cat—a reference to one of Aesop’s fables where a clever fox outsmarts himself with all his tricks and is killed by hunters, while the cat simply climbs a tree and hides, but survives. Lydia surmises that Elizabeth is a cat, but suggests it is time to be a fox, and tells her that Vidala is plotting Elizabeth’s downfall. But Lydia will protect her on one condition: Elizabeth must give a false testimony, as happens often in Gilead.
Elizabeth’s false testimony will obviously be angled at Dr. Grove to bring him to justice, demonstrating the manner in which knowledge as power can be used to even seek justice for unaccounted wrongdoings. Lydia’s extra-judicial pursuit of Dr. Grove essentially equates to vigilante justice, yet in a society such as Gilead where there is no justice at all, especially for women, such an action is arguably justified.
Themes
