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Chapter 50
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
Three years later, Agnes discovers a blue folder of papers tucked behind the work assignments left for her at her desk. Opening it, she discovers that it contains evidence and case notes about the death of Commander Saunders, Paula’s former husband. The Commander was not murdered by his Handmaid, but by Paula, who was having an affair with Commander Kyle even while Tabitha was alive. Paula framed the Handmaid for the murder, and the Handmaid was tortured for so long that she eventually confessed to the crime she didn’t commit, a which point she was hanged. “The Aunts had known the truth.”
As with the Dr. Grove’s accusation and execution, Paula’s framing of the Handmaid for Saunders’s murder demonstrates that false testimony is a common occurrence in Gilead. This not only highlights the rampant corruption throughout Gilead’s leadership—which thus delegitimizes any claim they make about moral purity or God’s will—but further weakens Agnes’s former loyalty to Gilead.
Themes
Agnes is awestruck by the information, though she cannot fathom why it was given to her. She wonders if this was what Lydia had used against Paula to force her to let Agnes join Ardua Hall. She wonders if this means that Tabitha was murdered as well. Agnes keeps all this to herself, even from Becka, so as not to endanger her. Over the next two years, more and more files appear on Agnes’s desk, describing the crimes of people at every level of society except for Aunts and Handmaids.
Lydia’s use of her knowledge of Paula’s murderous actions to free Agnes not only demonstrates the power that damning knowledge can grant, but also implicitly grants this power to Agnes as well. The fact that none of the files contain evidence against Aunts or Handmaids suggests that the deliverer of such information is intentionally protecting both classes of women.
Themes
Commander Judd’s file is the thickest and most significant, describing his murder of every one of his numerous wives of the past, creatively killed off through tragic accidents, poisonings, or forced birth complications. Agnes realizes that by becoming an Aunt, she narrowly avoided the same fate. Although the files initially disturb her, and though Agnes does not know why they are given to her, she realizes that this is where the Aunts’ power lies: in dirty and dangerous secrets. If Agnes continues to rise through the ranks, this is what she will enter into: power and the possibility for vengeance. The notion is very tempting.
Agnes’s realization confirms that even in a male-dominated, ruthlessly oppressive regime, knowledge can grant tremendous power to women or other disempowered individuals. The temptation Agnes feels to use such power for vengeance is understandable, but also disturbing, since it would parallel Gilead’s own use of power to dominate or control others, even if Agnes seemed more justified in it.
Themes
