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Chapter 51
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
While Lydia is up late writing her manuscript, Vidala suddenly arrives and nearly catches her in the act. Vidala states that she doesn’t trust the new Pearl, Jade, and thinks the tattoo on her arm is both ridiculous and blasphemous for associating God with love. In her opinion, Jade should be harshly interrogated, and the tattoo removed, in case she is a Mayday spy. Lydia deflects her suspicions and desire to torture as best she can.
Once again, Vidala’s statement that any association between God and love is blasphemous suggests that Gilead is not an embodied representation of Christianity or religion at large, but rather demonstrates the abuse of such religious influence and power to uphold a tyrannical and oppressive regime.
Themes
Lydia rushes to meet Commander Judd at his home. Shunammite opens the door and Lydia remarks that she looks very ill. Lydia knows he is poisoning her, so she assures Shunammite that she will convince him to send her to the clinic in Ardua Hall. Lydia finds Judd in his study, a room she has been in many times before both on business and in espionage. Vintage pornography hangs on his wall and his bookshelves, along with many old and long-forbidden pieces of literature.
Judd’s possession of pornography and forbidden literature again suggests that Gilead’s upper leadership does not hold itself to the same strict moral standards that it espouses to everyone else. This is both hypocritical and particularly egregious, since adultery and sexual misconduct—which pornography would presumably be, in such a Puritanical culture—are described elsewhere as capital offenses.
Themes
Lydia explains Vidala’s suspicion, which interferes with their own aims. She claims that Vidala should no longer be trusted, for reasons she will not yet reveal. Lydia also requests that Shunammite be transferred to Ardua Hall, and after glaring at each other for a long time, Judd agrees and implies that it would be better for her to die there, away from him, to decrease suspicion.
Lydia’s attempt to save Shunammite from the murder that they both know Judd is in the process of committing again demonstrates her boldness and the scope of her own power, through which she will even risk challenging one of the most powerful men in Gilead.
Themes
Lydia reflects that she is now “poised on the razor’s edge.” She must decide between falling headlong into her plan to bring down Gilead, which, if a failure, will see her tortured and executed as a traitor, or betraying Nicole, Becka, and Agnes, possibly to their deaths, but cementing her own legacy as one of the most powerful figures in Gilead. She is not sure which path she will take.
In spite of her vast power and ability to manipulate events, Lydia’s moment of pause and indecision demonstrate that she is as flawed as any human, and the desire to simply protect oneself and survive at the expense of other people is as strong for her as anyone else.
Themes
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