The Testaments

A major theme of this story is the coming of age and loss of innocence that Agnes and Daisy experience. Agnes begins her story extremely sheltered and naive, secure in her mother’s love. She takes Aunt Vidala’s threats of violence against her by lustful men seriously, but this is not an active worry on her part. Her family protects her. When Tabitha dies and Paula takes over the household, he security Agnes had enjoyed and her identity as her parents’ child is stolen away from her. In a similar fashion, when she is a Supplicant Aunt, Agnes questions her faith. Her beliefs in God and the teachings of Gilead’s society had been as enveloping as a parent’s arms around her. When she finds that the system lied to her about the teachings of the Bible and about God’s plans for the world, Agnes is bereft. Her innocence is lost, and she finds she must begin to make life decisions for herself.

Daisy is also very sheltered and naive at the beginning of the story, though she thinks herself sophisticated and knowledgeable of the world. Daisy is a typical teenager, waiting for greater freedom to do what she wants to do. When the couple she has believed to be her parents are killed, Daisy’s world is turned upside down. This is exceptionally traumatic, especially since she has no time to mourn, no time to adjust to her new identity. It takes Daisy, as she becomes Nicole, time to figure out who and what she truly is, and that identity is still developing at the end of the story.

Lydia also experiences a later-in-life loss of innocence. The ideals and principles of justice, due process, and individual freedom were part of her consciousness, and she had devoted her professional life to upholding these values. Seeing how quickly and systematically they could be stripped away is a shock to Lydia. Her own ability to suppress and betray those values in developing a new society is perhaps the hardest lesson of all for Aunt Lydia.

The Founder Aunts are the only ones who retain their original names. The other Aunts adopt new names for themselves from an approved list designed by the Founders. Thus, the Aunts have names like Aunt Estée, Aunt Sara Lee, Aunt Betty, and Aunt Gabbana, names obviously taken from brand names that had been part of women’s lives in the former time. Apart from these commercially inspired names, there are also names considered feminine enough to be acceptable, such as Aunt Lise. Agnes, after having rejected Aunt Maybelline and Aunt Ivory, chooses Aunt Victoria. It is curious that Victoria is allowed on the approved list, since it seems that the Founder Aunts would consider it too “regal,” which might lead to feelings of superiority. Becka chooses the name Aunt Immortelle, a flower, but significant in that she is later immortalized for her loving sacrifice. We learn at the end of the novel that Agnes tellingly kept the name Victoria, suggesting that she was still committed to her religious identity

Through a change of name, a person experiences a change in identity. When the Aunts enter Ardua Hall, they are to shed their former selves and devote themselves to all of Gilead. Likewise, when Gilead assigns a Handmaid to a household, they take on the name of the Commander, literally “Of” that man’s name. They have no identity of their own and exist only to carry on the line of that Commander. This is part of Agnes’s realization that women have no real identity in Gilead, that are they viewed as having no true value.

Daisy goes through name changes throughout the story, and each represents a different stage in her journey. She begins as Daisy, the name she has always knowns as her own. After she learns who she is, she becomes Jade, the false name she takes on for her mission. All the while, she is Nicole, the name given to her by her birth mother and a symbol of resistance and treachery. Nicole takes this name and it becomes her new identity, but without abandoning her old identity, the person that she was when she was Daisy. Thus, Nicole proves that names can exist separately from identity as well.

Gilead is a theocracy, a society in which the religion and government are one and the same. Agnes and Becka grow up in this society, accustomed to their lessons in school being concerned with Bible stories and teachings about God’s plan for them personally. Divine Will is justifies all actions, no matter how brutal and unjust, particularly in the subjugation of women. Thus, the Commanders maintain their abuse of power by altering passages from the Bible, by forbidding women to read, and restricting access to actual Bibles.

Becka and Agnes discover the hypocrisy of their nation when they gain access to Bibles and the ability to read them. Seeing the way in which the elites of Gilead have changed and twisted the true meaning of Bible passages pains and infuriates Agnes and Becka. Becka has made peace with this discovery by deciding that she can still believe in God without believing in the ways that Gilead has distorted the word of God. When she receives access to evidence of the many crimes committed by Commanders, Wives, and other elites, all while they espouse their own purity and devotion to God, Agnes is disillusioned.

The author may be suggesting that religion on its own is not a negative thing, nor that a society that employs religion in its teachings is automatically a bad society. It is the act of hypocrisy, of cynically using twisted teachings of religion to suppress its citizens, while at the same time the elites flout those teachings personally, that makes Gilead a regime that must fall.

Resistance to Gilead grows, both inside and outside the regime. Mayday has wide-reaching influence, with many operatives willing to risk their personal safety to oppose Gilead’s cruel treatment of its citizens. This can mean death, as the Quakers and fishermen on one of Mayday’s escape routes discovered. Aunt Adrianna, the Pearl Girl who was working as a Mayday operative, gave her life to prevent Aunt Sally from alerting Gilead to her suspicions about Nicole. These people are acting on their conscience, unlike the contacts that Nicole and Agnes encounter, who are aiding Mayday simply for the money.

The concept of resistance recurs throughout the story. Even as she allows herself to become a major cog in the Gilead machine, Aunt Lydia retains her resistance to the regime itself. She may have ground down the citizens of Gilead, but in her heart, she never stopped working to ensure their future freedom. Aunt Lydia plays a long game and proves to be the greatest resistance fighter of them all.