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Chapter 16
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
Ofkyle becomes pregnant and the household goes from vaguely tolerating her to doting on her. Paula glows with joy. Although their family will not make any announcement until three months in, because of how many babies are stillborn, all of Agnes’s classmates quickly find out and her status among them is immediately restored. As for Ofkyle, she seems less joyful than relieved, and Agnes herself feels childishly bitter that the new baby has drawn all attention away from herself—even the Marthas’ attention.
Both Agnes and Ofkyle’s rise in standing due to a pregnancy suggests that in Gilead, a woman’s primary value (or lack thereof) is relegated to her ability to produce children, regardless of what other virtues or strengths she may have. Ofkyle is never valued for her intelligence, insights, or virtues, but reduced only to her status as a child-bearing vessel, and thus dehumanized.
Themes
Around this time a “shameful” thing happens to Agnes. Agnes goes to the dentist, Dr. Grove (Becka’s father), for her yearly check-up. Although a Martha would normally go with her, Paula insists they are all too busy and sends Agnes alone, which makes her feel grown up. Dr. Grove performs the dental check-up and takes his gloves off to wash his hands. However, the man remarks that she is growing up and then proceeds to sexually abuse her. Agnes is horrified and feels that this confirms what she’d always been taught about men and their “fiery urges,” imagining that she must somehow be the cause of it. When Dr. Grove is finished, he cleans himself off, tells Agnes that he did not hurt her, and sends her out.
Agnes’s feeling that she somehow brought Dr. Grove’s sexual abuse on herself, merely by sitting in a dentist’s chair, again demonstrates the detrimental effects of such repressive teaching about purity and sexuality. Agnes is unable to recognize that Dr. Grove committed a monstrous, criminal, unjustifiable act of his own volition. Rather, in her fear of her own sexuality, Agnes interprets the event as somehow being her own fault, thus partially absolving Dr. Grove of his crime in her own mind.
Themes
Agnes wonders if this will happen every year when she goes to the dentist but thinks it unavoidable. Even though the Aunts say that girls should report any man who touches them, Agnes knows it would be foolish to report it—she’s seen girls whipped for reporting such things and the public humiliation would devastate Becka. Zilla meets Agnes when she gets home and tries to comfort Agnes, saying she should have gone with her. Agnes suspects that Zilla knows exactly what happened, and suspects that Paula intended it to happen. Agnes hates her stepmother even more from then on and feels vindicated in her hatred.
The powerlessness that Agnes feels to report the incident or to bring any sort of punishment or accountability down on Dr. Grove suggests that such heavily propagated ideas of gender and power—that men are more value, important, intelligent by design—inevitably lead to scenarios in which such wretched men as Dr. Grove have nearly free rein to hurt and exploit women. This condemns the teaching and propagation of any such gender roles or inequity.
Themes
