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Chapter 34
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
After Becka’s suicide attempt, Agnes often worries about her, but Shunammite thinks she was only looking for attention. This disagreement causes Agnes and Shunammite to grow apart. Aunt Gabbana visits Agnes’s home and announces they have three marriage candidates for Agnes to choose from, though Agnes knows it will not actually be her choice. Most impressive among them is Commander Judd, whose young wife has recently died, and who is very powerful and important. The other two are younger, though less prestigious matches. Aunt Gabbana promises that Agnes’s parents want her to be happy, though she knows they just want to be rid of her. While she lays in bed that night, she imagines each of the three of the candidates on top of her, “trying to shove his loathsome appendage” into her dead body, cold and white like Ofkyle’s.
Although Agnes is given three marriage candidates to choose from, she knows that it is only the illusion of choice, a pretense to make the situation seem a little less oppressive and unbearable. Agnes’s vision of her own body as a cold corpse while each candidate crawls on top of her is graphic and disturbing. The fact that Agnes imagines herself to be dead like Ofkyle suggests that, like Becka, Agnes believes that such a marriage and ordeal would destroy her sense of self, her personhood, and any sense of agency she might once have possessed; she will be reduced to a body for someone to have sex with.
Themes
