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Chapter 57
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
Agnes and Becka are summoned to Lydia’s office at the same time, and they both assume they are meant to report on Jade’s progress as a convert. However, when they arrive, Jade is already in Lydia’s office, sitting on a stool. Agnes notices that Lydia looks older and frailer, which she’d once thought impossible. Lydia reveals that Baby Nicole is in Gilead, and that she is Agnes’s sister. Becka is both thrilled and pained by this news, since now Agnes has biological family while she herself does not. However, when Lydia announces that Jade is Nicole, Becka is even more crestfallen. Agnes is in shock but makes a polite show of gratitude for Jade’s sake.
Becka’s disappointment that Jade is Baby Nicole in the flesh suggests that Becka had expected such an icon to be a paragon of grace and virtue. Although understandable, this only emphasizes the manner in which, by making Baby Nicole into a symbolic icon, both the people of Gilead and Canada’s anti-Gilead protesters dehumanized Nicole, the actual person, for their own purposes. In treating Baby Nicole as an icon, neither side recognized her as an actual person, an individual with agency and personality that might not suit the symbol.
Themes
Lydia announces that they need to get Nicole out of Gilead and back to Canada, which floors both Agnes and Becka, since such an action would be “treason ten times over.” Lydia argues, however, that as they’ve both seen in the crime files—Becka has secretly been receiving them as well—Gilead’s leadership is fully corrupt, and this new task serves the women of Gilead in the greatest possible way, though it certainly is treachery. Lydia says they can make their own choice as to whether to participate or not, though if they don’t, they will still be punished for the dangerous information they now possess. Nicole calls this “emotional blackmail” but Lydia is unmoved, and leaves Agnes and Becka alone to decide.
Although Lydia presents Becka and Agnes with the choice of whether or not to participate in her plot, it is only the illusion of a choice, since they have been given too much information already and would likely be arrested and killed. In this manner, although it is for an arguably greater good, Lydia’s involvement of Becka and Nicole without giving them a real choice echoes the behavior of Gilead’s regime, suggesting that even those with ultimately good intentions may still be guilty of robbing women of their right to choose.
Themes
After their meeting, Becka returns to her work in the Reading Room while Agnes and Nicole go back to their apartment. Agnes shows Nicole the picture she stole of their mother. Nicole is thankful to see it but after gazing at it decides it is too dangerous to keep, so they tear the pages up and flush them in the toilet. At Aunt Lydia’s direction, all three of them carry on with their work as usual, though Agnes wonders if she and Becka will still undertake their mission as Pearl Girls soon. Less than a week before they are set to be sent on their mission, Lydia tells them that Becka will not go on her mission right away, but that Nicole will go to Canada posing as a Pearl Girl with Agnes in her stead. Lydia claims Becka will follow after, but Agnes suspects this to be a lie.
Again, although the situation arguably demands it, Lydia pulls both Becka and Agnes into a very dangerous scheme that will permanently change their lives without their consent. This again depicts Lydia as a less-than-heroic figure, although her goals are certainly noble. Agnes’s suspicion that Lydia is lying when she says that Becka will escape to Canada after Agnes and Nicole make it out safely suggests not only that Lydia is hiding something, but that Becka will not escape with her life as Lydia claims.
Themes
