Choice Theme Analysis

Women in Gilead are given little to no choice in nearly every aspect of their lives, and this lack of personal agency or autonomy becomes a source of anger, frustration, and fear for Agnes and Becka. However, even Nicole, who grows up in an open, democratic society in Canada and has considerably more power to make her own decisions, finds that sometimes she, too, is given little choice in major decisions in her life—especially when she is swept up in external events and circumstances beyond her control. Through Agnes, Becka, and Nicole’s consideration of choice and agency, the narrative suggests that the power to exercise one’s personal agency and choose what happens to their body and their life is an important human right, though sometimes circumstance and fate may press one to nobly sacrifice that agency for the sake of offering agency to others.

The frustration and fear that Agnes and Becka experience over not being given choices in their life suggests that a woman’s ability to choose is a fundamental right and necessary for their health and wellbeing. As a girl, Agnes witnesses her adoptive father’s Handmaid, Ofkyle, die in childbirth. The doctor realizes that only the mother or the child will live, and so without consulting Ofkyle, cuts her open to save the baby. While Agnes’s family and the doctors and nurses praise Ofkyle for making the “ultimate sacrifice” and dying with “noble womanly honor,” Agnes is deeply disturbed, since Ofkyle’s sacrificial death “wasn’t something she chose.” The doctor forced it on her without asking permission, without giving her the choice. Agnes’s revulsion and sadness suggests that it is not even Ofkyle’s death, but her total inability to choose to live or sacrifice herself, that seems the greatest injustice thrust upon her as a woman. When they are just entering puberty, both Becka and Agnes fear their forthcoming forced marriages. Although they each get three possible husbands to “choose” from—which is only the illusion of choice, since their parents will be the ones to actually choose—they are both horrified at the prospect of being forced to marry an older man, being forced to have sex with him. However, neither Agnes or Becka are against having families someday, it is just this forced method of it and their utter lack of choice that they find so fearful. In the weeks before her wedding, Becka attempts to commit suicide. Becka’s attempted suicide represents what she believes will be her last choice in the face of a choiceless life, a married life without agency. Her resolve to die rather than be forced into a dismal marriage she did not want suggests that her agency and power to choose is more important to her than life itself—to her, life without any agency would not be worth living.

However, even in comparatively free societies such as Canada, where women like Nicole are given far more choice, circumstances and the greater flow of history may limit one’s actual choices or press them to sacrifice their own agency. Contrasting with Becka and Agnes’s utter lack of choice and freedom to determine their own lives, Nicole is given a comparatively large amount of choice and agency in her life, even in desperate circumstances. After Nicole’s adoptive parents are murdered by Gilead operatives who are after Nicole, her new guardian, Ada, takes her on the run but is careful to allow Nicole the opportunity to walk away or go to the police—even though doing so would most likely mean Nicole’s capture or death. Ada’s willingness to let Nicole make her own choices as an individual, even if there should be deadly consequences, suggests that she understands how important a woman’s sense of choice is and respects Nicole’s personal agency. Even so, when it becomes clear that Nicole is the only person who could infiltrate Gilead and retrieve Lydia’s cache of information, the other resistance operatives sweep Nicole into their plans without her ever truly choosing to be involved: “I somehow agreed to go to Gilead without ever definitely agreeing. I said I’d think about it, and then the next morning everyone acted as if I’d said yes,” leading Nicole to see the mission as a necessity, though not a choice. Nicole’s lack of choice in a decision that could cost her her life chillingly resembles Handmaid Ofkyle’s lack of choice in whether or not to die to save her baby. This complicates the concept of choice, since Nicole’s unchosen mission is the best hope of toppling Gilead, suggesting that an individual may sometimes need to set aside their own personal agency for the sake of the greater good, which in Nicole’s case will free the women in Gilead and allow them all to have the ability to choose and exert their own personal agency.

Becka faces a similar lack of choice when she and Agnes are swept into Lydia’s plan to smuggle information to Canada via Nicole. Although Agnes and Nicole will travel to Canada, Becka must stay behind to act as a diversion, which means she will certainly be captured, tortured, and killed. By the time Becka learns of her role, the plan is already in motion and she must accept her self-sacrifice or risk the lives of everyone else involved. Becka willingly accepts this non-choice to help her friends and ultimately all the women in Gilead, which again suggests that although having choice and personal agency is critically important, in the sweep of events greater than oneself, one may heroically give up their right to choose for the sake of a grander purpose, such as fighting to provide that right to personal agency to other people as well. The Testaments presents the concept of women’s choice and agency as a complex issue: though it is a critical human right and an injustice when one’s choice and agency are denied, in some circumstances one may nobly sacrifice it for a greater good.