'The Testaments' Analysis: Intro, Chapters 1-3

I know my Handmaid's Tale analysis isn't finished, but I thought I would jump right into The Testaments since the Hulu adaptation is well underway. Obviously, the show and novel have different continuities. The Testaments is understood to take place 15 years after The Handmaid's Tale's (novel) ending. It does not feature the same protagonist, but rather tells the story from three different viewpoints.

Before we dive in, I thought I would venture a speculation on the choice to use green in lieu of red to denote the Handmaid on the front. Green is the complementary color of red, meaning the opposite. So, whereas a Handmaid in red represents oppression, subjection, and dehumanization (as in only being valued as a walking womb), a Handmaid in green represents freedom, autonomy, and individualization.

Now, let's discuss the intro. George Eliot sounds like a man's name but this is the pen name of a woman born Mary Anne Evans. She desired to escape the social norms of female writers only writing romances, so she wrote under a masculine name. Her quotation refers to women's tendency to fight one another and argue over how feminism should be perceived.

The next quote comes from a novel written by Vasily Grossman called Life and Fate. It's a quasi-historical novel of the happenings during the Eastern Front during WWII, with some embellishment to flesh out a narrative. The quote in particular is given by a Nazi officer, Obersturmbannführer Liss, to a Bolshevik named Mostovskoy. The quote is thought-provoking, however fallacy-laced it may seem coming from a Nazi. I convey it as the chilling few moments we see of Nazis in old photographs where they're acting almost human. It's these glimpses of humanity in these evil people that scare us the most but it's also likely manipulation on their part.

The final quote comes from Ursula K. Le Guin in The Tombs of Atuan. It's the story of a young girl destined to be the priestess to the Nameless Ones and guard the Tombs of Atuan. It's a lonely, depressing life until a wizard comes to try to steal a treasured ring in the Tombs. She holds him prisoner in a labyrinth beneath the Tomb and she's deeply shaken by the truth of the outside world, that her fate is contrived and pointless. The quote itself is a solemn declaration that freedom isn't a gift, but a choice that has to be fought for.

So, that's the intro done and dusted. Let's move on to Part I: Statue.

The introductory scene of the novel details an account of an Aunt, a female official charged with training the Handmaids and teaching young girls. Immediately, her status is expressed as very exalted within the Republic of Gilead because she's already had a statue carved of her. She recounts the unveiling of the statue in Ardua Hall, the place where the Aunts live and work. We can see that the narrator isn't well-beloved by Aunt Vidalla, who begrudgingly reads out the citation.

There's a contrast in describing the statue's placement, stating that it's located in the secluded area of Ardua Hall, even though statues are usually meant to be on display. The Aunt in the statue is joined by stone replicas of a child, a Handmaid, and a Pearl Girl, which is a Gilead missionary. She muses over the use of her Taser, seeing it as a great failing of hers. She wishes the statue had only showed herself, possibly showing some narcissism. She bemoans the status of the other statues, which are effigies of her colleagues.

She reveals that the statue was unveiled nine years ago and that Gilead citizens leave offerings at her feet, often foodstuffs that represent pregnancy and fertility. It's a core belief of the society of Gilead, where fertility and babies are wanted above all, though usually for status, not genuine wants to be mothers. She takes nothing but the oranges, possibly representing her job only being the pregnancy part, not the fertilizing part. Quite possibly, she's compartmentalizing, ignoring the fact that Handmaids are systematically raped to produce children.

The narrative detours and she's now writing in present tense. She's writing down a lengthy account of happenings in Gilead, which is strictly forbidden. She recalls book burnings, possibly a reference to fascist regimes in real life burning books and magazines seen as offensive to the State. She does admit to participating in the destruction of media, paving the way for a "morally pure" generation. She addresses the future reader, a fourth-wall break, meaning it's a message to the real-life reader of the novel.

She stops her inscribing for the night, hiding her notes away, with a last silent warning to the people who might want to usurp her by exposing her.

Now we move on to Part II: Precious Flower. The narrator changes to Agnes, a young girl growing up in Gilead. It should be noted that Agnes' sections are prefaced by "Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A", meaning that this an in-universe historical account, possibly read in a trial examining the crimes of Gilead. So, already we know that Agnes eventually escaped Gilead. Whereas the Aunt's narration seems to be more omnipresent, the two other characters are speaking of the past. This is done on purpose to show just how involved the Aunt was in the creation and functionality of Gilead.

Agnes opens her testimony by explaining that Gilead children were loved and that adults were fallible, just like in other societies. She still displays some naive ideals from growing up in Gilead. The horrid things she describes as merely unfortunate facts of life, like grown men finding extremely young girls too impossible to resist, sadly mirror many attitudes of victims of childhood sexual assault today.

She asks for some compassion toward her nostalgia for Gilead, because it was her home for her whole childhood. I'm reminded of accounts of German children growing up through Hitler Youth and joining the army, not realizing what exactly they would be facing until they were actively shooting Jews and sent to guard concentration camps.

The girls in Gilead have sumptuary dresses with colors for each season. Immediately, we see the poisonous marks of purity culture because Agnes implies that men's urges can't be contained so girls have to remain covered head to toe. This is especially troubling considering they are pre-adolescent children. As we'll find out later, girls in Gilead are considered women once they start menstruating, meaning they are eligible for marriage.

The girls are told that they are "precious flowers," which is possibly inspired by purity culture object lessons. In many evangelical settings, girls may be given purity talks and items like gum, roses, cookies, and even cars are used as metaphors. The assumption is that no one would want the chewed gum, the trampled roses, the spit-on cookie, or the crashed car. Agnes goes on to explain her school life. Girls only learn domestic arts like petit-point, knitting, and painting in Gilead. They aren't taught to read because it's forbidden for girls and women to write or read in Gilead, except for the Aunts.

Aunt Estee is Agnes' favorite Aunt because she is the nicest, though this Aunt is just as cowed into the doctrine as the rest of them. She explains that the girls' parents will arrange their marriages when the time comes, implying that this normal. The phenomenon of child brides being arranged by parents was briefly mentioned in the first novel when Offred attends a Prayvaganza, which is a mass wedding event. But Agnes isn't reassured and she greatly fears her future where she'll be forced to marry a man much older than her and have children.

Agnes makes a strange comparison, alluding to losing her purity to being married to "a goat on fire." This is possibly a loose reference to Jesus' parable of the goats and the sheep.

"All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left." Matthew 25:32-33

In the later part of the parable...

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me." Matthew 25:41-43

So, a "goat on fire" in this context is an awful person. It's implied that Gilead heavily edits scripture to make it fit their purpose in oppressing women and girls. So Agnes wouldn't know the context of the passage and just assume "goats of fire" are horrible men.

Agnes explains the class disparity in Gilead, how Econofamily daughters are not educated in the domestic art schools. The Sons of Jacob are mentioned, which is the junta who succeeded in executing a coup d'etat against the American government. Girls from Econofamilies aren't pre-chosen to marry Commanders or Sons of Jacob, though Agnes claims that these rules are often bent if those girls were attractive enough. Agnes laments over how vanity is considered a sin but there's still a preference for prettier girls.

In the final half of the chapter, Agnes discusses how her mother "chose" her. Her mother, Tabitha, tells a story about she rescued Agnes from a group of wicked witches. In reality, Agnes was actually taken by Guardians from her real mother when they attempted to cross the border into Canada. However, Agnes was too young to remember it.

Tabitha obviously can't tell Agnes the real story so she fabricates one of fantasy. There's foreshadowing of later events by her mention of coughing. Tabitha tells Agnes that she is loved and cherished, though her questioning of Agnes might seem self-aggrandizing. You have to consider that Agnes only knew Tabitha as her mother. She didn't know the real story of Tabitha being the Wife of a Commander who would enact horrible laws and enslave her real mother at the time. Whereas we the reader might see Tabitha has a horrible person for perpetrating Gilead's vile doctrine and technically kidnapping Agnes, she does truly believe that she saved Agnes.

In Chapter 3, Agnes explains how Tabitha would play with her. She had a dollhouse with doll versions of the household members typical in a Commander's home. She talks of the empty fake books on the bookshelves and her mother explains them as merely a decoration. She questions the existence of a powder room, obviously not knowing what powder is because vanity items are illegal in Gilead. She explains the difference between the Commander doll and her father, Commander Kyle, that she didn't get to see her father often because he was in his study, where women and girls aren't allowed.

We hear of more Gilead propaganda and misogyny, like Agnes explaining how Commanders could write and have a Computalk (phone) because they had bigger brains than women. Aunt Estee, arguably the nicest and most reasonable Aunt, compares the act of teaching girls to read as "teaching cats to crochet." Agnes thinks of Aunt Vidala's lessons about the Garden of Eden and why Eve ate the Apple of Knowledge. This is a common belief among evangelical Christians, that the doom of mankind is due to a woman seeking power like God or knowledge, so she ate the apple from the forbidden tree.

Agnes discusses the Handmaids from the young girls' perspective, admitting that she's scared of them. It's interesting that the dollhouse has a Handmaid considering the family is implied to already have a child. Tabitha comments on this, saying it was greedy for families to want more than one child, like they are luxurious commodities rather than people. Agnes laments over the swings in the parks, which Gilead girls are not allowed to be on due to their skirts. Agnes changes tense for a moment to reflect on her wish to swing on a swing, implying that even though she's escaped Gilead, she still has hangups about the things she wasn't supposed to do as a child.

The Handmaids are implied to be as pitiable as disabled people within the caste system. Agnes surmises that maybe they used to be little girls, showing that children are taught that Gilead's ways have been the norm for longer than they actually have. Agnes wonders if the Handmaids became such because they had been careless according to purity culture teachings. It's not too far from the truth since the classification of Handmaids broadened its eligibility as time went on. Single mothers, divorced women, fertile lesbians, and educated women are turned into Handmaids.

Agnes talks of the Aunt doll in her dollhouse, but she implies the Aunt doesn't belong with the typical Gileadean elite household. This could be an acknowledgment that Aunts within the caste system relate more to the men of the regime, carrying out the system of oppression rather than suffering it. Agnes confesses feelings of spite towards Aunts, pretending to lock the Aunt doll in the cellar and laughing at her screams. She thanks her mother for instilling honesty within her, even though it's, at best, Gilead propaganda.

The morality of "good people" within the Gilead regime is very gray. One could argue to be complicit in a regime's oppression and propaganda, this makes you a collaborator and not a good person. But you have to consider how strict the surveillance and caste system is. If a Gilead Wife and mother were to be seen having anything less than conservative, authoritarian views, she would be disciplined. Quite a few of the women are true believers in the Gilead doctrine and believe themselves to be morally pure. I believe Tabitha may have her doubts of the regime, but she had to make sure Agnes understood how the system worked, even if she (Agnes) would grow disillusioned with it. I'd compare them to fundamentalist Mormon women who instruct their daughters in ways of keeping their fathers and future husbands happy. Yes, it is all wrong, but this is the world they must survive in.

Agnes explains her bedtime ritual. She used to have a whale stuffed animal she'd sleep with and she explains that God made whales, so it was alright that they could be toys. In the previous novel, it's actually speculated by Offred that whales have gone extinct due to environmental pollution and climate change. Gilead is quite anti-science, at least in the novel. In the Hulu show, Gilead was green and switched to renewable energy and organic farming to reduce pollution believed to be causing low birth rates.

Tabitha sings an old hymn with a few alterations, based off the 18th century hymn of "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep." Agnes doesn't think of heavenly angels, though, she thinks of the militant Angels with rifles that fight on the front lines of Gilead's ongoing civil war with rebels. Agnes isn't comforted by the thought of four men around her bed while she's in her nightclothes. She thinks of what her soul might look like and how she would have to guard it just as diligently as her purity.

Thank you for reading this intro to my analysis. We'll continue on later with Chapters 4-6 in due time.