The Handmaid's Tale, #2
The Testaments
by Margaret Atwood
Contents
13
Overview
Agnes endures Tabitha’s austere Gilead funeral and witnesses court politics in miniature at the reception, where the Widow Paula’s scandalous past resurfaces in gossip. Months later, Agnes’s father marries Paula and gives her Tabitha’s ring, consolidating household power and deepening Agnes’s alienation as her grief is minimized.
Summary
Agnes narrates the aftermath of Tabitha’s death, describing her numb dislocation and a Bible verse drilled into her at school that now feels hollow. She attends the restrained Gilead funeral, where her father praises Tabitha as a model Wife and leads a brief prayer before a modest reception at their home.
Helping Martha Zilla bake cheese puffs gives Agnes a momentary comfort. At the reception, the Widow Paula—notorious because her former husband, Commander Saunders, was killed by their Handmaid—scrutinizes Agnes and makes a patronizing remark about her new black dress, which Agnes resents but endures in silence.
Agnes recalls the competing accounts of Commander Saunders’s death: Paula’s claim that a deranged Handmaid attacked him, and the Marthas’ gossip that he coerced the Handmaid into nightly visits, provoking violence. Agnes prefers the latter story and imagines Paula struggling to restore the dead man’s trousers to preserve appearances.
Months later, Agnes’s father marries Paula, who begins wearing Tabitha’s distinctive ring. The Marthas grumble that Tabitha intended Agnes to inherit it, but no one can oppose the decision. Agnes, furious and grieving, finds herself ignored as her father and Paula adopt a “humouring” strategy that treats her emotions as weather to be waited out.
Who Appears
- Agnes JemimaNarrator; grieves Tabitha, endures a restrained funeral, resents Paula, and feels powerless after Paula marries her father.
- PaulaWidow of Commander Saunders; attends the funeral, later marries Agnes’s father, and wears Tabitha’s ring.
- Agnes’s fatherLeads Tabitha’s funeral remarks; soon marries Paula and dismisses Agnes’s grief as a phase.
- ZillaMartha who comforts Agnes by letting her help bake cheese puffs for the funeral reception.
- RosaMartha who notes Tabitha intended her ring for Agnes but can’t challenge Paula’s claim.
- ShunammiteAgnes’s schoolmate; source of Martha gossip about Commander Saunders and the Handmaid.
- Aunt VidalaAunt whose memorized Bible verse echoes in Agnes’s grief.
- Commander SaundersDeceased; his scandalous death by a Handmaid fuels gossip overshadowing Paula.