The Testaments

Highlights

Page 580

What my father was doing in there was said to be very important—the important things that men did, too important for females to meddle with because they had smaller brains that were incapable of thinking large thoughts, according to Aunt Vidala, who taught us Religion. It would be like trying to teach a cat to crochet, said Aunt Estée, who taught us Crafts, and that would make us laugh, because how ridiculous! Cats didn’t even have fingers!

Page 697

I found out from Shunammite, who said she was my best friend. We weren’t supposed to have best friends. It wasn’t nice to form closed circles, said Aunt Estée: it made other girls feel left out, and we should all be helping one another be the most perfect girls we could be. Aunt Vidala said that best friends led to whispering and plotting and keeping secrets, and plotting and secrets led to disobedience to God, and disobedience led to rebellion, and girls who were rebellious became women who were rebellious, and a rebellious woman was even worse than a rebellious man because rebellious men became traitors, but rebellious women became adulteresses.

Note: I didn’t realise that having friends was such a slippery slope

Page 781

I’ve become swollen with power, true, but also nebulous with it—formless, shape-shifting. I am everywhere and nowhere: even in the minds of the Commanders I cast an unsettling shadow. How can I regain myself? How to shrink back to my normal size, the size of an ordinary woman? But perhaps it is too late for that. You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet.

Page 793

And bless Baby Nicole, stolen away by her treacherous Handmaid mother and hidden by the godless in Canada; and bless all the innocents she represents, doomed to be raised by the depraved. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. May our Baby Nicole be restored to us, we pray; may Grace return her.

Note: surely the use of “thoughts and prayers” isn’t coincidental

Page 917

I decided she was naive. I was the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing.

Page 391

Because if you weren’t an Aunt or a Martha, said Aunt Vidala, what earthly use were you if you didn’t have a baby?

Note: indeed

Page 154

Some women had nightmares, as you’d assume. They would groan and thrash about during them, or sit bolt upright with modified shouts. I’m not criticizing: I had nightmares myself. Shall I describe one for you? No, I will not. I’m fully aware of how easily one can become fatigued by other people’s nightmares, having heard a number of recitals of these by now. When push comes to shove, only one’s own nightmares are of any interest or significance.

Note: true

Page 247

I groped around in the dusk, found the bed slab, sat down on it. I can do this, I thought. I can get through. I was right, but only just. You’d be surprised how quickly the mind goes soggy in the absence of other people. One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

Page 344

Reading was not for girls: only men were strong enough to deal with the force of it;

Page 572

“I am sure we can help,” I said finally. “But it will take a considerable amount of work. Women have been told for so long that they can achieve equality in the professional and public spheres. They will not welcome the …” I sought for a word. “The segregation.” “It was always a cruelty to promise them equality,” he said, “since by their nature they can never achieve it. We have already begun the merciful task of lowering their expectations.”

Page 509

Then, in bits and pieces, it came out. The wretched Dr. Grove had not stopped at the fondling of his young patients in the dentist’s chair. I had known about this for some time. I had even collected photographic evidence, but I had passed over it, since the testimonies of young girls—if testimonies can be extracted from them, which in this case I doubted—would count for little or nothing. Even with grown women, four female witnesses are the equivalent of one male, here in Gilead. Grove had depended on that. Also, the man had the confidence of the Commanders: he was an excellent dentist, and much latitude is given by those in power to professionals who can relieve them of pain. The doctors, the dentists, the lawyers, the accountants: in the new world of Gilead, as in the old, their sins are frequently forgiven them.

Note: i love how she throws in things like “4 female witnesses” that are based on real life. I bet there are people out there who read this and reckon “nah, this is impossible” but it is

Page 370

There was also the matter of the tattoo on her left arm. It said GOD and LOVE, made into a cross. She claimed it was a token of her conversion to the true belief, but I doubted that, as she’d let slip on one occasion that she thought God was “an imaginary friend.” “God is a real friend, not an imaginary one,” said Becka. There was as much anger in her voice as she was capable of revealing. “Sorry if I disrespected your cultural belief,” Jade said, which did not improve things in the eyes of Becka: saying God was a cultural belief was even worse than saying he was an imaginary friend. We realized that Jade thought we were stupid; certainly she thought we were superstitious.

Note: oh no it’s retarded

Page 254

Passamaquoddy, formerly Bangor—was not only a crucial jumping-off point for refugees fleeing Gilead but was also a key hub of the Underground Railroad in antebellum times, now more than three hundred years ago. As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Note: beautiful

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