116 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret AtwoodThe Testaments
Margaret AtwoodFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 23: “Wall”
Chapter 65 Summary: “The Ardua Hall Holograph”
Aunt Lydia narrates that they find Aunt Vidala, comatose, behind her statue. At first, doctors believe she has had a stroke, and Aunt Lydia visits her in the Intensive Care Unit. After the nurse leaves, Aunt Lydia contemplates tampering with the oxygen supply, feeding tube or anesthetic. She does none of these things, thinking that Aunt Vidala will soon be exiting this life on her own. Before she leaves, Aunt Lydia puts a vial of morphine in her pocket.
At lunch, Aunt Helena comments on the absence of Aunt Immortelle, Aunt Victoria, and Jade. Aunt Lydia says they must be fasting now in preparation for their Pearl Girl mission, and Jade might be ill with a female complaint. Aunt Helena says that she will take her a hot water bottle, and Aunt Lydia hopes Nicole left her note in a prominent location.
Aunt Helena soon returns bearing the news that Jade has eloped “[w]ith a plumber named Garth” (372). Aunt Lydia replies that they must find the couple to ensure a proper marriage is conducted. She comments that Jade would not have made a proper Aunt anyway. Aunt Lydia posits that there was a complaint about too little bathwater, someone must have called the plumber who met Jade. Jade must have climbed over the wall.
Part 23 Analysis
Aunt Lydia is a whirlwind, shrouding all aspects of Agnes’s and Daisy’s flight with a multitude of cover stories and plausible explanations.
When the Aunts discover Aunt Vidala comatose in the garden, the official conclusion by paramedics and doctors is that she suffered a stroke, no doubt a diagnosis engineered by Aunt Lydia. Pearl Girl pearls are found near where Aunt Vidala, and Aunt Lydia plans her speech: “Pearls do not grow on trees, I will say, even artificial ones; nor should they be cast before swine. Not that there are any swine at Ardua Hall, I will add coyly” (371). Here, Aunt Lydia implies that her nemesis, Aunt Vidala, is swine, though she chooses not to kill her when she could have easily done so in the hospital.
It is interesting that this section is “Wall.” The Wall is the place where the Gileadeans hang the bodies of guilty parties as a warning to others not to deviate from the correct path. In the fabricated story, the Wall is how Jade, the wayward Pearl, escapes to be with her Economan. The Wall also both physically and mentally separates the people of Gilead from the outside world. It is the barrier that Aunt Lydia is hoping to tear down.
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By Margaret Atwood
