The Testaments

One question the reader may ask when reading this chapter is: why is Aunt Lydia writing this memoir? If found by one of her political opponents, it would be highly incriminating. Just the act of writing her story would be incriminating, and the flippant, blasphemous tone she takes concerning matters of faith and the regime would instantly be a death sentence. Aunt Lydia herself ponders this question, as she wonders who the future reader of her manuscript will be, or if she will even have one.

Ultimately, Aunt Lydia has a deep desire to explain herself. She knows that she has become a symbol of the “best” of Gilead, genuine piety and womanly strength and virtue. She knows that many inside and outside of Gilead view her with contempt, a symbol of all that is “evil” in Gilead. She maintains a great deal of showmanship to conceal who she really is, a woman who found herself in an untenable situation when the leaders of Gilead came to power. Aunt Lydia wants to demonstrate that she was not always a monster.

Before she was Aunt Lydia, she was Lydia, a family court judge. She was independent, accomplished, and confident in her attempts to make the world a better place. Lydia recognized that things were bad in the country and that people were suffering, but she experienced compassion fatigue, a tuning out of the constant bombardment of bad news. Lydia, like most Americans, had underestimated the ability of a few zealots and their supporters to completely take over the country.

Though she understands her role in the subjugation of women in Gilead, Aunt Lydia wants to show why she has done what she has done. She understands all too well that others desire her position of prominence, and she knows that these women would not be as concerned with mitigating suffering. She is not only the principal leader of the women’s sphere, she is very good at her job: “I control the women’s side of their enterprise with an iron fist in a leather glove in a woollen mitten, and I keep things orderly: like a harem eunuch, I am uniquely placed to do so” (62). She has remained alive partially because she remains necessary to the regime.

Aunt Lydia inserts a recollection of a meeting with Commander Judd, the leader of the Eyes and a powerful head of state, into her memoir. She shows her interactions with the Commander as an example of her life, the type of the daily efforts she must contend with to keep her position and ensure her survival. Commander Judd praises Aunt Lydia, but with a subtext of threat that she understands, and she parries expertly with her own unspoken promises and threats. All of this takes place with the required outward piety and obsequiousness expected of her, as a mere woman. Commander Judd and Aunt Lydia clearly despise each other, but they find each other useful, so they maintain a veneer of esteem, though there is a sense that they could turn on each other at a moment’s notice.

Aunt Lydia ends this section of her memoirs with a description how she was abruptly displaced from a respected position and became a prisoner. Readers of The Handmaid’s Tale know Offred’s descriptions of the bewildering swiftness with which women lost their rights after the coup by the Sons of Jacob, and Lydia’s story parallels Offred’s account. Lydia expresses her disbelief and outrage. As an officer of the court, she had sworn to uphold the Constitution, so it is with profound incredulity that she finds that the Constitution is no longer the law of the land.

This segment of Lydia’s story ends in a way that mirrors Offred’s at the very end of The Handmaid’s Tale: in a van, heading for the unknown. Whereas that van ride signaled the end of Offred’s nightmare in Gilead, Lydia’s nightmare journey is just beginning.