The Testaments

Aunt Lydia’s memoirs begin with her description of the unveiling of a statue erected in her honor. It is a momentous occasion, for it is the first time such a statue is meant to represent a woman, and a living woman at that. This symbolizes Aunt Lydia’s legendary status in Gilead, as the preeminent Founder Aunt. It shows the reverence with which Gileadeans regard her, but also how the regime continues to use her as a tool of subjugation and control. The eyes of the statue seem to look off into the distance, as if scanning for signs of sinful dissent and blasphemy. Aunt Lydia notes the fear on the face of the sculptress, who worries that Aunt Lydia will not approve of her work. Bad things can happen to people under the weight of Aunt Lydia’s disapproval. Aunt Lydia, noting that she is not without compassion, tells the woman that the statue is very lifelike. This is an early indication that the Aunt Lydia of this story is very different than her portrayal in The Handmaid’s Tale. The Aunt Lydia of that story is not compassionate.

In the Epilogue, Professor Pieixoto comments that archaeologists found the statue of Aunt Lydia vandalized and mutilated. The statue’s nose is gone, perhaps broken in an act of revenge by someone in Gilead after its fall. This act of vandalism would symbolize the pent-up anger and desire to diminish Aunt Lydia’s stature by deforming her image.

At the very end of the novel, Agnes and Nicole, along with their families, commissioned a statue to memorialize Becka. This statue symbolized Becka’s sacrifice that would ensure Agnes and Nicole’s escape. Becka had thought of them as birds of the air, carrying their message to the world, so birds on the statue’s shoulder represent Nicole and Agnes. Becka is a Pearl Girl, which symbolizes her devotion to God and recognizes the dream she gave up so that others could be free.

In Gilead, women of different classes wear different colors. Wives wear blue, Marthas wear dull green, Handmaids wear red, Aunts wear brown, and Econowives wear multi-colored stripes, meaning that they serve the functions of all the other classes. The symbolism of this is that each class of women is visibly recognizable. They are color-coded, deprived of individual identity, especially Handmaids, who have their faces concealed by their headwear to the point that they all look identical.

In this story, the daughters of the elite class wear special dresses, with colors that change with the seasons. The girls wear pink in the spring and summer and plum in the fall and winter, with white dresses for significant occasions. They feel privileged, especially in contrast to Econogirls who always wear the same stripes. Later, when girls become of marriageable age and enter the Rubies Premarital Preparatory School, they exchange their pink and plum dresses for spring green, to symbolize their transition to womanhood. The spring green symbolizes fertility and lush abundance.

When Aunt Lydia describes the women who are part of a firing squad, she says that they wear brown gowns. Later, Lydia dons her own brown gown to signal her acceptance of her cooptation by the new regime. These are not the brown dresses of the Aunts, which will come later. Lydia calls them penitential garb, rough material to symbolize their status as prisoners of Gilead’s ideology. In her memoirs, Aunt Lydia refers to the gown as sackcloth, which can have different meanings. Sackcloth can refer to the hair shirts that ancient Christians used to mortify the flesh as penitence, as the Commander forced Lydia to repent for her initial refusal to bend. Sackcloth can also refer to the garments worn by the Israelites as a sign of mourning or social protest, so this choice of wording could be a sign of Aunt Lydia’s secret subversion

There are multiple references to drowning in the story, which provide foreshadowing of Becka’s eventual fate. After she attends the anti-Gilead protest march, which abruptly turns into a violent riot, Daisy says that being in a riot feels like drowning. Daisy feels helpless, unable to run away in the throng of people, which controls her movement like a riptide. She is defenseless and panicked, until Ada plucks her out of the crowd. Soon, Daisy feels a different kind of helplessness, as she finds that her whole sense of identity is gone. She struggles, feeling vulnerable and not in control, again like she is drowning.

Becka’s story of Aunt Lily, who drowned herself in despair, shows Becka’s understanding of what some people will do when they have no options. Agnes is horrified by the thought of someone choosing to die by drowning, but Becka says that while no one wants to die, some people cannot live with the choices offered to them in life. This symbolizes self-determination, the act of taking agency over one’s life. When it appears that there are no available choices to a desperate person, there is still the choice of taking one’s life. In this case, drowning is not a helpless act, but an act of defiance.

Becka makes this choice herself. To aid the escape and survival of her friends, Becka drowns herself. Through this act, Becka takes the ultimate control over her life, choosing to sacrifice it for a higher cause. In a society in which women have little self-agency, this is a tremendous undertaking.

Finally, as Agnes and Nicole struggle in the inflatable, Agnes thinks that she will throw herself overboard before she goes back to Gilead. She thinks it better for her and Nicole to sink down and drown themselves rather return to Gilead for the state to use them as propaganda. Though this does not prove necessary, Agnes shares Becka’s decision that drowning is preferable to subjugation.