Aunt Lise
Aunt Lise is a minor but symbolically significant figure within the hierarchy of Ardua Hall, an Aunt whose domain is the cultivation of surface-level grace and domestic accomplishment among the elite young women of Gilead. She is the teacher of the Rubies Premarital Preparatory class, a finishing school for the daughters of Commanders, where she instructs in manners, flower-arranging, and the proper management of a household. Her character embodies the regime's attempt to aestheticize female submission, yet her gentle nature and limited power also reveal the cracks in that system, as she becomes a conduit for the desperation of the girls in her charge.
Identity and Role
Aunt Lise is defined by her elegant, pretentious appearance, notably her "modified French roll" hairstyle, which sets her apart from the more severe Aunts. She is described as having a "soft heart," a quality that relegates her to the relatively menial duties of the wardrobe team and the teaching of domestic arts. In her past life before Gilead, she was a professor of eighteenth-century French literature, pre-Revolution, and teaching the Rubies class is the closest she will ever come to having a salon. Her role is to instruct the girls in the performance of their future roles as Wives: which fork to use, how to pour tea, how to be kind but firm with Marthas, and how to avoid emotional entanglements with Handmaids. She teaches elementary gardening with an emphasis on roses, and the basics of interior decorating, though the final choices are always made by the husbands. Her lessons in flower-arrangement, covering both Japanese and French styles, are a central part of her curriculum, and she sets great store by them.
Key Actions and Encounters
Aunt Lise's most significant actions stem from her encounter with the suicidal Supplicant, Becka. When Becka slashes her wrist with the secateurs during a French-style flower-arranging class, it is Aunt Lise who reports the incident to Aunt Lydia. She nervously wrings her hands and describes the attempt, noting that Becka had tried all the usual methods of persuasion and was adamant in her refusal to marry. Aunt Lise reveals the root of Becka's phobia: "It's the penises. It's like a phobia." She advocates for Becka, suggesting that the girl claims to have received a calling to higher service, and asks if she might be admitted to Ardua Hall. Aunt Lise's intervention is crucial; she presents the case not as a rebellion but as a psychological incapacity, and her soft-hearted plea—"It would have been such a shame" to lose her—persuades Aunt Lydia to accept Becka on probation. This act positions Aunt Lise as a figure of limited but real compassion within the system, one who can recognize and act upon the genuine distress of the girls.
Relationships and Conflict
Aunt Lise's primary relationship is with her students, particularly Becka and Agnes. She is a source of gentle, if ultimately inadequate, comfort. When Becka is distraught after the story of the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces, it is Aunt Estée, not Aunt Lise, who is called in to calm her, suggesting Aunt Lise's role is more instructional than pastoral. She is also subordinate to the more powerful Founders, particularly Aunt Lydia, to whom she reports Becka's case with nervous deference. Her relationship with Aunt Vidala is one of unspoken tension; Aunt Vidala's harsh, fear-mongering theology directly contradicts Aunt Lise's more soothing approach, and Aunt Lise's soft heart is implicitly contrasted with Vidala's severity. She has no direct conflict with the Commanders or the Eyes, operating entirely within the separate female sphere.
Change and Ending
Aunt Lise does not undergo a significant personal transformation. She remains a static character, a functionary within the system. Her fate is not explicitly detailed in the narrative, but she is last seen in her role as a teacher, continuing to instruct the girls in the performance of their prescribed roles. Her legacy is the small, humane space she creates within the oppressive machinery of Gilead, a space that allows for the rescue of a girl like Becka, even if that rescue is only into another form of confinement. She represents the regime's reliance on women who are not cruel but are complicit through their focus on the trivial and the aesthetic, a complicity that ultimately serves the system's goals.
Thematic Significance
Aunt Lise embodies the theme of aestheticized oppression within Gilead. Her focus on flower-arrangement, etiquette, and the "stage set" of a Wife's life reveals how the regime uses beauty and refinement to mask its brutality. She is a living example of the "separate sphere" for women, a sphere that is decorative, domestic, and ultimately powerless. Her soft heart and good intentions are not enough to challenge the system; they merely make it more palatable. She represents the tragedy of women who, having no real power, use their limited influence to perform small acts of kindness, acts that are both necessary and insufficient. Her character underscores the novel's critique of how even the most gentle and well-meaning individuals can become cogs in a machine of terror, their humanity circumscribed and channeled into serving an inhuman order.
