Aunts
The Aunts are the female enforcers of Gilead's patriarchal regime, responsible for the indoctrination, surveillance, and punishment of Handmaids at the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center (the Red Center). They wield cattle prods, control reading and writing, and administer brutal discipline, yet they are themselves a controlled class, granted limited power in exchange for enforcing the system that subordinates all women.
Identity and Role
The Aunts are a class of women who serve as the regime's primary agents for the control and re-education of Handmaids. They are distinguished by their khaki dresses, reminiscent of military uniforms, and their use of electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts. Unlike the Handmaids, the Aunts are permitted to read and write, a privilege that underscores their authority and their role as intermediaries between the male power structure and the female population they police. They patrol the dormitories and classrooms of the Red Center, maintaining order through a combination of ideological instruction and physical intimidation. Aunt Lydia, the most prominent of them, delivers speeches that blend religious platitudes with threats, telling the Handmaids, "Think of yourselves as seeds," and warning that some "will fall on dry ground or thorns." The Aunts also control access to basic necessities; for example, they mark down on a chart how many times a day a Handmaid may use the washroom.
Methods of Control and Punishment
The Aunts employ a systematic program of psychological and physical coercion. They force Handmaids to memorize slogans and Bible verses, and they conduct "Testifying" sessions in which women are compelled to confess their sins and are then publicly shamed by their peers. During these sessions, Aunts like Aunt Helena lead the chant of "Her fault, her fault, her fault," directing the collective condemnation. Punishment for disobedience is swift and brutal. When Moira attempts to escape by faking an illness and being taken to a hospital, she is caught and returned. The Aunts then take her to the room that used to be the Science Lab, where they use steel cables, frayed at the ends, to beat her feet until they are so swollen she cannot walk for a week. Aunt Lydia justifies this by stating, "For our purposes your feet and your hands are not essential." The Aunts also use solitary confinement and the threat of shipment to the Colonies, where women are used as expendable toxic-cleanup squads, to enforce compliance.
Ideological Indoctrination
The Aunts are the primary vehicles for Gilead's ideological re-education of women. They teach that women are "two-legged wombs" and that their sole purpose is reproduction. Aunt Lydia instructs the Handmaids to "Think of yourselves as pearls," and tells them that "A thing is valued only if it is rare and hard to get." They control the narrative of history, showing films that depict the pre-Gilead era as a time of degradation and violence against women, and they present the regime's restrictions as a form of protection. Aunt Lydia frames the loss of freedom as a gain, telling the Handmaids, "There is more than one kind of freedom. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from." The Aunts also enforce the prohibition on reading and writing, keeping the Bible locked up and reading from it aloud to the Handmaids, who are forbidden to touch it.
The Aunts' Own Position
Despite their power over the Handmaids, the Aunts are themselves a controlled and exploited class within Gilead's hierarchy. They are typically older, infertile, or unmarried women who would otherwise be sent to the Colonies. Service as an Aunt offers them a reprieve from that fate, as well as a measure of authority and material comfort. Aunt Lydia's own speeches betray a desperate need for validation; she pleads with the Handmaids, "I'm doing my best. I'm trying to give you the best chance you can have," and her hands are described as "empty." The Aunts are also subject to the regime's rules; they are not trusted with guns, and their own reading and writing privileges are strictly controlled. Their power is entirely derivative, granted by the male hierarchy and contingent on their continued loyalty. The system is designed so that women police women, a strategy that the regime's architects, according to the Historical Notes, considered "the best and most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other purposes."
Narrative and Thematic Significance
The Aunts function as a chilling illustration of how authoritarian systems co-opt members of an oppressed group to enforce their own subjugation. They embody the internalization of patriarchal ideology, wielding power over other women in exchange for a precarious and limited status. Their presence in the narrative deepens the novel's exploration of female complicity and the moral compromises made under duress. The Aunts are not merely villains; they are products of the same system that destroys the Handmaids, and their own humanity is eroded by the cruelty they are required to perform. The figure of Aunt Lydia, in particular, with her "nervous pleading smile" and her capacity for both sentimentality and sadism, becomes a complex symbol of the corruption that absolute power, even when delegated, can produce.
