Aunt Abby

Aunt Abby is a minor Aunt at Ardua Hall whose primary function in the narrative is to serve as a petty authority figure, embodying the arbitrary and humiliating nature of the tests imposed on Supplicants. She is characterized by her mean and pompous behavior, which makes her a source of irritation for the younger women in training, particularly Agnes Jemima (later Aunt Victoria). Her role is not to instruct but to enforce unreasonable demands, revealing the psychological conditioning that underpins the Aunts' system of control.

Role and Function

Aunt Abby is assigned the task of supervising the most junior Supplicants during their manual labor, specifically the scrubbing of toilets. This duty is not about cleanliness but about obedience: the Supplicants are required to clean the same toilet three times, even when it is already perfectly clean. Aunt Abby's presence as a supervisor—someone almost the same age as those she commands—intensifies the humiliation. Agnes Jemima finds this particularly galling, complaining that Aunt Abby is "so mean, and pompous." The test is designed to see whether the Supplicants will obey unreasonable demands without complaint, and Aunt Abby is the instrument of that test.

Narrative Significance

Aunt Abby appears only briefly in the narrative, but her character illustrates a key mechanism of Gilead's power structure: the use of petty, arbitrary authority to break down individual will and enforce conformity. Becka explains to Agnes that the repetitive cleaning is not about the state of the toilets but is a deliberate test of obedience, and that the Aunts assign the most junior Aunt to supervise in order to make the test harder. Aunt Abby thus represents the mundane, everyday cruelty of the system—a cruelty that is not reserved for major transgressions but is woven into the fabric of daily life at Ardua Hall. Her presence helps to explain the psychological pressure that shapes the Supplicants into compliant Aunts, and it underscores the theme of power being exercised through small, relentless acts of domination.