Aunt Lydia
Aunt Lydia is the most powerful and enigmatic figure within Gilead's female hierarchy, the de facto ruler of Ardua Hall, and the secret architect of the regime's eventual collapse. A former family court judge who was arrested, imprisoned in a stadium, and tortured in the Thank Tank, she chose to cooperate with Commander Judd and became one of the four Founders of the Aunts' system. For decades, she has played a double game: outwardly a pillar of the regime, inwardly a patient saboteur who has hoarded incriminating evidence against the elite and orchestrated the escape of Baby Nicole with a microdot containing the proof that would trigger Gilead's destruction.
Identity and Background
Aunt Lydia was born into a trailer-park family; her father was a violent man who beat her with fists or boots, and she describes herself as a "smarty-pants girl" whose pretensions were beaten out of her. She escaped this background through scholarships and working nights at crappy jobs, eventually becoming a family court judge—a position she gained through "decades of hardscrabble work and arduous professional climbing." Before Gilead, she had a brief marriage, several lovers, and one abortion, all of which would later be used against her. She had assumed she was living virtuously, contributing to charities and holding worthy opinions, until the day she was arrested.
Arrest, Imprisonment, and the Thank Tank
On the day of the Sons of Jacob attack that liquidated Congress, Aunt Lydia was arrested in her office along with her colleagues Katie and Anita. She was taken to a stadium where she was held with hundreds of other professional women, forced to sit in the sun without food or water, and made to witness the execution of twenty blindfolded women. After seven days, she was removed from the stadium and taken to a repurposed police station where she met Commander Judd for the first time. When she refused to sign a blank contract of cooperation, she was thrown into the Thank Tank—a dark, solitary confinement cell where she was kept for an unknown period, fed only bread and water, and subjected to three sessions of precise kicking and tasing. She was not raped, she notes, because she was "already too old and tough for the purpose." During this ordeal, she developed a cold, stone-like third eye in the middle of her forehead that did not weep but saw, and behind it someone was thinking: "I will get you back for this. I don't care how long it takes or how much shit I have to eat in the meantime, but I will do it."
Cooperation and the Founding of the Aunts
After the Thank Tank, Aunt Lydia was given three days of rest in a hotel, then brought before Commander Judd again. She agreed to cooperate, and was forced to prove her commitment by participating in an execution—she shot one of the blindfolded women, who turned out to be her colleague Anita. She threw up afterwards. She was then brought together with Elizabeth, Helena, and Vidala, and Commander Judd told them they were to organize the separate sphere for women. Aunt Lydia negotiated for a truly separate female sphere where men would not pass the threshold and where women would command. She was given a budget, a base of operations, and a dormitory, and she and the other three became the Founders of the Aunts' system. Over the years, she invented laws, uniforms, slogans, hymns, and names, and she tightened her grip over Ardua Hall, leveraging it to acquire extensive though silent power.
The Double Game: Hoarding Secrets and Undermining Gilead
Aunt Lydia has long understood that "knowledge is power, especially discreditable knowledge." She has hoarded incriminating files on the elite—the "secret histories of Gilead"—in the Forbidden World Literature section of the Hildegard Library. She has also installed surveillance cameras in her own statue to catch her enemies, and she has used her Pearl Girls initiative as a cover for espionage, passing microdots to Mayday through the Pearl Girls brochures. She has protected her position by making herself indispensable: the regime needs her to control the women's side, she knows too much about the leaders, and she is discreet. She has also cultivated a network of informants and has used her knowledge to manipulate others, such as when she forced Paula to relinquish Agnes Jemima by revealing Paula's murder of her first husband.
The Final Gambit: Baby Nicole and the Microdot
Aunt Lydia's most audacious act is her plan to smuggle Baby Nicole (the half-sister of Agnes Jemima) out of Gilead with a microdot containing the evidence that would trigger the regime's collapse. She arranged for Nicole to be brought to Ardua Hall as a convert, placed her in the same apartment as Agnes and Becka, and then, when Commander Judd discovered Nicole's identity and demanded her marriage to him, Aunt Lydia accelerated the escape. She provided the two young women with Pearl Girls dresses, passes, money, and a map, and instructed them to leave at dawn. When Aunt Vidala tried to stop them, Nicole knocked her out with a heartstopper punch. Aunt Lydia then covered up the escape by claiming Nicole had eloped with a plumber, and later, when Becka was found dead in the water cistern, she arranged a dignified funeral and claimed it was an accident. She waited for news of Nicole's safe arrival in Canada, knowing that the microdot would be displayed on television and that her own death would follow.
The End: A Quick Exit
As the Eyes close in, Aunt Lydia prepares for her own death. She has a vial of morphine and plans to make a quick exit rather than face torture. She writes her final words to her reader, hoping that she will be remembered as a warts-and-all portrait, and that her efforts will not have been in vain. She reflects that she has made a bargain with Commander Judd, but that she has also been a Recording Angel, collecting together all the sins of Gilead, including her own. She ends with the hope that her messengers have flown safely and that Gilead will fall.
