Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Testaments, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religious Totalitarianism and Hypocrisy
Gender Roles
Truth, Knowledge, and Power
Shame, Fear, and Repression
Choice
Summary
Analysis
Aunt Lydia prepares herself for bed, looking at herself in the mirror as she unpins her hair. She was “handsome” once, but now she is old and withering. Her hair is shorter and thinner. She is dying, quicker than many realize but not quickly enough for some. She wonders how she will meet her end, whether hidden away through old age, toppled with the regime, torn apart by a mob, head impaled on a pike, or tried and shot by firing squad. She has certainly enraged enough people for any of those options. And she’s made her list of who to bring down with her when she goes.
Contrasting with Agnes’s weak will and general passivity, Lydia is characterized as the most subversively powerful character in the story, the effective puppet-master in Gilead’s downfall. The scope of Lydia’s power hinted at here, and later described in detail, suggests that even in a patriarchal theocracy that seeks to subdue women, some women may learn to hold and exert tremendous power, not because it was given to them, but because they earned it.
Themes
Lydia suspects that the reader already knows who she is, that her fearsome reputation has preceded her. She is a “legend,” a looming and threatening figure larger than life, a monster used to scare children. Now, lost in her own power—since, in Gilead, one either becomes powerful or dies—Lydia only wonders how to return to her “normal size” after growing so inhumanly large.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Lydia occupied the role of an archetypal villain with no redeeming qualities. Her narration and characterization in this story offer Lydia’s character redemption, developing her from a one-dimensional monster to a complex and dynamic character, a human of “normal size” rather than an evil archetype.
Themes
It is Easter in the rest of the world, and though Gilead does not celebrate it, Lydia still allows the Aunts to dye the eggs they will eat for supper. She leads the seasonal prayer, praying for Baby Nicole who was stolen from Gilead and is lost in Canada, and who has become an icon for Gilead’s “faithful.” They end with the incantation “Per Ardua Cum Estrus.” Lydia is pleased with herself at having developed the Latin phrase, which means nothing but inspires obedient repetition of it. The hymns that three young Supplicants now sing were also written by Lydia, not to be beautiful or inspirational, but to reinforce obedience. Ardua Hall is not forgiving of disobedience. As the singing ends, Lydia sees Aunt Elizabeth take one more egg than she is allotted, and Vidala watching furtively.
The fact that Gilead does not celebrate Easter suggests they do not practice traditional Christianity but have developed their own religious variation. As recognized by the narration, Baby Nicole works as an icon, a symbol for both Gilead (representing the outside world’s immoral interference in Gilead’s affairs) and those who oppose Gilead (representing the possibility for escape and freedom for Gilead’s women). However, in treating Baby Nicole as an iconic symbol, both sides effectively dehumanize Nicole by failing to remember she is a human being with her own personality, hopes, and desires.
Themes
After dinner, Lydia makes her way to the library, through the genealogical archives—kept very carefully so as to avoid incest when marriages are arranged—and past the Bibles in their locked boxes, to her inner sanctum. Here, amidst the banned literature, she has a trove of dangerous information on people throughout Gilead. “Knowledge is power.” In a Catholic text—deemed heretical and unlikely to be touched by anyone else—she keeps a manuscript that would certainly earn her immediate execution if discovered, though she is not ready to die yet. Lydia reflects that, among other things, this writing is an attempt to justify her own life and the atrocities in which she’s participated. Once, before the regime began, she’d been a judge, voted and paid taxes, and wrongly assumed that this would all lead to a virtuous life.
Although Lydia is one of the architects of Gilead’s social structure and one of the most powerful figures within its government, her secret hoarding of dangerous information demonstrates that she is laying her own plans. Lydia explicitly recognizes that “knowledge is power,” and her gathering of useful material demonstrates that even as a woman in a repressive society, the right information can grant a massive amount of power. Lydia’s brief remembrance of her past life again suggests that, despite the mythic status she has achieved, she is still only a human being, making her way through life like anyone else.
Themes
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