Aunt Lydia
Gilead's iron matron
Theocracy enforced woman-to-woman.
Restorationist Autocratic TheocratOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Autocratic Theocrat hall →- Role
- Enforcer (fiction)
- From
- The Handmaid's Tale
- Region
- Gilead
- Social band
- Restorationist
- Placement
- −8 · +94 · −90
§ Where Aunt Lydia stands
3 axesEconomics matter far less to Lydia than theology, which fits her place near the centre of this axis. Gilead froze women's bank accounts and barred them from paid work and property, sorts women by caste into Wives, Marthas, Econowives and Handmaids, and has Handmaids shop with picture tokens because women may not read. Yet the Commanders keep their houses, cars and servants, so the order is hierarchical rather than socialist.
Lydia serves a theocratic dictatorship that suspended the constitution after the President was shot and Congress massacred, abolished elections and rules through the Eyes, Guardians and Angels. Her own instrument is indoctrination: at the Red Center the Aunts carry electric cattle prods and maim the feet of runaways, and she stages Salvagings and a Particicution in which women are made to take part in executions.
Lydia preaches the most extreme traditionalism on the compass: a woman's purpose is to bear children, reading is forbidden to her, and selectively quoted scripture is the measure of law. She screens old pornographic films to persuade the Handmaids that the old freedoms only exposed women to danger, and sells their subjection as protection, the 'freedom from' that replaces the 'freedom to' of the past.
How close are you to Aunt Lydia?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
FictionAunt Lydia is the senior Aunt in Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale, published in 1985. In the Republic of Gilead, a theocracy that has seized power in the former United States, she trains fertile women at the Rachel and Leah Center, which they call the Red Center, to serve as Handmaids who bear children for the ruling Commanders. The narrator, Offred, keeps recalling her slogans and pious euphemisms, and Lydia later presides over the public executions known as Salvagings.
Through Lydia, Atwood shows how a regime that strips women of their rights recruits women to enforce its rules, rewarding a few with power over the rest. The 2019 sequel, The Testaments, which shared that year's Booker Prize, makes her a narrator: a former family-court judge who chose collaboration over death when Gilead rose, gathered power through secret files and finally works to bring the regime down. Ann Dowd's Emmy-winning performance in the Hulu series from 2017 made her one of television's best-known villains.
Notable for
- 01Enforcer in 'The Handmaid's Tale'
- 02Symbol of theocratic patriarchy
- 03Indoctrination and control
Key works & moments
- 1985Margaret Atwood publishes The Handmaid's Tale, with Aunt Lydia as the Handmaids' indoctrinator at the Red Center.
- Section XIVLydia presides over a Salvaging and a Particicution, in which Handmaids beat an accused man to death.
- 1990Volker Schlöndorff's film adaptation, scripted by Harold Pinter, brings Gilead and its Aunts to the cinema.
- 2017Hulu's television series begins; Ann Dowd wins an Emmy for playing Aunt Lydia.
- 2019The Testaments reveals her past as a judge and her secret plot against Gilead; it shares the Booker Prize.
In Aunt Lydia's words
“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. Don't underrate it.”
§ Minds closest to Aunt Lydia
All minds →
§ Also in the Autocratic Theocrat hall
Enter the hall →§ Common questions
4 answersWhat is Aunt Lydia's political ideology?
Aunt Lydia is a theocratic enforcer: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Restorationist Autocratic Theocrat. Economically she sits near the centre (−8), since Gilead's caste order matters more to her than any economic doctrine. On governance she is close to the authoritarian maximum (+94), serving a dictatorship without elections or rights, and socially she stands at the traditionalist extreme (−90), preaching a biblical order in which women are confined to childbearing, obedience and silence.
Is Aunt Lydia left-wing or right-wing?
Right-wing, on the religious far right. Lydia's Gilead is a patriarchal theocracy that claims to restore traditional values, and her near-centre economics do little to change that verdict, because the decisive axes for her are the social and governance ones. Atwood drew on the Puritans of early New England and on the American religious right of the 1980s. The Testaments shows that Lydia's own motives are more complicated than zeal, but the system she runs belongs unmistakably to the authoritarian right.
Does Aunt Lydia really believe in Gilead?
Not in the way she first appears to. In The Handmaid's Tale she seems a zealot, quoting scripture and policing the Handmaids with conviction. The Testaments (2019) reveals her past: a family-court judge, she was rounded up with other professional women, held in a stadium and broken in solitary confinement before agreeing to serve the new regime. She then built power through secret files on the Commanders and finally passes evidence of their crimes to the resistance group Mayday, helping to bring Gilead down.
Which minds are closest to Aunt Lydia?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Aunt Lydia are Ruhollah Khomeini (98% alike), Girolamo Savonarola (96% alike) and Hassan al-Banna (96% alike). The furthest is Emma Goldman (0% alike).