The Testaments

One problem that Gilead suffers, Aunt Lydia shares, is the high rate of escape by Handmaids and other desperate people. There are areas in Maine and Vermont that remain permeable, where guides accept money for helping Mayday operatives. Aunt Lydia comes from a family with a long history of smugglers and others who operated on the wrong side of the law, which made her father proud. She did not come from an educated family, and her father was never proud of her, “I was a girl and, worse, a smarty-pants girl” (112). She achieved her position through strategic ladder-climbing.

Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Helena, and Aunt Vidala come to Aunt Lydia and present her with a detailed plan to improve “the female emigrant problem.” The plan calls for trapping Handmaids on their way to Canada and more effective methods of interrogation. Aunt Lydia suspects Aunt Vidala is behind the “fingernail ripping” aspects of the plan. Aunt Lydia praises the plan and promises to take it to Commander Judd, knowing that if she did not, he would hear about it.

Days later, the three Aunts come to see Aunt Lydia again, excited about the raids in Upstate New York that resulted in the capture of several people suspected of aiding the Underground Femaleroad.