The Testaments

It is natural for Aunt Lydia to wonder who will find her writings and what that person will make of them: “Possibly you will view these pages of mine as a fragile treasure box, to be opened with the utmost care. Possibly you will tear them apart or burn them: that often happens to words” (403). Depending on the time, place, and personal biases of the reader, the reader may enshrine and celebrate Aunt Lydia’s words as a found treasure, or view it as abominable and dangerous, necessitating destruction. As Aunt Lydia notes, words deemed dangerous often burn.

Much of what she has sought to accomplish in writing her memoirs is to explain herself, why she did the things she did. She wants to believe that her goal was always to defend women in Gilead as best she could by virtue of her position, though it did not always turn out that way. Her behind-the-scenes endeavors to build a case against the Gilead elites and take down the regime was done with the goal of restoring human rights and liberties back to the people who had had them stolen. Aunt Lydia did all this to remake a world in which a young female student would have the liberty to someday find and read her story.

After she indulges in this little fantasy of a better future, Aunt Lydia prepares to end her own story. Always a realist, she knows that her only option at this point is to overdose on the morphine she took from Aunt Vidala’s bedside. She closes with a quote from Mary, Queen of Scots, which she has seen embroidered on a wall hanging with a phoenix rising from its ashes. Aunt Lydia comments on what good embroiderers women are. Embroidery was one of the allowed activities in the women’s sphere in Gilead, but Aunt Lydia is commenting that women have always found a way to resist and endure. Even an embroidery can be a sign of defiance, a metaphor for the resilience of women, who will rise again from the ashes of their oppression.

Aunt Lydia closes with a sensory experience, hearing boots approaching, feeling her last breaths.