From Villainess to Gilead’s Nemesis: The (Un)easy Rehabilitation of Aunt Lydia
Abstract The article takes under scrutiny the evolution of the key antagonist from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, namely, Aunt Lydia. In the sequel to her most popular novel, that is, The Testaments, the author boldly rewrote the villainous Aunt as Gilead’s undercover agent, forcing the reader to reconsider their own perception and reception of this character retrospectively. Predictably, many critics and fans found the said transformation implausible. Taking The Testaments as a point of departure, the article rereads the original tale, which, astonishingly, discloses a number of equivocal passages that in fact might provide credibility to Atwood’s audacious refashioning of Aunt Lydia as a Mayday spy. The article offers a reevaluation of Aunt Lydia’s villainy in The Handmaid’s Tale through the lens of her undercover identity, revealed in The Testaments. Firstly, it dissects the techniques and ploys the author used in the sequel to breed readers’ empathy for hitherto despised Aunt Lydia. It focuses on the overlap between the transformation of her character and the shift from the original novel’s criticism of second wave feminism towards the sequel’s embrace of the fourth wave. Finally, and most importantly, it discusses a selection of equivocal fragments from The Handmaid’s Tale that specifically pertain to Aunt Lydia.
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Abrams, Rebecca. “The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Struggles to Live up to Its Lauded Prequel.” The Financial Times, 10 Sept. 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/aefeeeac-c5b5-11e9-ae6e-a26d1d0455f4. Accessed 23 June 2024.
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—. The Handmaid’s Tale. Virago Press, 1990.
—. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Anchor Books, 2002.
—. The Testaments. Chatto & Windus, 2019.
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Ditum, Sarah. “Testament to the Times.” The Lancet, vol. 394, no. 10207, 2019, pp. 1403–04, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32307-4.
Enright, Anne. “The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Review: A Dazzling Follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Guardian, 10 Sept. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/10/the-testaments-by-margaret-atwood-review. Accessed 23 June 2024.
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—. “Margaret Atwood’s Recent Dystopias.” The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood, edited by Corall Ann Howells, 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 171–88.
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Scurr, Ruth. “Testament of Experience.” The Spectator, 21 Sept. 2019, pp. 32–33.
Shead, Jackie. “The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments: The Transitional Generation and its Successor.” Margaret Atwood Studies, vol. 15, 2022, pp. 4–18.
Somacarrera, Pilar. “Margaret Atwood on Questions of Power.” The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood, edited by Corall Ann Howells, 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 32–46.
Tatar, Maria. “Female Tricksters as Double Agents.” The Cambridge Companion to Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar, Cambridge UP, 2014, pp. 39–59.
Tausz, Ramona. “Atwood’s False Testament.” First Things, January 2020, pp. 43–44.
Tolan, Fiona. “Feminist Utopias and Questions of Liberty: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as Critique of Second Wave Feminism.” Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 2005, pp. 18–32.
Tolentino, Jia. “All Aunt Lydia’s Children.” The New Yorker, vol. 95, no. 27, 16 Sept. 2019, p. 56. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A600491058/AONE?u=yorku_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=dc722d9a. Accessed 17 May 2022.
Turner, Frank M. John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion. Yale UP, 2002.
Williams, Patrick. “In the Absence of Best, or the Value of Imperfect in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.” Femspec, vol. 20, no. 1, 2020, pp. 72–73.
White, Megan. “ʻAn Act of Hopeʼ: Women’s Resilience Through Literacy and Storytelling in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.” Journal of Integrated Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1–13.
Yousafzai, Malala. “Nobel Lecture.” The Nobel Prize. 2014, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2014/yousafzai/lecture/. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Atwood, Margaret. “Atwood on Pornography.” Chatelaine, Sept. 1983, pp. 61+.
—. The Handmaid’s Tale. Virago Press, 1990.
—. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. Anchor Books, 2002.
—. The Testaments. Chatto & Windus, 2019.
Bethune, Brian. “Atwood’s Urgent New Tale of Gilead.” Maclean’s, Oct. 2019, https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/margaret-atwoods-urgent-new-tale-of-gilead/. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Birch, Dinah. “Up or Plummet.” TLS. Times Literary Supplement, 13 Sept. 2019, pp. 23–24.
Chifane, Cristina, and Liviu-Augustin Chifane. “Historiographic Metafiction Reflected in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019).” Journal of Romanian Literary Studies, vol. 21, 2020, pp. 1180–90.
Ditum, Sarah. “Testament to the Times.” The Lancet, vol. 394, no. 10207, 2019, pp. 1403–04, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32307-4.
Enright, Anne. “The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Review: A Dazzling Follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale.” The Guardian, 10 Sept. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/10/the-testaments-by-margaret-atwood-review. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Feldman, Lucy. “Let’s Break Down the Most Mysterious Parts of The Testaments, with a Little Help from Margaret Atwood.” Time, 10 Sept. 2019, https://time.com/5673535/thetestaments-plot-questions-margaret-atwood/. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Gheorghiu, Oana Celia, and Michaela Praisler. “Rewriting Politics, or the Emerging Fourth Wave of Feminism in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.” ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries, vol. 17, no. 1, 2020, pp. 87–96, https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.17.1.87-96.
Gilbert, Sophie. “Margaret Atwood Bears Witness.” The Atlantic, Dec. 2019, pp. 124–27.
Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. Macmillan Press, 1996.
—. “Atwood’s Reinventions: So Many Atwoods.” ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries, vol. 17, no. 1, 2020, pp. 15–28, https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.17.1.15-28.
—. “Margaret Atwood’s Recent Dystopias.” The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood, edited by Corall Ann Howells, 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 171–88.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Routledge, 1988.
Johnson, Aidan. “When the Meek Are not Blessed.” America. The Jesuit Review, vol. 222, no. 8, 13 Apr. 2020, pp. 48–49.
Jurich, Marilyn. Scheherazade’s Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature. Greenwood Press, 1998.
Kearns, Madeleine. “Tales from the Resistance.” National Review, 10 Feb. 2020, pp. 41–42.
Keck, Michaela. “Women’s Complicity, Resistance, and Moral Agency: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments.” Gender Forum, vol. 82, 2022, pp. 12–33.
Kuznetski, Julia. “Disempowerment and Bodily Agency in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and The Handmaid’s Tale TV Series.” The European Legacy, vol. 26, no. 3–4, 2021, pp. 287–302, https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2021.1898108.
Labudová, Katarína. “Testimonies in The Testaments by Margaret Atwood: Images of Food in Gilead.” ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries, vol. 17, no. 1, 2020, pp. 97–110, https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.17.1.97-110.
Larson, Janet Karsten. “Margaret Atwood’s Testaments: Resisting the Gilead Within.” The Christian Century, 20 May 1987, pp. 496–98.
“Margaret Atwood offers The Handmaid’s Tale Essay Help on Twitter.” Toronto Star, 8 Nov. 2018, https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2018/11/08/margaret-atwood-offers-the-handmaids-tale-essay-help-on-twitter.html. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Machała, Katarzyna. “ʻThat’s not how we hang people hereʼ: Gilead in the Eyes of Witnesses in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments.” Brno Studies in English, vol. 48, no. 1, 2022, pp. 187–200, https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2022-1-11. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Starling and Black, 2014.
Neuman, Shirley. “‘Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 3, 2006, pp. 857–68, https://doi.org/10.1353/utq.2006.0260.
Pike, Lisa. “The Testaments.” Herizons, vol. 34, no. 2, summer, 2020, p. 30. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/testaments/docview/2440494868/se-2?accountid=15182.
Scurr, Ruth. “Testament of Experience.” The Spectator, 21 Sept. 2019, pp. 32–33.
Shead, Jackie. “The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments: The Transitional Generation and its Successor.” Margaret Atwood Studies, vol. 15, 2022, pp. 4–18.
Somacarrera, Pilar. “Margaret Atwood on Questions of Power.” The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood, edited by Corall Ann Howells, 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 32–46.
Tatar, Maria. “Female Tricksters as Double Agents.” The Cambridge Companion to Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar, Cambridge UP, 2014, pp. 39–59.
Tausz, Ramona. “Atwood’s False Testament.” First Things, January 2020, pp. 43–44.
Tolan, Fiona. “Feminist Utopias and Questions of Liberty: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as Critique of Second Wave Feminism.” Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 2005, pp. 18–32.
Tolentino, Jia. “All Aunt Lydia’s Children.” The New Yorker, vol. 95, no. 27, 16 Sept. 2019, p. 56. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A600491058/AONE?u=yorku_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=dc722d9a. Accessed 17 May 2022.
Turner, Frank M. John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion. Yale UP, 2002.
Williams, Patrick. “In the Absence of Best, or the Value of Imperfect in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.” Femspec, vol. 20, no. 1, 2020, pp. 72–73.
White, Megan. “ʻAn Act of Hopeʼ: Women’s Resilience Through Literacy and Storytelling in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.” Journal of Integrated Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1–13.
Yousafzai, Malala. “Nobel Lecture.” The Nobel Prize. 2014, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2014/yousafzai/lecture/. Accessed 23 June 2024.
Feldman-Kołodziejuk, E. (2025). From Villainess to Gilead’s Nemesis: The (Un)easy Rehabilitation of Aunt Lydia. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 14, 85–103. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v14i85-103
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