The Historical Notes

The Historical Notes at the end of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale add a significant amount of context to the novel. While reading Offred’s story, there is a lot of information that Offred herself and therefore the reader is never given as well as pre-Gilead events that are not explained but just implied. For example, what environmental aspects lead to the extremely low birthrates in the United States? The historical notes explain that it was “linked to the various nuclear-plant accidents, shutdowns, and incidents of sabotage that characterized the period, as well to leakages from chemical- and biological-warfare stockpiles and toxic-waste disposal sites… both legal and illegal… and to the uncontrolled use of chemical insecticides, herbicides, and other sprays.”

The notes also put the entirety of Offred’s tale in a new context: cassette tapes; which is a very interesting development for the reader but also explains the development of Offred’s story telling throughout the tale. Initially the sentences were short and word choice was simple, almost like Offred had forgotten how to speak. But as the tale goes on her basic language improves, and then the storytelling becomes more romanticized and dramatic. This dramatic improvement in language skills must have come from escaping Gilead and being able to read again.

The most interesting aspect of the Historical Notes is how they make the nightmare of Gilead seem even more plausible. First, the Professor Pieixoto who is giving this speech is acting like the events that began Gilead will never happen again. He states that Gilead was “under a good deal of pressure… and was subject to factors from which we ourselves are happily more free.” Considering that many of those factors stemmed from human greed and ignorance, it is not unlikely that the “good deal of pressure” could return. There is also an unsettling focus on just understanding Gilead, but not showing any disapproval of the practices. There is a possibility that the purges of documents lead to an inaccurate view of how terrible Gilead was, or this Professor just undermines the suffering of women. I’m leaning towards the latter as he mocked “The Underground Femaleroad” by calling is “The Underground Frailroad” and is inclined to discredit Offred’s tapes altogether. The Professor even goes on to admire the tactics and people that formed Gilead. He states that Frederick R. Waterford, the man who was possibly Offred’s Commander, “was, in his prime, a man of considerable ingenuity.” And to top it all off, Pieixoto keeps implying that much of the information about Gilead is actually missing. The missing information combined with the casual sexism just reminds me that “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

The analysis made by Professor Piexioto is important for the reader’s complete understanding of Gilead. It does also calm my nerves that even this fictional totalitarian government came to an end, but despite it being fiction I was still unsettled to hear the severity of how women were treated undermined in such an academic setting. This was no doubt Atwood’s intention, and created very strong context for The Handmaid’s Tale.