Handmaid’s Tale: historical
notes
summary of historical notes
The epilogue is a transcript of a symposium held in 2195, in a university in the Arctic.
Gilead is long gone, and Offred’s story has been published as a manuscript
titled The Handmaid’s Tale. Her story was found recorded on a set of cassette tapes
locked in an army foot locker in Bangor, Maine. The main part of the epilogue is a
speech by an expert on Gilead named Professor Pieixoto. He talks about
authenticating the cassette tapes. He says tapes like these would be very difficult to
fake. The first section of each tape contains a few songs from the pre-Gileadean
period, probably to camouflage the actual purpose of the tapes. The same voice
speaks on all the tapes, and they are not numbered, nor are they arranged in any
particular order, so the professors who transcribed the story had to guess at the
intended chronology of the tapes.
Pieixoto warns his audience against judging Gilead too harshly, because such
judgments are culturally biased, and he points out that the Gilead regime was under
a good deal of pressure from the falling birthrate and environmental degradation. He
says the birthrate declined for a variety of reasons, including birth control, abortions,
AIDS, syphilis, and birth defects and miscarriages resulting from nuclear plant
disasters and toxic waste. The professor explains how Gilead created a group of
Handmaid’s Tale: historical notes 1
notes
summary of historical notes
The epilogue is a transcript of a symposium held in 2195, in a university in the Arctic.
Gilead is long gone, and Offred’s story has been published as a manuscript
titled The Handmaid’s Tale. Her story was found recorded on a set of cassette tapes
locked in an army foot locker in Bangor, Maine. The main part of the epilogue is a
speech by an expert on Gilead named Professor Pieixoto. He talks about
authenticating the cassette tapes. He says tapes like these would be very difficult to
fake. The first section of each tape contains a few songs from the pre-Gileadean
period, probably to camouflage the actual purpose of the tapes. The same voice
speaks on all the tapes, and they are not numbered, nor are they arranged in any
particular order, so the professors who transcribed the story had to guess at the
intended chronology of the tapes.
Pieixoto warns his audience against judging Gilead too harshly, because such
judgments are culturally biased, and he points out that the Gilead regime was under
a good deal of pressure from the falling birthrate and environmental degradation. He
says the birthrate declined for a variety of reasons, including birth control, abortions,
AIDS, syphilis, and birth defects and miscarriages resulting from nuclear plant
disasters and toxic waste. The professor explains how Gilead created a group of
Handmaid’s Tale: historical notes 1
