Interpreting The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is distinguished by its various narrative and structural divisions. It contains four
different levels of narrative time: the pre-Revolution past, the time of the Revolution itself, the Gileadean
period, and the post-Gileadean period (LeBihan 100). In addition, the novel is divided into two frames,
both with a first person narrative. Offred's narrative makes up the first frame, while the second frame is
provided by the Historical Notes, a transcript of a lecture given by a Cambridge professor. The distinctions
in structure and narrative perspective parallel the separation of Gileadean residents into different social
roles.
Offred's narrative is mainly of the Gileadean period, but she frequently interrupts her account of this time
with memories of the pre-Revolution and Revolution periods. In her account of the pre-Revolution period,
the reader learns of Offred's childhood with her mother, her student days with her friend Moira, and her
relationship with her daughter and husband. From her memories of the Revolution, the reader learns of
the time she spent at the Red Center, the facility in which women were indoctrinated. The repression and
bias that she and other women suffer progresses with movement form the pre-Revolution past to the
Gileadean present. When compared with her life before the Revolution, the gross corruption and injustice
of the Gileadean period becomes increasingly evident.
Offred's narrative is noteworthy for several reasons. For one thing, it is an act of defiance; by telling her
story, Offred refuses to forget the past or reconcile herself to the present. In a society in which women are
forbidden to read or write or to speak freely, her tale becomes a protest. In fact, it becomes her "gesture of
resistance to imprisonment in silence, just as it becomes the primary means for her psychological
survival" (Howells 127).
The fact that the narrative voice of the major bulk of the novel is a woman's is all too significant. It
suggests that women still retain some measure of authority, even within a male-dominated society. In the
instance of women in the novel, this power comes from their indispensable role in the propagation of
society. As Offred tells her story, she incorporates the stories of other women into her narrative. Her voice
"multiplies to become the voice of women rather than the voice of a single narrator" (133). Thus,
The Handmaid's Tale isn't just Offred's protest against her oppressive condition, but the collective protest
of every woman.
The Historical Notes comprising the second frame of the novel provide an important shift in perspective.
The Notes are a transcript of a lecture given by the professor, Darcy Pieixoto, at an academic symposium
on Gileadean Studies two hundred years after Gilead has become ancient history. The reader finds out
that Pieixoto and his colleague are the ones responsible for the transcription and editing of the
handmaid's story. (As it turns out, Offred's account is not actually written, but recorded onto cassette
tapes). Pieixoto treats Offred's story in a scientific and detached manner. For him, her account is merely a
resource for gaining knowledge of the former Gilead Republic.

The shift from Offred as narrator to Pieixoto as narrator does two things. First, it signifies Offred's inability
to make her voice heard; the voice of the male narrator in the last part of the novel threatens to drown out
Offred's voice and the significance of her autobiography. Secondly, it leaves readers with the challenge of
interpreting the story they have just read, since The Handmaid's Tale is actually Offred's transcribed
speech, reassembled and edited by a male historian (Stein 79).
It is left to the reader to determine whether the story she has just read is really the handmaid's tale or that
of someone else.

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