Offred's Narrative - What is the purpose and function of the 'Historical Notes' and how do they assist your interpretation of the novel?
What is the purpose and function of the 'Historical Notes' and how do they assist your interpretation of the novel?
The historical notes are not part of Offred's narrative, they are a transcript of a symposium held at a university in 2195 - two hundred years from where we left the end of Offred's harrowing tale. The purpose of these notes if any, is to put Offred's narrative into a historical purpose to help these academics understand the life of Gilead. It seems to me that another purpose of these historical notes is to provoke a very strong reaction in the readers who have followed the emotional journey with the narrator Offred.
The significance of the university name 'Denay, Nunavit' is that Atwood took the name from a group of people called Dene from Canada's North west territories and they are about to become the first self-governing group of North American native people in an area called Nunavit. Atwood has chosen names such as Maryann Crescent Moon and Johnny Running Dog for the professors suggesting that the native Americans overbear the academy which strongly contrasts with the white male-dominated patriarchy in the Gilead times in this future world Atwood has made the white males become the vulnerable subjects of a study and nit the dominant rulers and scholars they once were. Also the name of the university sounds like the sentence 'Deny None Of it' suggesting that Offred's story was all true despite what my be said or not said in the historical notes.
The purpose of the lecturer that Atwood created Professor James Darcy Pieixto is to give readers a masculine view of Offred's story which is ironic due to the domineering and powerful roles that the males played in Offred's world and how they made her and other women feel completely helpless, by choosing to tell her story it gives Offred the only power she could grasp over them that was much more than just being passive. All of this is now being analysed and retold by those who made her feel so powerless in the first place.
This section of the novel can also be functioned to create a light mockery towards the current academic practice and language, the male perspective used here is typical of the historical male dominance and perspective in academic research who also completely miss the point, like Pieixto with Offred's narrative.
I believe that the readers who have just finished agonising with Offred through her tormented times to suddenly come across the Historical Notes will find themselves offended and shocked, as I am convinced Atwood means it to be allowing another purpose for the historical notes, to hear Offred's tragic life discussed in front of an amused audience of academics who joke about it as if it was an unusual memento.
At the beginning of his speech we learn it was a man called Professor Wade who gave the title of Offred's story 'The Handmaid's Tale' partly in homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer who had wrote the Canterbury tales between 1380 and 1400. This is significant because he only had two female characters and one of those characters was the Wife of Bath who's prologue argues the importance of female experience over male authority, the significance of Offred's experience is invalidated by the power of the male authority in 2195 plus the identity of the Wife of Bath ...
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At the beginning of his speech we learn it was a man called Professor Wade who gave the title of Offred's story 'The Handmaid's Tale' partly in homage to the great Geoffrey Chaucer who had wrote the Canterbury tales between 1380 and 1400. This is significant because he only had two female characters and one of those characters was the Wife of Bath who's prologue argues the importance of female experience over male authority, the significance of Offred's experience is invalidated by the power of the male authority in 2195 plus the identity of the Wife of Bath is remembered in literature by her status of a wife as does Offred, who remains defined by her commander, which I will elaborate on later, Atwood knew these similarities between the two female characters which is possibly the reason why she mentioned this, it also tell us readers that the sexist attitudes of these male historians have not gone away by the jokes he makes on 'frailroads' and of the actual narrative itself.
Pieixto claims that people should be aware before they start to think about Gilead "Gileadean society was under a good deal of pressure, demographic and otherwise." I believe that Pieixto chooses to only understand what he wants to understand, I think he just wants to focus on how the social theories of Gilead work and reconstructs these to his audience. He also claims "Our job is not to censure but to understand." I don't fully believe this comment here, I don't feel he understands Offred at all, he is not concerned with her as an individual nor the content of narrative or the motivation behind it to get her story out there for people to hear the ways women lived in fear and loneliness as a Handmaid also about her tragic life in a horrendous world which was dominated by a so called 'Christian society' which Pieixto claims to be genius "There was little that was truly original with or indigenous to Gilead: It's genius was synthesis." He talks about how Gilead's practices were based on real practices, this I think could come across as disturbing and unsettling to the readers, which again I think Atwood intended. How could someone who just before said we are here to understand but find these ways genius? After hearing how it caused Offred so much pain and misery from losing her daughter and having to live through fear everyday by having to see if her husband would one day appear on the wall. He goes on to discuss how the use of Handmaids can be justified, as it has biblical precedents so somehow saying that this is associated with the bible makes the purpose any better, I feel that this will not really make a difference to how the readers perceived the terrifying life that Offred went through with being a handmaid.
Readers will see how much Pieixto goes off the point, but the reasons here could be due to being an anthropologist who are faithful to their research methods which involves studying other cultures objectively without passing judgement on the morality or any other aspect of the culture being researched, so because he cannot reveal Offred's true identity with certainty then Offred's story as an artefact of early Gileadean period is dismissed to them. Again showing that he really doesn't understand Offred as a person because he is being too concerned with trying to establish the authenticity of the text and it's worth as being historical evidence. He goes on "But what else do we know about her, apart from her age, some physical characteristics that could be anyone's, and her place of residence?" What else he has is Offred's whole story, her thoughts, her feelings, her dreams, her hopes, her fear plus information on the rebellion 'mayday' who tried so hard to fight against the system. What does it matter if no name is revealed, the readers did not know Offred's true identity yet they felt they knew her by hearing her thoughts and listening to her story they connected with her in spite of all the things that Pieixto mentions, to historians the name is much more important and the story is trivial, whereas for the readers the story is much more important.
Piexito even has the nerve to blame Offred "had she had the instincts of a reporter or a spy. What would we not give, now, for even twenty pages or so of printout from Waterford's private computer!" His re-telling of the story effects a massive shift from 'herstory' to 'history' as he tries to discredits her narrative by making an accusation towards Offred for not paying attention to the significant things. His account completely eradicates Offred as a person; he never ends up telling us what happened to Offred because he doesn't know and is also not interested he does exactly what Offred knew but also feared would happen that historians in the future will make of handmaids: "From the point of view of future history, this kind, we'll be invisible."
As he cannot identify Offred he just put her to the side even though in our eyes she is the main narrator of the story but he chooses to discuss more on the commander "If we could identify the elusive 'commander' we felt, at least some progress would have been made." Pieixto spends half of the lecture trying to decide whether the commander's name was Fedrick Waterford or B.Fredrick Judd, when reading this you can't help but think how trivial this all is trying to figure the commander's name when Offred has already offered us so much deep insight about the commander such as in their secret meetings when playing scrabble or the time he took her to Jezebels. Whereas in the Historical Notes things such as knowing that the commander "did indeed have grey hair" is very important information to them, we also learn about their part in creating Gilead which to the readers will be new information, but information I feel will not really change our views of the commander, I think the readers have already made up what they feel about him through what Offred has told them and that the Historical will not change this. Offred is being limited by her commander again, Pieixto shows much more interest in him in much more detail and for longer, if Pieixto really understood Offred he would know that Offred despised the fact that she as so powerless against this man yet here she is again being small against the commander.
The overall tone of the Historical Notes is very stiff and academic which is very hard for the readers to connect with which is a huge contrast to how close the readers felt with Offred from being able to hear her thoughts and feelings. The Historical notes are very impersonal he is talking to a large audience in a formal lecture whereas with Offred it is first person and autobiographical, Pieixto's style is very objective based just on facts whereas with Offred it is subjective only hearing her own personal views. The language used with Offred is very detailed and emotional characterised by thought association which can make us warm more to Offred as a character and feel for her when she goes through traumatic experiences. Whereas the language used in Historical notes is very fact based and completely non-emotional creating a disliking towards the lecturer. Ironically as a historian he should be able to have an overview of Gileadean society yet what he offers us is arguably as limited, if not more so, than what Offred gives and she was also very limited to what she knew.
I feel the purpose of the Historical Notes is to warn us of the possible consequences of contemporary trends, it was unnerving and unsettling to learn that the Gileadean practices were based on real ones which are currently or formally in existence so as a futuristic novel it serves it's purpose by giving us a warning that the reality of Gilead is not far from our own experiences as we thought when reading Offred's narrative. Seeing how trivial a woman's life is but how glorifying a man's computer is suggests the patriarchal leanings of this new society, how they feel that Offred's trauma was really nothing to this group of academics again shows us that again that this society could not be far off who see themselves progressive but hold the seeds of patriarchal oppression. With Pieixto's appeal for some understanding feelings toward Gilead which was then followed by an applause this also suggests such moral ambivalence getting ready for such future evils. Another purpose for these notes is also to show how academics miss the point completely when looking at some historical facts and Atwood shows an example of this with these notes, how people can be sending out the wrong message and doing false teachings. The finishing sentence "Are there any questions?" gives the story a deliberate open-ended conclusion, here I think Atwood wants readers to discuss or at least think about the message she has just shown us, that the end of The Handmaids Tale is only the beginning of a discussion of the issues raised in the story, of what will our world finally become?
