In the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, a group of young women are told, “this will become ordinary.” The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian television series based on Margaret Atwood’s 1984 novel that follows fertile women, known as Handmaids, who are forced to bear children.
The most terrifying part of this dystopian world is that it is all based on real-life events. As Margaret Atwood said herself, “One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened… nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. God is in the details, they say. So is the Devil.”
Here, we take a look at all the historical events The Handmaid’s Tale is based on, in the hope we can learn from our past mistakes to ensure the plot of the novel and show doesn’t become a reality.
1. The persecution of women in Gilead is partially inspired by the Salem witch trials
Author Margaret Atwood has made it very obvious that The Handmaid’s Tale takes a lot of its inspiration from the Salem witch trials and the killing of innocent women in the late 1600s.
In 2017, Atwood gave an interview to PRI’s The World and said that The Handmaid’s Tale borrows heavily from the story of Mary Webster. Before the Salem witch trials, Webster was the most infamous “witch” from Hadley, Massachusetts.
Salem Witch Trials
After Philip Smith – a prominent member of Hadley, Massachusetts – fell ill, town members assumed a witch must be involved. They decided that Mary Webster must be the witch responsible and physically assaulted and hung her as a punishment. However, Mary Webster ended up surviving, and her story was told in detail in 1689’s Memorable Providences.
2. Giving birth in public used to be royal protocol
Royal births in Europe throughout the 1600s and 1700s followed a similar custom. Royal women giving birth often did so in front of an audience for several reasons. Witnesses were needed to assure that babies were not switched at birth, especially during the birth of an heir to the crown.
