The Handmaid’s Tale Has an Epilogue to its Epilogue Now

The Handmaid’s Tale has a new piece of material, at least in the special edition of the audiobook, coming straight from Margaret Atwood.

If you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale, it doesn’t actually end with Offred. Instead, Margaret Atwood chose to include some “Historical Notes,” which take the form of a partial transcript from “the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies” and a speech by a Professor James Darcy Pieixoto of Cambridge: “Problems of Authentication in Reference to The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Now, we have a chance to hear Professor Pieixoto himself. As posted by Entertainment Weekly, there is now a fully-cast epilogue to the historical notes. You can listen to part of it below:

It seems important to do a brief breakdown of the question. Indeed, we can only hear one question: it’s about Aunt Lydia and, ultimately, the idea of “domestic harmony” between the women of the Republic of Gilead. Pieixoto’s response differentiates between earlier cultures in that what he calls “secondary or supplementary women” participated in raising children, but handmaids didn’t. (We assume it’s Pieixoto anyway. The only other professor named in the notes is Maryann Crescent Moon. She doesn’t speak after introducing Pieixoto in the transcript.) He even notes that this changed in Gilead after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale.

At this point, a full-fledged sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale still seems rather unnecessary, though. This little extra story seems just about right. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t further elaborate on the nature of Gilead in a meaningful way.

Part of the fun of Handmaid, though, is that you know going in that your information will be incomplete, something carefully emphasized in the original historical notes. Little continuations like this are great, but we don’t want to see the “Diary of P.,” to refer to another document mentioned in those historical notes.

Next: The New Books Roundup for March 28

Will you pick up this audiobook of The Handmaid’s Tale, or do you think even this is unnecessary?