How Fast Was Gilead?

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the switch from what we would call modern America into what they would call the Gilead was an interesting one. We didn’t get to see the entire picture of how the Gilead replaced America but it seemed to go gradually at first and then all at once. The first thing that happened in the correct chronological order of the book pre-Gilead (which, in all honesty, Offred didn’t choose to spend much time dwelling on) that indicated that the Gilead was real and was coming, was when Offred was no longer able to access her money. I think that this seems like an incredibly drastic and abrupt first step from a party we didn’t even have any indication of existing before that within the context of the book. However, Offred does seem to have a streak of relative passivity, so it maybe shouldn’t be all that surprising that we don’t have too much insight to all of the political news happening before the events of the Gilead actively taking place.

I reason that, all things considered, it must have been gradual for Gilead to have come into some position of power at some point for them to take control of things like bank accounts and higher-up positions in government- although it definitely seemed abrupt to someone who wasn’t quite as aware of all of that as Offred wasn’t. So to answer the question of “how could the world of this book potentially happen, either ‘abruptly’ or ‘gradually’?,” I would say that it depends on who’s asking. If it is someone with their eye on current events or, better yet, actively part of those current events (like a political leader), then I would bet it would’ve seemed to have been years in the making. To someone like Offred, who tended to be more concerned with more personal and less large-scale issues, I would bet that it would’ve come as a complete shock.