Atwood's clipping file for this novel contains a great deal of material she researched about the American New Right in the early 1980's. It was at this time that religious right-wing fundamentalist groups became a significant political force in America, with their strong backing for President Reagan and the Republican Party.(1)

This right-wing Christian movement warned about the 'Birth Dearth' and expressed concern about such matters as the right to abortion, the rise of divorce and the growth of the Gay Rights movement. As a coalition of conservative interests which sought to influence government legislation on family issues and public morals, the New Right looked back to America's Puritan inheritance, and was politically powerful throughout the 1980s under President Reagan and the first President Bush. (2)

Atwood's interest in Puritan New England relates to her own ancestry (especially to her relative Mary Webster, who underwent attempted hanging as a witch in 1683 but survived her ordeal) and also to her studies at Harvard under Professor Perry Miller, the great scholar of the Puritan mind (see 'Dedication and epigraph'). (1)