Atwood’s ‘Half-Hanged Mary’ as Method-Making: Paths to Selfhood and Agency within Historical Subalternities.

Abstract

Openly feminist, Atwood’s ‘Half-Hanged Mary’ raises questions about women’s voice from a literary and historical perspective. By giving voice to Mary Webster, whose only appearance in the historical record is through her survival accounts, she reclaims her story as someone historically silenced and victimized to make an incidence in her agency instead: in her claiming and defence of selfhood. In doing so, she re(de)constructs the events from a different perspective, thus reappropriating historical and socially inflicted stereotypes by exploring the ‘witch’ archetype as a solution for surpassing the obstacles faced by women to achieve self-realization and positive identification.