Half-hanged Mary

‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ is a poem by Canadian MARGARET ATWOOD

poet and novelist Margaret Atwood. It was
published in Atwood’s poetry collection
Morning in the Burning House in 1995. The
1995
poem is based on a real incident that took
place in Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1684. The
previous year, a local woman, Mary Webster,
had been charged with being a witch. In June,
she was tried in Boston and acquitted. Her
neighbors, however, appear to have been
unconvinced by the verdict, and about eight-
een months later, Webster was again accused
of witchcraft. Some of the men from Hadley
hanged her from a tree, but she managed to
survive the ordeal. When townspeople came
in the morning to cut her down, she was still
alive. (There are other versions of this inci-
dent in the historical records.) She lived
another eleven years, until her death in 1696.
Atwood believed that Webster was her ances-
tor, and she dedicated her 1985 novel The
Handmaid’s Tale to her. The poem ‘‘Half-
hanged Mary’’ is a dramatic monologue in ten
sections that correspond to specific times, from
7 p.m. when Mary was hanged, until 8 a.m. the
following morning, with a concluding section
about her life in the years following the hang-
ing. The poem, which exhibits Atwood’s typical
wit, subtlety, and sharp images, shines a light
on a dark period in American history when
irrationalism and fear led to persecution of
the innocent.

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

and American universities, including the University

of Alberta, York University in Toronto, and New
York University. Her works have been translated
into more than forty languages, including Farsi,
Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic,
and Estonian.
Atwood’s many volumes of poetry include
The Animals in That Country (1968), The Jour-
nals of Susanna Moodie (1970), You Are Happy
(1974), Two-Headed Poems (1978), and Interlu-
nar (1984). Morning in the Burned House (1995)
includes the poem ‘‘Half-hanged Mary.’’ This
collection was a cowinner of the Trillium
Award. Atwood’s most recent collection, as of
2013, is The Door (2007).
Her fourteen novels include The Edible
Woman (1969); Surfacing (1972); Lady Oracle
(1976); Life before Man (1979); Bodily Harm
(1981); Encounters with the Element Man
(1982); Unearthing Suite (1983); The Handmaid’s
Tale (1985), which was a best seller and won
the Governor General’s Award, the Los Angeles
Times Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke science
fiction award; Cat’s Eye (1988); The Robber
Margaret Atwood ( Frances Guillot / AFP / Getty Images) Bride (1993), which won the Canadian Authors
Association Novel of the Year Award; Alias
Grace (1996), which won the Giller Prize;
The Blind Assassin (2000), which won the
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Booker Prize; and the trilogy Oryx and Crake
(2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and
Poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and liter- MaddAddam (2013).
ary critic Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born on
November 18, 1939, in Ottawa, Canada. Her father, Atwood’s nine short-story collections
Carl Edmund Atwood, was a forest entomologist; include Dancing Girls and Other Stories (1976),
her mother, Margaret Dorothy (Killam), was a Bluebeard’s Egg and Other Stories (1986), and
graduate in home economics from the University Moral Disorder and Other Stories (2006); her
of Toronto. Atwood spent her earliest years in nonfiction includes Survival: A Thematic Guide
Ottawa during the winters and the rest of the year to Canadian Literature (1972) and Payback:
in northern Quebec and Ontario. In 1946, her father Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008).
took up a position as professor at the University of Atwood has worked and traveled exten-
Toronto, and the family moved to Toronto. In sively in Europe, and she has received honorary
1957, Atwood became a student of English at degrees from many institutions, including Trent
Victoria College, University of Toronto. In 1961, University, Smith College, and the University of
after graduation, she studied English at Radcliffe Toronto. She was president of the Writers Union
College, Harvard University, and was awarded a of Canada from 1982 to 1983, and president of
master’s degree in 1962. She then went on to doc- PEN International’s Anglo-Canadian branch
toral studies at Harvard until 1963. The following
from 1984 to 1985. As of 2013, she is vice pres-
year, she taught English literature at the University
ident of PEN International.
of British Columbia. Her first collection of poetry,
The Circle Game (1966), won the Governor Gener- Atwood married James Polk, a novelist,
al’s Award. Since then, Atwood has published in 1967. They divorced in 1973. Atwood lives in
poetry, novels, short stories, children’s literature, Toronto with Canadian writer Graeme Gibson.
and nonfiction and has taught in many Canadian They have a daughter, Jess, who was born in 1977.

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

POEM SUMMARY stanza of this section. She understands that the

women are unable to help her in any way at all.
The text used for this summary is from Morning At ten o’clock, which is the title of the next
in the Burned House, Houghton Mifflin, 1995, section, Mary addresses God directly. She wants
pp. 58–69. to argue with him about free will. Was being
The poem is divided into ten sections. Each hanged an act of free will on her part, a choice
section is headed by an exact time during which she made? She pours scorn on the concept of
Mary, the woman who is being hanged, God’s grace and suggests that the great Christian
expresses her thoughts and feelings. The first virtues of faith, hope, and charity are dead.
section begins at seven o’clock in the evening. The next section begins at midnight. Mary
Mary recalls the circumstances in which she was describes the unpleasant physical sensations she
seized. Rumors were flying around the town is experiencing. She is being strangled; she
about witchcraft. She was milking a cow in the clenches her teeth; she feels despair. She feels
barn around sunset. The second stanza suggests the approach of death, personifying it first as a
that she was caught by surprise. She had no idea bird of prey, then as a venomous judge pro-
that she would be targeted as a witch. In the third nouncing punishment, and then as an angel urg-
stanza, she explains why she was picked on and ing her to give in to death.
hanged. First, she lived on her own; she was not
By two o’clock in the morning, when the
married. (This is unlike the historical Mary Web-
next section begins, Mary hears herself uttering
ster, on whom the poem is based, who was mar-
some kind of sound. It seems that it is both a
ried.) Her appearance also helps to account for
struggle for air and a prayer, born of despera-
what happened to her, she thinks. She worked
tion, that she might survive, that mercy might be
outside and got sunburned; her clothes were, it
shown to her.
seems, not of the highest quality; and she owned
the poorly kept farm where she lived. She also By three o’clock, the wind is raging and the
had knowledge of folk remedies for common birds are singing. Mary’s strength is ebbing and it
ailments. In addition, as the last stanza of this is hard for her to breathe. However, she affirms
section explains, she was a woman, and that her innocence and is determined not to give up.
made her a convenient target when people talked At six o’clock, the sun rises. Mary feels she
about demonic possession. has been up there a thousand years. She makes a
Section two starts one hour later, at eight sardonic joke about having grown taller (she
o’clock. Mary describes how she was hanged. means her body has been stretched by hanging).
The men from the town grabbed a rope and she At eight o’clock, the townspeople come to
was hanged from a tree. Her hands were bound, cut her down from the tree. She is still alive. She
and she was gagged. The men, thrilled by what knows that, according to the law, they will not be
they had done out of hatred, trudged back home. allowed to hang her again for the same offense.
Mary thinks that they were projecting their own She grins at them. She looks at them and scares
evil onto her. them. They run away. Mary reflects that, if she
Section three begins at nine o’clock. Mary was not a witch before, she has become one now.
relates how some women from the town come to In the final section of the poem, Mary dis-
stare at her. Mary looks down from her position cusses her life since the hanging. She says she
high up and can see how fearful they are. In the goes around mumbling to herself, and the towns-
second stanza she addresses two of the woman people flee from her whenever they see her. She
directly. It appears that they are both friends of finds that she can now say anything she wants;
hers. Mary cured the baby of one of the women having been hanged once, she cannot be hanged
from some unspecified ailment; she helped save again. She also speaks of herself as having under-
the life of the other one, it seems, by performing gone two deaths. She eats a strange diet and
an abortion on her. commits blasphemies, she says. God under-
Mary knows that the women lack the cour- stands her, she says, although no one else can.
age to bring her down from the tree. Were they It seems that she has access to some secret
to do so, they might be accused of being witches knowledge or wisdom as a result of her ordeal,
too. It is better not to bring attention to oneself and she expresses it in words that only she and
in this kind of situation, Mary says in the fourth God can understand.

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TOPICS FOR
FURTHER
STUDY
 Write a poem in the form of a dramatic mono- fictionalize the events, and in what respects
logue. Remember that a dramatic monologue does it stay close to the facts? Post your
features a first-person speaker who is not the review to the Amazon website.
poet offering his or her thoughts and feelings
 Read Where to Park Your Broomstick: A
about a particular situation to one or more
Teen’s Guide to Witchcraft by Lauren
people who are not actually present and
Manoy and Yan Apostolides (2002), which
whose reactions can be guessed only by the
explains the principles of Wicca. It also
speaker’s words. The situation can be based
includes a history of paganism and witch-
on a real event or it can be fiction.
craft. Write an essay in which you outline
 Give a reading of ‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ to the basic elements of Wicca and describe
your class, preceded by a two-minute intro- how they resemble or differ from those of
duction in which you discuss the poem’s Christianity, Judaism, or any other major
theme and structure. Have a classmate record world religion. Comment also on the fact
your reading and upload it to YouTube. that the authors make no mention of the
 Watch The Crucible, the 1996 film based on persecution of witches in history, including
Arthur Miller’s 1953 play that was itself the witch hunts that took place in seven-
based on the Salem witch trials. Using Inter- teenth-century New England. What reasons
net sources, write a review of the film in might the authors have had for omitting
which you assess how accurately the film this? What is the relationship between the
conveys not only the facts but the atmos- traditional understanding of witchcraft and
phere of those times. How does the film the modern version found in Wicca?

THEMES which made her more likely to be a target for the

witch-hunters. She also lived alone and owned
Injustice her own property. A woman owning property
The speaker of the poem has suffered an injustice was not common in seventeenth-century New
for which she was unprepared. The attack took England and could have aroused resentment
her by surprise, and there has been no judicial among men who felt it undermined their author-
process. The hanging she describes is an extra- ity. The woman also practiced folk remedies; she
judicial lynching. There is no evidence against says in this stanza that she knew a cure for warts.
her. Rumors have been flying around the town, If someone in the town disliked her for some
she says in the first line of the poem, presumably reason, the fact that she gave out remedies for
about some unspecified act of so-called witch- common ailments and treated children (as she
craft, and Mary happens to be a convenient states in section three) might have been used
target for people who are looking for someone against her if someone who took the remedy
on whom to vent their anger and fear. Mary has did not get better or even got worse. Such a
done nothing to deserve it. In the section headed situation might have led to an accusation that
three o’clock in the morning, she affirms that she the woman had made a compact with the devil to
is innocent; she has committed no crime. do people harm. That such an accusation
In the third stanza of the first section of the might have been made against the Mary of the
poem, Mary offers her own thoughts about why poem is clear from the last stanza of the first
she was singled out. She was female, for a start, section.

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

Atwood uses the image of the crow as a symbol of death. ( Hanka Steidle / Shutterstock.com)

The injustice the speaker has suffered is also that Mary inhabits as she hangs from the tree,
a betrayal, as the third section reveals. At least and God offers her no assistance, nor any
two of the women who come to look at her as she response at all. In the absence of God’s grace, all
hangs from a tree were her friends. But the that remains is the human idea of justice, which in
women will not help her, and Mary realizes this case is based on irrational fear and hatred.
that they are too fearful to do so. In this kind
of situation, when irrational thinking has taken
hold, it is dangerous to speak out against a pre- Transformation
In this extremely unusual, macabre experience,
vailing view. The hatred unleashed against one
Mary undergoes not death, as everyone includ-
person could, in a flash, turn against another.
ing herself might have expected, but transforma-
Mary continues the theme of injustice is con- tion. Her survival may, in part, be due to her
tinued by Mary as she addresses God in the fourth mental strength. She refuses to give up, even
section. God’s love is absent from the universe though she is tempted to do so at midnight

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

(tempted, it would seem, by the same devil that of J. Alfred Prufrock.’’ Atwood herself uses the
she is, supposedly, as a witch, in league with). At form, with some variation, in ‘‘The Loneliness of
three o’clock in the morning, she remains defi- the Military Historian,’’ one of the poems in
ant, still with the will to live. The first signs of her Morning in the Burning House. ‘‘Half-hanged
transformation are apparent at eight o’clock in Mary’’ meets all three elements identified by
the morning, when the men come to cut her Abrams, with some variations. Mary, the
down. The fact that she is still alive and grins at speaker, is not the poet, and she relates a trau-
the men terrifies them, and they run away. Now matic event that happened to her, extending the
she really is a witch, she says, with some wit, at account to cover her life after the hanging. In
the end of that section. addition to the reader, she addresses the women
The final section of the poem describes who come to stare at her in the evening (third
Mary’s life after her hanging. Marked out by section) and God (fourth section and part of the
her unusual, perhaps even unique, experience, sixth section). She also shows herself to be a very
she speaks of having died once already. She spirited woman who possesses a sardonic sense
becomes an eccentric figure, talking strangely of humor, as seen when she mocks her assailants
to herself, eating berries and flowers from the and offers wry and witty observations about her
fields, and experiencing a freedom to do and say own situation. She also reveals herself as a
exactly what she wants, not fearing any reprisals. woman of great endurance and determination
The townspeople are scared of her. It is as if she who is able to be defiant in the face of injustice
has acquired some kind of secret knowledge that and adversity to the extent that she is able to
enables her to communicate with nature. She keep the flame of life alive within her.
seems to live a paradox: while being close to the
earth, she is somehow also in touch with the
divine. She has acquired a new language for Simile and Metaphor
understanding the mysteries of life that take her The poem offers plentiful examples of simile and
beyond the normal range of human knowledge. metaphor. Similes consist of a comparison
Although she now calls herself, with some irony, between two unlike things in a way that brings
a witch, her communication is not with the devil out their underlying similarity. Similes are often
but, in a sense, with God. recognizable by the words ‘‘as’’ or ‘‘like,’’ and in
this poem, the word ‘‘like’’ appears in this con-
text no fewer than thirteen times. Each occur-
rence indicates the presence of a simile. For
STYLE example, the accusation against her is compared
to a bullet from a gun penetrating her. She com-
Dramatic Monologue pares herself as she is hoisted up onto the tree to
The poem is in the form of a dramatic monologue. a fallen apple being put back on the tree. In the
The dramatic monologue was made famous by the section headed ‘‘midnight’’, the poet uses three
nineteenth-century English poet Robert Browning similes, one after the other, for death. It is like a
in poems such as ‘‘My Last Duchess’’ and ‘‘Andrea bird of prey, a prurient judge, or a persuasive,
del Sarto.’’ According to M. H. Abrams in A Glos- tempting angel. The poet even jokes about a
sary of Literary Terms, the dramatic monologue, as simile that is not one. In the six o’clock section,
exemplified by Browning, usually consists of three the poet plays on the idea of the sun as a simile
elements. First, it features a single, first-person for God, which would be a common, scarcely
speaker who is not the poet, who gives his or her original comparison, but the speaker gives it a
account of a specific event in which he or she is twist: the sun is not a simile for God. Although it
involved at an important moment during that might have been in the past, the speaker implies,
event. Second, the speaker of the poem addresses such a simile would no longer be appropriate for
one or more people in the course of the poem. Their someone in her situation who is clinging to life in
responses are not given directly but can be inferred a universe in which God appears to be absent.
from what the speaker says. Third, the speaker, in A metaphor occurs when two unlike things
explaining the situation, reveals his or her character. are linked not by a comparison between them
The dramatic monologue has been used by but by identifying one as the other. In the eight
many poets, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, o’clock section, Mary metaphorically becomes a
in ‘‘Ulysses,’’ and T. S. Eliot, in ‘‘The Love Song flag, raised in the night. At the end of that

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

section, the sky is a metaphor for the God who and the Culture of Early New England, throughout
will not offer any solace or explanation for her the seventeenth century in New England, there
fate. were a total of 234 cases in which indictments
were made or complaints filed against accused
witches. There were thirty-six executions. Twenty
of these took place as a result of the notorious
HISTORICAL CONTEXT witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692—just
eight years after Mary Webster was hanged a little
Witches in Seventeenth-Century New more than one hundred miles away in Hadley.
England
Belief in witches was almost universal in the Puritan
colonies of seventeenth-century New England. In a The Case of Mary Webster
prescientific world, people believed in many things Mary Webster lived in Hadley, Massachusetts.
that modern people do not. Supernatural forces She married William Webster in 1670. They were
were thought to be at work in the day-to-day poor and depended on the town for assistance.
world, for example, and witches knew how to She was accused of witchcraft by the county
manipulate those forces for evil purposes. Witches, magistrates in Northampton in March 1683. It
it was believed, had entered into a compact with the appears that there were many written testimo-
devil and were dedicated to inflicting harm on other nies against her, naming her as a witch. The
people. If people were faced with a distressing event, county magistrates sent her to Boston for further
such as illness, the death of a child, or the death of examination at the Court of Assistants. The
cattle, they might think that some evil force was at court ordered her to stand trial, accusing her,
work and blame one of their neighbors whom they as quoted in David Hall’s Witch-Hunting in Sev-
did not like or with whom they had recently quar- enteenth-Century New England: A Documentary
reled or who was considered odd in some way. History, 1638–1692, of having ‘‘familiarity’’ with
the devil in the ‘‘shape of a warraeage [an Indian
David D. Hall, in his introduction to Witch-
word meaning ‘‘black cat’’] and had her imps
Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A
sucking her and teats or marks found in her
Documentary History, 1638–1692, notes that
secret parts.’’ Webster pleaded not guilty, and
women, especially those over forty, were accused
on June 1, 1863, she was acquitted. At some
of being witches far more frequently than men
point after the trial, Philip Smith, a church dea-
were. The ratio was four to one. Men accused of
con who had been a member of the court that
witchcraft were also less likely to face trial, and
had considered Webster’s case in Northampton,
their punishments were lighter than those meted
said he had tried to help her because she was
out to women. Hall suggests that one reason for
poor, but she said something to him in reply
the discrepancy might have been because men
that made him fear she might try to harm him.
held authority over women in all aspects of life
Smith then became ill. To the people who
and society. Witch-hunting might be seen as ‘‘a
attended him, there were some strange things
means of reaffirming this authority at a time
that happened during his sickness, as reported
when some women . . . were testing these con-
by Cotton Mather in Memorable Providences, a
straints, and when others were experiencing a
book published in Boston in 1689, excerpts from
degree of independence, as when women without
which are included in Witch-Hunting in Seven-
husbands or male siblings inherited property.’’
teenth-Century New England. There was a musk-
Legally, in New England in the seventeenth like smell, the source of which could not be
century, witchcraft was a felony punishable by identified; there was a scratching sound near
death. The Puritans had scripture on their side in his feet, and sometimes fire was seen on the
this respect, since the book of Exodus contains bed. Something as big as a cat was observed
the statement, ‘‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to moving under the covers, but when the covers
live’’ (Exodus 22:18). The death penalty was car- were lifted, nothing was found. These and other
ried out by hanging. Many alleged witches, how- occurrences made people think that witchcraft
ever, were acquitted in trials, and people who was at work. Smith died of his illness. Mather
made false charges against an alleged witch was convinced that Smith had been murdered by
were subject to punishment themselves. witchcraft. While Smith was still alive, some
According to John Putnam Davos, in his local men, convinced of Webster’s guilt, decided
introduction to Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft to take the law into their own hands. This is the

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COMPARE
&
CONTRAST
 Late 17th century: The Salem witch trials bines witchcraft with other beliefs and rit-
begin in Salem, Massachusetts, in June uals. In 1990, Wicca has 8,000 adherents in
1692. Many people are denounced as the United States and is popularized in films
witches as a wave of hysteria sweeps across and television programs, such as Charmed, a
the town. Within three months, nineteen TV series aired on the WB beginning in
men and women are convicted and hanged. 1998, about four witches who practice their
Another man is pressed to death by large art for good rather than evil. Popular books
stones for refusing to submit to a trial. such as The Truth about Witchcraft Today
1990s: The Salem Witch Museum in Salem, (1998) by Scott Cunningham, disseminate
Massachusetts, which opened in 1972, uses knowledge about Wicca and witchcraft.
the three hundredth anniversary of the trials Today: Wicca is a fast-growing religion, with
to bring a sense of reconciliation and an 342,000 people identifying as Wiccans in a
understanding of the lessons to be learned 2008 survey. Wiccans venerate nature and
from them. In 1991, Pulitzer Prize-winning are forbidden to harm anyone. Many prac-
playwright Arthur Miller (author of the tice their beliefs alone, not connected to any
1953 play The Crucible about the Salem organization. The status of Wicca as a reli-
witch trials) is the featured speaker at the gion has been upheld by US court rulings.
opening press conference. In 1992, the
museum helps to form the Salem Witch Tri-  Late 17th century: Estimates of the number of
als Tercentenary Committee and oversees alleged witches killed between 1484 and 1700
the building of the Salem Witch Trials in Europe range between 200,000 and 300,000.
Memorial, adjacent to Salem’s seventeenth- 1990s: Witch hunts no longer take place in
century Charter Street Burying Point. Nobel North America or Europe, but they con-
Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wie- tinue in other parts of the world. The BBC
sel visits Salem to dedicate the Salem Witch reports that, in the Democratic Republic of
Trials Memorial. Congo in the late 1990s, children are being
Today: The Salem Award for Human Rights labeled as witches. People in Congo society
and Social Justice is given each year to keep are superstitious, and when misfortunes
alive the lessons to be learned from the witch occur, many blame them on sorcery commit-
trials of 1692. The award recognizes those ted by children. More than 14,000 accused
who work to end discrimination and promote children in the capital city, Kinshasa, have
tolerance. In 2013, the Salem Award is given been thrown out of their homes onto the
to Thomas Doyle, an ordained priest, who street. Others have been murdered by their
helped to expose sex abuse within the Catho- own relatives. The BBC also reports on the
lic Church, and Horace Seldon, a former min- murder of alleged witches in Tanzania.
ister of the United Church of Christ, who has
Today: Persecution of people accused of
spent forty-five years teaching about racism
being witches still continues in Africa,
and working to end it.
India, and other parts of Asia. In February
 Late 17th century: In Europe and North 2013, in Papua New Guinea, a twenty-year-
America, witchcraft is considered evil, a old woman is accused of sorcery by relatives
deviation from true religion, and witches of a six-year-old boy who died in the hospi-
are persecuted. tal. The woman is tortured and burnt to
1990s: Wicca, a pagan religion developed in death on a pile of tires and trash, watched
the early twentieth century in England, com- by hundreds of people.

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

of science, history and religion.’’ In her review of

Morning in the Burning House in the Antioch
Review, Molly Bendall comments, ‘‘Atwood’s
savage, back-talking dramatic monologues have
become her trademark,’’ including ‘‘the tour de
force ‘Half-Hanged Mary,’ a voice from the
bleak theatre (Salem chapter) of our history.’’
For Ray Olson, reviewing the same collection in
Booklist, ‘‘if she [Atwood] is not consistently per-
suasive, she is always vital, powerful, magneti-
cally readable.’’ For Kathryn Van Spanckeren,
in her essay ‘‘Humanizing the Fox: Atwood’s
Poetic Tricksters and Morning in the Burned
House,’’ ‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ ‘‘recalls The Jour-
nals of Susannah Moodie [another poetry collec-
tion by Atwood] in its chronological construction
and transformation from realistic woman protag-
onist to mythical figure (in this case a witch). It
evokes a consciousness mysteriously continuing
after death.’’ However, Van Spanckeren adds
that ‘‘after all her suffering Mary remains emo-
tionally dead and cut off from others.’’

The narrator of ‘‘Half Hanged Mary’’ is killed

because the townspeople fear she is a witch. CRITICISM
( OlegDoroshin / Shutterstock.com)
Bryan Aubrey
Aubrey holds a PhD in English. In the following
essay, he examines the historical context of
description given by Sylvester Judd in History of ‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ as well as its transcendence
Hadley, Including the Early History of Hatfield, of that context.
South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby: ‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ is a witty, sometimes har-
A number of brisk lads tried an experiment rowing poem based on a dramatic and shocking
upon the old woman. Having dragged her out historical incident. Atwood wriggles inside the
of her house, they hung her up until she was mind of the ill-fated Mary Webster, who, in 1684,
near dead, let her down, rolled her sometime in was hanged as a witch in Hadley, Massachusetts,
the snow, and at last buried her in it, and there
but improbably lived to tell the tale. The poem well
left her; but it happened that she survived.
conveys the feelings—physical, emotional, spiri-
Mary Webster died in 1696, at about the age tual—of what it might be like to get strung up by
of seventy. your neighbors and hang all night from a tree being
gradually strangled. Although the poem is rich with
imagery, it is often conversational in tone as the
stricken woman addresses her various auditors
CRITICAL OVERVIEW using colloquial expressions that, in context,
acquire a sardonic humor. Mary emerges as a cou-
Although Atwood’s poetry has not attracted as rageous soul, at once knowledgeable, questioning,
much critical comment as her novels, ‘‘Half- defiant, and enduring. Atwood’s free verse varies in
hanged Mary’’ has received some attention from line and stanza length, and she is adept at creating
reviewers and literary critics. The reviewer for the effect she wants. The section in which Mary
Publishers Weekly includes ‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ relates her ordeal from three o’clock in the morning
as an example of ‘‘the most vivid poems’’ in is printed entirely in lower-case letters (with the
Morning in the Burning House, which ‘‘forge an exception of one word used to express her continu-
apprehensible human aspect from scholarly fields ing refusal to give up), without a single punctuation

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WHAT
DO I READ
NEXT?
 The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) is one of England from 1620 to 1725. Karlsen exam-
Atwood’s most famous novels. It takes place ines gender relations during the period and
in a dystopia in the near future and explores the argues that alleged witches were primarily
dangers of totalitarianism, religious fanaticism, older, sometimes financially independent
and the devaluing of women. The United States women who were perceived as a threat to
has become the Republic of Gilead, a conserva- the dominance of men in society.
tive Protestant theocracy in which women are  Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation
strictly controlled in all areas of their lives. The (1998) by Silver RavenWolf is an introduc-
novel is narrated by Offred, who serves as a tion to Wicca for young people. The author,
Handmaid to the Commander, a powerful at the time of writing, was the mother of two
member of the government. Her only role is to teenage children, and she understood the
produce his children. concerns of teens. She explains the basics
 Atwood’s Selected Poems II: Poems Selected of the Wiccan religion and takes a practical
and New; 1976–1986 (2nd edition, 1987) approach to spells and rituals. She empha-
contains seventy-three poems, including sizes that magic does not mix well with alco-
selections from four of her previous collec- hol or drugs and that Wiccans do not harm
tions as well as seventeen previously unpub- other people.
lished poems.
 Like Atwood, Alice Walker has major
 The Door (2007) is Atwood’s first collection achievements in both novels and poetry.
of poetry since Morning in the Burned House Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth:
in 1995. These fifty poems explore topics New Poems (2003) is her sixth collection of
such as writing and the role of the poet, poems. The title conveys one of the themes of
time, aging, and mortality, as well as political the eighty-six poems in the collection. Walker
and environmental themes, including war. employs simple diction and mostly very short
 Carol F. Karlsen’s The Devil in the Shape of lines as she writes in praise of the beauty of life
a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New Eng- in all its aspects and offers thoughtful reflec-
land (1998) is a history of witchcraft in New tion on a range of emotions.

mark, not even at the end. The chosen form cap- of its own, but to understand the hanging of
tures the movement of Mary’s mind as it races, alleged witches—for Mary Webster was not the
trying to subdue panic as the wind whistles through only one—in New England only a little over
the trees and she becomes increasingly desperate to three centuries ago requires a leap of the histor-
cling to life even as her body weakens. ical imagination. What, one has to ask, were
As for Mary’s crime and punishment, a these people thinking of?
modern reader can only wonder at the sensibil- The basic elements of their world view are not
ities of those seventeenth-century folk, respect- difficult to understand. The Puritans believed that
able citizens all, it would seem, who thought it supernatural forces were capable of penetrating
was a capital idea—right and proper and just— the natural world and causing things to happen
to condemn as a witch, without judicial proceed- that would otherwise be impossible or inexplica-
ing, a woman who was probably in her late fifties ble. The invisible, spiritual world was always act-
and then hang her from a tree. No doubt the ing upon the visible, physical world, either
twenty-first century has unspeakable cruelties through what was referred to as God’s providence

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To the modern mind, to interpret all this as

evidence of witchcraft seems ridiculous, a tissue
of nonsense, but it was not so for the people of
INDEED, PERHAPS THE MOST HAUNTING Hadley in 1684. This was all it took for Mary
PART OF THIS POEM ABOUT THE SUFFERING THAT
Webster to feel the force of their cruel judg-
ments. It must, of course, have been known
IGNORANCE AND MALICE CAN INFLICT ON ONE POOR that she had been tried in Boston for witchcraft
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN IS NOT THE AGONY OF a year prior, so perhaps belief in the old adage
that there is no smoke without fire was also at
TORTURED FLESH BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THE work in her case.
WOMAN AFTERWARD.’’ In writing her poem, Atwood certainly did
her research, not only into Mary Webster but
into other cases of witchcraft from the period as
well. The Mary of the poem, for example, is a
or through the power of evil as personified in healer. She makes this clear several times, and
Satan, or the devil. The Puritans knew from scrip- she believes her cures were effective, as she points
ture that the devil was continually plotting evil out to the women who come at night to gawk at
against God and man. All Satan needed was a her. But perhaps doing her best to heal people
willing partner, and if people—witches—were to was Mary’s mistake, at least as far as her welfare
form a covenant with the devil, he and his agents was concerned, since being a healer and a
would join with them in doing harm. woman in New England, at the time, could, on
occasion, be a dangerous combination. Accord-
As for the historical Mary Webster, not a
ing to John Putnam Demos in Entertaining
great deal is known about her except for the fact
Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New
she was tried and acquitted of witchcraft in
England, many of the women accused of witch-
Boston in 1693 and that she later succeeded in
craft practiced informal methods of healing.
greatly annoying a gentleman by the name of
Elizabeth Garlick of Easthampton, Long Island,
Philip Smith, whose suspicion that she was prac-
ticing witchcraft on him during his illness led who was tried and acquitted of witchcraft in
directly to her hanging. According to the 1658, prescribed herbal remedies. Katherine
account of Smith’s illness given by Cotton Harrison of Wethersfield, Connecticut, who was
Mather in Memorable Providences (1689), required to leave Connecticut in 1670 after the
strange events accompanied it. court failed to reach a verdict, was also a healer.
Winifred Holman of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
At one point, Smith felt as if hundreds of who was prosecuted in 1659 and acquitted, pre-
pins were sticking into him, pricking him, but scribed herbs for a sick woman. Margaret Jones of
only one pin was ever found. Smith claimed that Charlestown, Massachusetts, executed in 1648,
he could see Mary Webster and others standing also practiced medicine on an informal basis.
in his room. No one else, it seems, could see When combined with other factors, such as
them, but a core belief in the witchcraft trials previous accusations of theft or slander, women
was ‘‘spectral evidence,’’ the idea that witches healers could easily fall under suspicion.
could leave their bodies and appear to someone
they intended to harm in a spectral (i.e., ghostly) However, in creating the character who deliv-
form. Further, when Smith was in great distress ers the dramatic monologue, Atwood makes her
from his illness, his friends went to Mary’s home Mary, in other respects, somewhat atypical of the
and harassed her, and while they were doing so, women who were accused of witchcraft and,
Smith slept well (presumably because her unwel- indeed, unusual for a woman of her time and
come visitors had forced her into a lapse of con- place. She lives alone on a farm she owns herself,
centration in her desire to do Smith harm). In and the bulk of her time is taken up with the daily
other incidents, a pot of medicine for Smith that chores of farm life. (Much of the imagery she uses
was nearly full and carefully watched over mys- is drawn from what would have been her day-to-
teriously became empty; fire was seen on the bed day observations on the farm.) According to
that would vanish when the people who saw it Demos, however, although women were some-
began talking about it; and after Smith died, an times assistants to farmers, they were not farmers
observer saw his bed move without cause. in their own right; many, of course, lived and

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The serene image of the barn at sunset is interrupted by the unexpected accusation. ( Cardens Design /
Shutterstock.com)

worked on farms with their husbands and chil- poor middle-aged woman is not the agony of
dren. Mary of the poem, though, appears to have tortured flesh but what happens to the woman
no children. Moreover, most accused witches, afterward. In the last section of the poem, Atwood
including the historical Mary Webster, were mar- departs from any historical facts or surmises
ried. Perhaps Atwood’s Mary is a widow who (other than the fact that Mary Webster survived
inherited the property. It is also possible that mak- the hanging) and enters a world of pure imagina-
ing her more of an isolated, independent figure tion. Her Mary, shunned and ostracized by the
than she was in actual life serves Atwood’s dra- locals who now fear her more than ever, lives in an
matic intentions: it places Mary outside the tradi- isolated but imaginatively rich world of her own.
tional patriarchal order of things and therefore It is as if she has gone beyond some invisible
makes her an object of envy and fear. (Demos, boundary and acquired a knowledge of life that
however, does not consider that tension between only she can comprehend. Old categories of think-
patriarchal structures and women’s aspirations ing have been transcended, and the notion of
played any role in the witch hunts. Men were blasphemy no longer has any meaning. Instead,
dominant, of course, but Demos found no evi- a new spirituality has emerged in her, one that
dence of a conflict between the sexes that might seems to embrace the unity of all life and offers
explain why women were more often accused of gratitude at every moment.
being witches than men were.)
Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on ‘‘Half-hanged
Of course, ‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ is an imagi- Mary,’’ in Poetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2014.
native creation and does not have to conform in
every detail to historical fact, even if those facts
could be known for sure. Indeed, perhaps the Lothar Hönnighausen
most haunting part of this poem about the suffer- In the following excerpt, Hönnighausen contrasts
ing that ignorance and malice can inflict on one Atwood’s poetry with her prose.

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On the occasion of this essay on Margaret range of her artistic moods and modes of expres-
Atwood’s poetry, I take my cue both from her sion, as the overview of the following volumes of
painter Elaine Risley, favoring ‘‘a chronological poetry will show: The Circle Game (1966), The
approach’’ for this retrospective exhibition, and Animals in That Country (1968), The Journals of
from her gallerist Charna, who ‘‘wants things to Susanna Moodie (1970), Procedures for Under-
go together tonally and resonate’’ (Cat’s Eye, ground (1970), Power Politics (1971), You Are
91). Atwood’s work has been categorized and Happy (1974), Two-Headed Poems (1978), True
subdivided into so many styles and phases, in Stories (1981), Interlunar (1984), Morning in the
which she supposedly was a Canadian national- Burned House (1995).
ist, literary lobbyist, liberal parodist, Amnesty In a retrospective of Atwood’s poetry, the
International activist, or changed back and forth title poems of her various volumes obviously
from poet to prose writer, from aggressive fem- constitute nodes which can serve as points of
inist harpy to soft-souled wife and mother, from departure and foci for the proposed rereadings.
progressive young woman to stone-faced sibyl, Atwood’s debut as a fully fledged poet, The
that the use of any traditional evolutionary Circle Game, for which she received the Gover-
scheme in approaching it is out of the question. nor General’s Award for 1966, was as convinc-
Along the same lines, Atwood’s poetic stance, ing as her first novel, The Edible Woman, dating
which has been over-simplistically described as from 1965 and published in 1969. Both the vol-
either autobiographical or mythopoeic, is prob- ume of poetry and the novel fuse the narcissism
ably neither or both, resulting, as with other of an antagonistic love affair with wider the-
writers, from the stylization, in changing forms, matic concerns, such as the doubtful realities of
of a changing stream of experience. In any case, the contemporary consumer and media culture,
her sixtieth birthday seems to call not so much and both these apprentice works display the
for yet more scholarly theorizing than for intense same amazing assurance of tone and perform-
rereading, particularly of her poetry, which is ance. In fact, the basic poetic techniques that
not as well known as her fiction. Atwood adopts in her first book of poetry
undergo no substantial changes, notwithstand-
Although there are many affinities between
ing many subtle modifications, from her first
Atwood’s poetry and her fiction, her poems, in
through her most recent volume. There are no
contrast to her novels, stories, or essays, seem to
fixed stanza forms, no rhyme, no regular meter,
occur like entries into a kind of artistic logbook.
but a sure and continuous voice informs the
Writing poetry for Atwood appears to be an
poem through its remotest ramifications, and
irresistible, ongoing process of perception,
through the varying lengths of stanzas and
reflection, and aesthetic organization. What
lines. This medium proves flexible enough to
makes this process of poetic exploration relevant
accommodate widely varying topics, presenting,
to her readers is the radicality with which she
to somebody with the artistic ingenuity and
puts things to the test, and the inventive crafts-
shaping power of Atwood, every opportunity
manship with which she organizes her experien-
for formal precision. . . .
ces as poems: ‘‘As for the ego—I wonder if it
really exists? . . . One is simply a location where Source: Lothar Hönnighausen, ‘‘Margaret Atwood’s
Poetry 1966–1995,’’ in Margaret Atwood: Works and
certain things occur, leaving trails & debris . . .
Impact, edited by Reingard M. Nischik, Camden
something in one that organizes the random bits House, 2000, pp. 97–99.
though’’ (Sullivan, 220).
Furthermore, there are some other continu- Molly Bendall
ous traits which endear Atwood the poet to her In the following review, Bendall reminds readers
readers: her nimble intelligence and her comic that Atwood is not only a ‘‘prolific novelist’’ but a
sense, her precision and scientific curiosity, her ‘‘powerful poetic voice.’’
inexhaustible productivity, and her insistence on Let’s not mistake Margaret Atwood’s bare
shaping rather than shouting. If her literary per- statements, bald-faced retorts, and declarative
sonae hardly ever appear in a tragic predica- moments for banal plainspokenness. Atwood
ment, they are often plagued by doubt and has made these, along with her clipped rhythms
revulsion, but fortunately many convey a wry and bluntly sarcastic comeback lines, her own
sense of humor. The fascinating experience for distinctive vehicles. She recognizes the complex-
Atwood’s readers is to share with her the wide ity of a voice and constructs it with carefully

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modulated tones. Sure, one is reminded of Bette powerful, magnetically readable. Political, too,
Davis or Katherine Hepburn when the speaker although never propagandistic. Rather, she is a
in ‘‘Manet’s Olympia’’ says, ‘‘She reclines, more contemporary, female Whittier or Kipling—tech-
or less. / Try that posture, it’s hardly languor.’’ nically adroit, imagistically rich, immediately
Or when Helen of Troy says, ‘‘There sure are a accessible. She is a popular poet of the very first
lot of dangerous birds around.’’ However, it’s [order]. Readers who know only her novels really
more than a movie. Her process of remedying owe it to themselves to read her poems.
crises with light-hearted (sometimes) cynicism Source: Ray Olson, Review of Morning in the Burned
and of alchemizing sacredness into gossip is House, in Booklist, Vol. 92, No. 1, September 1, 1995, p. 32.
born of the fables and magic that she loves.
Atwood often dips into the rhetoric, and even Publishers Weekly
the vocabulary, of folktales (using tools like ana- In the following review, a contributor lauds
phora); she gives her language the feel of a charm or Atwood’s ‘‘swift, powerful energy’’ and her free-
vengeful spell, ‘‘You make a cut in yourself, / a little verse style, which makes these poems ‘‘intimate
opening/for the pain to get in. / You set loose three and immediate.’’
drops of your blood.’’ A reader might recognize
In her first poetry collection since 1987’s
occasional similarities with Sylvia Plath and the
Selected Poems II, Atwood brings a swift, powerful
fact that Atwood has had an influence on many
energy to meditative poems that often begin in
poets writing now (Louise Gluck, for instance).
domestic settings and then broaden into numinous
Atwood’s savage, back-talking dramatic mono-
dialogues. In ‘‘In the Secular Night,’’ the speaker,
logues have become her trademark. In this book
who has wandered through her house talking to
stand-outs include ‘‘Ava Gardner Reincarnated as
herself of the ‘‘sensed absences of God,’’ realizes
a Magnolia,’’ ‘‘Helen of Troy does Counter Danc-
‘‘Several hundred years ago / this could have been
ing,’’ and the tour de force ‘‘Half-Hanged Mary,’’ a
mysticism / or heresy. It isn’t now.’’ In five roughly
voice from the bleak theatre (Salem chapter) of our
thematic sections, Atwood often displays incisive
history. Her range is darkened and deepened with a
humor (‘‘Ava Gardner Reincarnated as a Magno-
series of elegiac poems about her dying father, and
lia’’). The most vivid poems forge an apprehensible
she, the speaker, the daughter, faces the inevitable
human aspect from scholarly fields of science, his-
fall into the future from which her wit and magic
tory and religion: in ‘‘Half-hanged Mary’’ a woman
can’t save her. We know Atwood is a prolific novel-
who was being hanged for witchery survives and
ist. Remember also her powerful poetic voice.
tolls each hour until she is cut down. The final
Source: Molly Bendall, Review of Morning in the Burned grouping seems compiled from the charred remains
House, in Antioch Review, Vol. 54, No. 2, Spring 1996, p. 248.
of a deeply examined life, where only ‘‘the power of
what is not there’’ may transcend. Atwood’s lean,
Ray Olson free-verse style renders these apocryphal poems inti-
In the following review, Olson praises the collec- mate and immediate.
tion and considers Atwood ‘‘adroit, imagistically Source: Review of Morning in the Burned House, in
rich,’’ and ‘‘immediately accessible.’’ Publishers Weekly, Vol. 242, No. 35, August 28, 1995,
pp. 107–108.
The blood of a sexually liberated generation
ran cold at Atwood’s lancing epigraph to Power
Politics (1971): ‘‘You fit into me / like a hook into John Wilson Foster
an eye//a fish-hook/an open eye.’’ No poet better In the following excerpt, Foster discusses how
expressed the could-be-lethal frisson of deep love- being Canadian has influenced Atwood’s poetry.
lust, the tart, equivocal successes and failures of Margaret Atwood’s current popularity stems
late-twentieth-century romance. In the first section in part from the fact that her poetry explores
in her new collection, she returns to the love dance, certain fashionable minority psychologies. With
middle-aged and more experienced if not wiser, its cultivation of barely controlled hysteria, for
and gives us poems as right-sounding, memorable, instance, her verse is that of a psychic individual
and pithy as her best a quarter-century ago. In later at sea in a materialist society. This hysteria, how-
sections, she turns to goddess myths, history, ever, assumes specifically feminine forms and
archaeology, family stories, and dreams—all sub- lends Atwood’s work certain affinities (of which
jects she has taken up before—and if she is not current popularity is the least important) with that
consistently persuasive, she is always vital, of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath. For like these

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two predecessors, Atwood confronts her own sex- Moreover, Atwood’s animal imagery is not nat-
uality and the contemporary roles laid down by uralistic but heraldic and emblematic, and this
men for her to play. A minority psychology sim- heraldic stylism she shares with totem-carvers.
ilar to that which informs her identity as a woman Consider, for instance, the animals in ‘‘Buffalo in
informs her national identity, for Atwood is a Compound: Alberta’’ which walk in profile ‘‘one
contemporary Canadian aware of belonging to a by one, their / firelit outlines fixed as carvings’’
minority culture on the North American continent and enter ‘‘the shade of the gold-edged trees.’’
and in reaction recollecting and re-enacting her Even more telling are the metamorphoses which
pioneer ancestors’ encounter with the wilderness operate within Atwood’s sexual and pioneer
and with the native people. Appropriately, the contexts but which are also the transformations
Canadian ancestral experience—repository of the that inspire totemism and involve, as they do in
spiritual identity of a people—happens to be best Atwood, men, animals and the landscape. ‘‘A
commemorated in the journals and memoirs of carver,’’ wrote Viola E. Garfield, ‘‘may include
some remarkable women, including Catharine a figure representing the dwelling place of a story
Parr Traill, Susanna Moodie and Anna Jameson. character, a camp site or place of refuge, or any
phenomenon he desires. He always depicts it as
Charges of opportunism could easily be lev-
animate. Features of the landscape are usually
elled against a poet so deeply involved with the
illustrated as land animals, while those of the sea
minority psyche. But they are answerable by our
are given the anatomical characteristics of ocean
exhibiting, as I hope to do here, the essential
dwelling creatures. Sometimes they are carved
coherence of Atwood’s poetic themes. Her
with human, rather than animal, attributes.’’
poetry succeeds not by masterly technique or The relationship between man and animal is
style but by a peculiar force of content, by excit- paramount. ‘‘In the beginning people and ani-
ing transformations of experience that appear mals were not distinct and separate, but animals
only to the superficial reader as mere opportu- were people, and many retain the ability to think
nities. Among the experiences of being an indi- and act as people in the present world . . . Down
vidual, a woman and a Canadian, Atwood through the generations men have been known
intuits an underlying connection deeper than who assumed animal form. . . . ’’ Anthropomor-
minority membership. These experiences flesh phism and zoomorphism animate The Journals
out in multiple guise the root formula of her of Susanna Moodie and indeed much of
poetry. Like a mathematical expression, that Atwood’s poetry, and are aspects of the primor-
formula sustains a wealth of individual existen- dial unity to which her characters and personae
ces—of image, motif, subject and dramatic sit- revert. The section of poems in You Are Happy
uation. Stated briefly, Atwood’s poetry in the six entitled ‘‘Songs of the Transformed’’ seems espe-
volumes to date concerns itself with the self’s cially indebted to Indian cosmology, concerning
inhabitation of spaces and forms and the meta- as they do human spirits in animal shapes. It is
morphoses entailed therein. All that is themati- no coincidence that ‘‘Owl Song,’’ in which the
cally important derives from this: invasion, owl is the heart of a murdered woman, bears a
displacement, evolution and reversion, as well resemblance to the Tlingit and Haida tale of the
as those notions significant enough to warrant unkind woman turned to an owl and depicted on
book titles—survival, ingestion (cf. The Edible totem poles (Garfield, pp. 26–27). We could even
Woman, a novel), and surfacing. The message of argue that the stylistic metamorphoses with
Atwood’s poetry is that extinction and obsoles- which we are familiar in poetry—metaphor, sim-
cene are illusory, that life is a constant process of ile and personification—are in Atwood’s poetry
re-formation. The self is eternally divided in its derived as much from a totemic awareness as
attitude to the forms and spaces it inhabits, from poetic convention. . . .
simultaneously needing, fearing, desiring and
despising them. Source: John Wilson Foster, ‘‘The Poetry of Margaret
Atwood,’’ in Critical Essays on Margaret Atwood, edited
. . . It is clear that Atwood has been pro- by Judith McCombs, G. K. Hall, 1988, pp. 153–54, 163–64.
foundly influenced by Indian mythology, espe-
cially from British Columbia where she lived for
a time. Many of the poems in You Are Happy, Anne G. Jones
and certain poems elsewhere (for example, ‘‘The In the following excerpt, Jones examines how
Totems’’), resemble Indian tales of origination. Atwood’s poetry treats the issue of identity.

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. . . One cannot separate Atwood’s fascina- only metaphorical.’’ Since the writer makes connec-
tion with form, its sources, its extreme limits, tions by making metaphor, it’s no surprise that
from her exploration of identity. After all, it is language should itself become a metaphor. In a
form that permits identity: in ‘‘the lucidities of love poem from Power Politics
day/ . . . you are something I can/ trace a line all of me
around, with eyes/ cut shapes from air, the ele- breathes you in . . .
ment/where we/must calculate according to/ sol- the adjectives
idities.’’ Then growth or decay of an entity fall away from me, no
means a change in form, a transformation. And threads left holding
me, I flake apart
Atwood returns throughout her work to that
layer by
theme. In a series of poems called ‘‘Songs of the layer down
Transformed,’’ for instance, Atwood puts quietly to the bone, my skull
human voices into the bodies of animals. (The unfolds to an astounded flower
rat says, ‘‘All I want is love, you stupid human- regrowing the body, learning
ist.’’) In ‘‘Eventual Proteus,’’ Atwood describes speech again takes
the process of transformation: days and longer
. . . Form permits identity, then, but neces- each time / too much of
this is fatal
sitates separation; lack of form, preventing clear
identity, yet permits intimacy; the narrator holds Elsewhere, Atwood finds that nature and
Proteus, but only until he takes the form of man. language were once more nearly one: the ‘‘ear-
Transformations, shifts in identity, take liest language/ was not our syntax of chained
place in nature without human control. But pebbles/ but liquid, made/ by the first tribes,
other transformations occur because people the fish/ people.’’
exert power and choice. The artist, the shaper, The writer can do more than make single
is the primary human transformer. metaphors; she can make stories, for ‘‘a language
. . . If consciousness and nature are radically is not words only,/ it is the stories/ that are told in
different, or if identity requires formal separate- it,/ the stories that are never told.’’ And, ranging
ness, then one person is alienated from another, still further and deeper, she can create the
subject from object, even left hand from right. extended metaphor of myth. Making ‘‘A Red
Margaret Atwood started publishing her work Shirt’’ for her daughter, the poet remembers old
with a book of poems called Double Persephone; myths, summed up in the warning that young girls
her latest (1978) volume of poems is called Two- should ‘‘keep silent and avoid/ red shoes, red
Headed Poems. Much as her work finds these stockings, dancing.’’ ‘‘It may not be true,’’ she
splits (even wars) in reality, Atwood suggested concludes, still sewing, ‘‘that one myth cancels
repeatedly that a profound similitude (even an another./Nevertheless, in a corner/ of the hem,
identity) persists between human mind and where it will not be seen,/ where you will inherit/
nature, and can be revealed or created with the it, I make this tiny/ stitch, my private magic.’’
right tools. The pioneer, for instance, can let his To use language, then, is to wield power,
straight lines be bent by nature, and not lose his power to preserve, to create, to change, to under-
mind. Nature and consciousness are joined ulti- stand. And power to lie. For ‘‘worn language clots
mately and awesomely for Atwood in the mysti- our throats, making it difficult to say/ what we
cal experience: in ‘‘Giving Birth,’’ for instance, mean, making it/ difficult to see.’’ Hence Atwood
Jeannie actually sees the equivalence of mass and keeps weeding her word garden, pushing back ‘‘the
energy, and in Surfacing and Susanna Moodie, coarse ones spreading themselves everywhere/ like
the protagonists become the spirit of place. thighs or starlings’’ and pulling off ‘‘inaccurate’’
Nature and consciousness, though, are also versions of her lover: ‘‘the hinged bronze man,
joined, in terror, by the insane. the fragile man/ built of glass pebbles,/ the ranged
And they are joined, with language, by the man with his opulent capes and boots/ peeling
writer. The fact that metaphor exists at all suggests away from you in scales.’’
a continuity between mind and its objects. Morri- Finally, words have the power to heal or to
son in ‘‘Polarities’’ says that ‘‘the only difference’’ harm. Because language has such power, it
between mad Louise and the other students is that becomes, for Margaret Atwood, a question for
‘‘she’s taken as real what the rest of us pretend is ethics. In fact, her considerations of ethics have a

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

great deal to do with power in general: the power Linder, Douglas O., ‘‘The Witchcraft Trials in Salem: A
of America, of men, of predators; the powerless- Commentary,’’ Salem Witchcraft Trials 1692 website,
ness of victims and prey. In Survival: A Thematic September 9, 2009, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/
ftrials/salem/SAL_ACCT.HTM (accessed February 22,
Guide to Canadian Literature, Atwood outlines 2013).
four ‘‘victim’’ positions. In the first, the victim
denies he or she is a victim. In the second, she ‘‘Margaret Atwood: Biography,’’ Margaret Atwood web-
site, http://margaretatwood.ca/bio.php (accessed March
admits that she is, but blames it on some ‘‘large 5, 2013).
powerful idea,’’ like fate or biology. Position
Three moves toward freedom: the victim no lon- ‘‘The Official King James Bible Online,’’ King James
Bible Online website, http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.
ger believes that victimhood is inevitable. And org/Exodus-22-18/ (accessed March 5, 2013).
Position Four, that of ‘‘creative non-victim,’’
moves beyond victimhood—but, presumably, Olson, Ray, Review of Morning in the Burned House, in
Booklist, Vol. 92, No. 1, September 1, 1995, p. 32.
not into the mirror role of victor. Atwood sug-
gests there may be a fifth position, for mystics, Review of Morning in the Burning [sic] House, in Publish-
yet she doesn’t expect to find much literature ers Weekly, Vol. 242, No. 35, August 28, 1995, p. 107.
written from that position. ‘‘The Salem Witch Museum – Past and Present,’’ Salem,
MA: Salem Witch Museum website, August 2010, http://
Essential to the transformation of an indi- www.salemwitchmuseum.com/media/SalemWitchMuseum
vidual from one position to the next is awareness _background.pdf (accessed February 22, 2013).
of reality; positions one and two are notable for
‘‘The Salem Witch Museum – Timeline,’’ Salem Witch
their denial or distortion of what is. And ‘‘a Museum website, August 2010, http://www.salemwitchmu
writer’s job is to tell his society not how it seum.com/media/timeline.pdf (accessed February 22, 2013).
ought to live, but how it does live,’’ Atwood
Shumaker, Wayne, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance:
says baldly. ‘‘He is us.’’ . . . A Study in Intellectual Passions, University of California
Source: Anne G. Jones, ‘‘Margaret Atwood: Songs of the Press, 1972, p. 61.
Transformer, Songs of the Transformed,’’ in Hollins
‘‘Spectral Evidence,’’ Salem Witch Museum website,
Critic, Vol. 16, No. 3, June 1979, p. 1.
February 13, 2013, http://www.salemwitchmuseum
.com/blog/ (accessed February 23, 2013).
Tatlow, Didi Kirsten, ‘‘Women Killed as ‘Witches,’ in
SOURCES Papua New Guinea, in 2013,’’ in International Herald
Tribune, February 19, 2013, http://rendezvous.blogs.
Abrams, M. H., A Glossary of Literary Terms, 4th ed., nytimes.com/2013/02/19/women-tortured-killed-as-witches
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981, p. 45. -in-papua-new-guinea-in-2013/ (accessed February 19, 2013).

Atwood, Margaret, ‘‘Half-hanged Mary,’’ in Morning in ‘‘2013 Salem Award Winners Announced,’’ Salem Awards
the Burned House, Houghton Mifflin, 1995, p. 58–69. Foundation website, 2013, http://www.salemaward.org/
(accessed February 22, 2013).
Bendall, Molly, Review of Morning in the Burned House,
in Antioch Review, Vol. 54, No. 2, Spring 1996, p. 248. Van Spanckeren, Kathryn, ‘‘Humanizing the Fox:
Atwood’s Poetic Tricksters and Morning in the Burned
Demos, John Putnam, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft House,’’ in Margaret Atwood’s Textual Assassinations:
and the Culture of Early New England, Oxford University Recent Poetry and Fiction, edited by Sharon Rose Wilson,
Press, 2004, pp. 3–15, 63, 81–82. Ohio State University, 2003, pp. 107–108.
Evans, Ruth, ‘‘Eyewitness: Suspected Witches Murdered Vine, Jeremy, ‘‘Congo Witch-Hunt’s Child Victims,’’ BBC
in Tanzania,’’ BBC website, July 5, 1999, http://news. website, December 22, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/386550.stm (accessed February africa/575178.stm (accessed February 19, 2013).
22, 2013).
Goldman, Russell, ‘‘Real Witches Practice Samhain:
Wicca on the Rise in U.S.,’’ ABC News website, October
30, 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/WN/real-witches-practice-
samhain-wicca-rise-us/story?id=8957950 (accessed FURTHER READING
February 22, 2013).
Cooke, Nathalie, Margaret Atwood: A Biography, ECW
Hall, David D., ed. Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Cen-
Press, 1998.
tury New England: A Documentary History, 1638–1692,
This is the first biography of Atwood.
Northeastern University Press, 1991, pp. 7, 261.
Cooke explores the ups and downs of
Judd, Sylvester, History of Hadley, Including the Early Atwood’s private life and her emergence as
History of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby, a major figure in Canadian literature and
Massachusetts, Metcalf, 1863, p. 239. culture.

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 H a l f - h a n g e d M a r y

Howells, Coral Ann, Margaret Atwood, 2nd ed., Palgrave

Macmillan, 2005.
SUGGESTED SEARCH TERMS
This introduction to Atwood covers her work
from the 1970s up through the novel Oryx and Margaret Atwood
Crake, published in 2003. Howell explores all Half-hanged Mary
of Atwood’s typical concerns, including Cana-
dian identity and feminist issues. Mary Webster AND witch
Howells, Coral Ann, ed., The Cambridge Companion to witches
Margaret Atwood, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
This is an examination of Atwood’s work in all witchcraft
genres. The introduction traces trends in
Atwood criticism since the 1970s, and the witchcraft AND New England
twelve essays by Atwood scholars analyze her
Salem witch trials
work from a variety of critical standpoints.
Stein, Karen F., Margaret Atwood Revisited, Twayne dramatic monologue
Publishers, 1999.
Wicca
This is an introduction to Atwood’s major literary
works that discusses theme and character, as well
as her storytelling style and frequent use of
paradoxes.

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(c) 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.