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Literature and Theology 2002 16(2):172-187; doi:10.1093/litthe/16.2.172
© 2002 by Oxford University Press
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The Gospel According to Grace: Gnostic Heresy as Narrative Strategy in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace

Ryan Miller1

1 Department of English, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6 rmiller{at}sfu.ca

This paper approaches Margaret Atwood's 1996 novel Alias Grace with specific attention to the author's use of Gnosticism in the creation of a subtle and complex feminist narrative. This is an original topic: one not previously cited in Atwood criticism. My reading proposes that the author brilliantly locates the potential for feminist license in the undercurrents of nineteenth-century spiritualism. By utilising Gnostic myth and imagery—and emphasising gnosis (self-knowledge)—Atwood playfully localises in Grace Marks the suffering of the divine feminine. In so doing, she allows her protagonist the opportunity to refute then-contemporary judgments of her actions.


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