Half-Hanged Mary Summary & Analysis
by Margaret Atwood

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"Half-Hanged Mary" is Canadian writer Margaret Atwood's tale of patriarchal cruelty and powerful transformation. This dramatic monologue's speaker is Mary Webster, a 17th-century woman hanged for witchcraft in Puritan Massachusetts. Dangling from a tree, choking but not dying, Mary has plenty of time to reflect on the sadistic sexism that got her here—and when she's found alive the next morning, she truly becomes the powerful witch she was falsely accused of being before. This poem first appeared in Atwood's 1995 collection Morning in the Burned House.

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