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Half-Hanged Mary (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)

At a glance:

The Poem

“Half-Hanged Mary” is a medium-length narrative poem in free verse that has ten sections, each containing one to five stanzas. In it, Atwood reconstructs the hanging of Mary Webster, a woman accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts in the 1680’s. Webster was hanged but did not die; thus the title of the poem.

The poem is written in the first person: Mary tells her own story. The ten sections of the poem are titled by time. The first, “7 p.m.,” tells of the hour in the evening when authorities come for Mary while she is milking the cows. Her crimes, she...

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