SOURCE: Dragland, Stan. “Out of the Blank: Daphne Marlatt's Ana Historic.” In The Bees of the Invisible: Essays in Contemporary English Canadian Writing, pp. 172-90. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Dragland explores Marlatt's radical feminist subversion of patriarchal discourse in Ana Historic, drawing attention to the novel's revision of the gothic genre, complex linguistic and narrative dualities, and Marlatt's evocation of the female body and creativity.

The ideal template is held up in front of every person observed in daily transactions. This means that variance, when perceived, is viewed as monstrous, to be safe is to be identified with the ideal type, of which a separate form exists for all ages, social groupings and classes. This template is an extension of symbolic logic acting in areas which are not properly its domain. In human beings variation is the norm. This variation is viewed as monstrous...