SOURCE: MacDonald, Bruce F. “Helena's Household: James De Mille's Heretical Text.” Canadian Literature 128 (spring 1991): 120-40.

In the following essay, MacDonald maintains that Helena's Household represents De Mille's questioning of the doctrines of the early Christian church and exploration of the many religious issues confronting him during his lifetime.

Critical studies of James De Mille have tended to centre almost exclusively on Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder or on his long poem, “Behind the Veil,” both of them published posthumously. Criticism has also tended to assume that De Mille was religiously conservative. This narrow focus on two works and on an assumed conservatism has had a distorting effect on a fuller view of De Mille. Strange Manuscript, for instance, can be read as far from orthodox and more than satire: as denying the basic tenets of Christianity itself. “Behind the Veil” reads like a “Vision Quest,” a...