BLOOD ON THE WALL: CHRISTIANITY, COLONIALISM, AND MIMETIC CONFLI IN MARGARET ATWOOD'S CATS ETE Ken Derry Introduction Margaret Atwood's censure of Christianity is certainly not difficult to find; it even comprises the primary basis for an entire novel, The Handmaid's Tale. Many critics have pointed out that when Christianity appears in Atwood's work it is patriarchal, authoritarian, closed, institutional, and repressive.1 Others have indicated the ways in which much of Atwood's work endorses a perspective that could be considered implicitly or explicitly religious in other respects. This perspective most often involves a kind of personal "spiri tuality," one that is anti-patriarchal, nature-centered, and humanistic—and definitely not Christian.2 In contrast to this dominant critical understanding, a handful of scholars have noted that, even though "at first glance" Atwood appears to promote "a total break with biblical tradition," her writing in fact at times favors this tradition in certain respects.3 Evelyn Hinz shows that Surfacing, for example, signals "the need to distinguish between forms of Judaeo-Christianity," and that the narrator draws strength from some of these forms even as she discards others.4 Ann-Janine Morey similarly states that although Surfacing's R&L 48.3 (Autumn 2016) 91 This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 07 Jan 2020 02:43:24 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms