Michèle Roberts' third novel may be read as a more extensive examination of the questions about history and power raised at the end of her second novel,
The Visitation. In
The Wild Girlwe also begin to see the technique employed in much of Roberts' later work: a combination of fictional narratives and historical sources which blur the boundaries of each.
The Wild Girlis presented as a fifth gospel by Mary Magdalen, an alternative to canonical accounts of the life of Jesus. Susan Haskins, in
Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor(London, 1993), is critical of this feminist fantasy:
The studied simplicity of the Magdalen's prose style is equalled only by the simplicity of the ideas of equality and love, and the what-might-have-been if patriarchy hadn't taken over. In the end, Michèle
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Citation: White, Rosemary. "The Wild Girl". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 February 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10197, accessed 27 November 2024.]
