Like the webbed interconnections of the fragments of this hypertext, her concerns are always with the links between people and things. Just as birth and death are linked in her, so her flexible frame is mirrored in the linked hypertext structure of this text. The links can stretch very far before they break. But for all of the parody of other texts and times, Jackson's hypertext does not celebrate disembodied disconnection. It is instead a homage to the difficulties of healing from the cruel incisions of life and the pain of loss.
Scar tissue is new growth and tougher than skin innocent of the blade.
Seeking to remake herself in an acceptable image to herself, she purchases an identity and celebrates her difference as she is revisioned and reconstructed in her lovers' eyes. Allowing us to follow the scar trails and hear the voices of women's histories, Jackson weaves an intertextual body of female community and narrative. This is a community based on connection rather than on bloodlines, a women's community stitched from friendship and love rather than family. Toying with the open-ended conventions of the Gothic form, Mary's monster breaks out into the American world of popular culture, footnotes, marginalia, autobiography and dialogue. Through the interjection of theory, other voices and intertexts, Jackson pieces together the humanity of a monstrous woman who must always exist as an outsider.