ABSTRACT
Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is told "not by one, not by two, but by five narrators, all female, one dead". Despite such variety of narrative voices, the center stage in each of their stories is occupied by the monolithically dominant and inflexible character of their father and husband, Reverend Nathan Price, a Georgian Freewill Baptist Evangelist. The household punishment for his children was "the dreaded Verse" – they had to copy a Verse from the Bible plus the ninety-nine subsequent verses for the whole afternoon, whereby the last verse would reveal the reason for the punishment. The influence Nathan Price had on his family and congregation is obviously damaging, but let us accentuate the extent to which these damaging effects went. The criterion of "reckless disregard for safety of self or others" is particularly emphasized in the so-called subcategory of a "risk-taking antisocial," that Millon describes as a combination of "antisocial and histrionic traits".
