Gender in the Apocalypse: A Story of Containers

Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction , this article examines the function of the text of Revelation as a container and the depiction of containers in the text. The assessment that containers do not hold tight but enable a process of transformation helps to deconstruct the gendered binary between container characters like the Whore of Babylon, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Messianic hero. If Revelation is conceived as a container of violence, it is a container story that does not necessarily hold; that is, violence can flow out of the text, but it can also be transformed by the text as it comes into contact with the readers.