Alias Grace is a novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It is a period novel and is based on a double murder case that occurred sometime in 1843. For this incident, two people were arrested and tried in the court of law in Toronto. One of them was a 16 year old girl Grace Marks and the other was a 23 year old man McDermott. Together they were accused of killing their master, Mr. Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. The arrested persons worked as servants in Kinnear household. Both of them were proved to be guilty and partners in crime. McDermott who was a stable man,was hanged to death and Grace who worked as the assistant to the housekeeper, was given life imprisonment considering her tender age. Grace was released after 28 years of imprisonment for her good behavior and later lived in the US under several names. Hence Alias Grace…
Even though the novel talks about a true incident, it is a piece of fiction and the fictitious part begins with the introduction of a psychiatrist Dr. Simon Jordan who was interested in finding out how the brain works when someone acts like Grace at such a young age. Was it because of insanity or was something else at work there? Did she really commit the murder or was she wrongly implicated in the crime? Jerremiah the peddler who is Grace’s friend from earlier days and acts as a hypnotist. Dr Du Pont tries to hypnotiZe Grace to peep into her brain in which we find Grace identifying herself her friend Mary Whitney, the errand boy at Kinnear house who lived on Kinnear estate and later marries Grace after her release from prison etc seem to author’s fabrication.
The novel is unique in several ways. She experiments with it’s craft. In words of Grace she talks about telling her story she says, When you are in the middle of the story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion, a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass,like a house in whirlwind,or a boat crushed by icebergs and swept over the rapids and aboard are powerless. It is only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all.when you are telling it to yourself or someone else. (Grace). That’s what we all experience in her storytelling style. It begins with a poem that describes the incident in a very cryptic way. And then the novel begins. Again, each chapter begins either with thoughts from some famous thinker and/or some extracts from courtroom reporting or newspaper clipping reporting the happenings and confessions by the accused, opinions of the people attending the proceedings of the case etc. These extracts act either as pointer to or some comment on the story to come in the chapter.Towards the end, one of the chapters is in the form of letters informing us of the happenings after Dr. Jordan left his half done task. It is through these letters that we are acquainted with his mother and his professor. Atwood also presents the story in the form of a quilt which has a different design that can interpreted in different ways when you look at it from different angles. Grace waves this quilt while telling her story to Dr. jordan. Each chapter begins with the hope that reader would know whether Grace is guilty of the crime or not but always disappoints towards the end starting again with the new chapter with same hope to no avail. The novel ends with authors note merely suggesting that she might have been an accomplice but leaves you to your own interpretation. To help readers to form an opinion, she mentions that Grace marries her acquaintance immediately after her release but marries several times later with different names.
There are several sub plots in the story.
She weaves an interesting tale of Dr. Jordan being seduced and trapped in a clandestine relationship by the lady of the house where he lodged and had sessions with Grace. Her husband who has abandoned her was away. He is not able to shake her off and ultimately runs away from her relinquishing his job as the investigator of Grace’s role in the murder, even though he knew that future of his career depended on it.
The story of Governor’s wife and her attempt of getting daughters married to the eligible bachelor and providing them opportunity to meet the Dr. Jordan to let him woo them but when one day he disappears, marries one of them off to the clergy who considers himself above sex, love and marriage.
The story of errand boy who fell in love with Grace when lived at Mr. Kinnear’s and waited for her release from jail to marry her.
The story of Grace in which she tries to weave her tale as she thinks might interest Dr. Jordan. It is through her tale that Margaret Atwood depicts the life in Canada around 1843, like layout of the house, structure of the social hierarchy, sanitary system, use of wood as fuel in kitchens, fetching of water from wells in buckets and use of pumps for drawing it, plight of women and their vulnerability, their prevalent value system at the time.
Atwood writes in fluent and luscious style, develops her tale in very enchanting manner. She is a master in portraying her characters. All of them- Mr.Kinnear, Nancy Montgomery, Jordan, the owner lady of his lodge, her servant, Dora the Clergy, Governor’s wife and her daughters, Dr. Jordan’s mother, the boy who later marries Grace, all of them come alive on the pages in the novel. .
I was under its spell for several days!!