"We Can't Make it Here Anymore" by James McMurtry

Thanks to Auric from Goldtent for the reference to this great song! This is probably the best protest song since the sixties.

Fiscal Crisis 2007 - The deep breath before the plunge

J. Palme shows insight in his webcasts. He made this one on August 21st.

"Alias Grace" by Margaret Atwood: The Historical Context

Toronto Penitentiary around 1871. Click on the picture for its full size.
The Victorian and Canadian Context AO5ii

Grace on the Governer’s wife: “They are all collecting things these days, and so she must collect something”. 29

Attitudes to punishment and crime:
Penetentiary. See 29 on its purposes, well known by Grace. She is expected “to repent”. 37 Matron.

Grace is “Caged in a dreary prison. Deliberately dreary, for if a prison were not dreary, where would be the punishment?” (Simon Jordan on Grace’s prison)216

Dr. Bannerling “ . . .the strict regime of the Penitentiary, where she (Grace) has been placed as a just punishment for her atrocious crimes . .. “
See also the early page on the Punishment Book form Kingston Penetentiary 1843.

Bodies of prisoners hanged were given over to medical experiments. McDermott was dissected. 31 Crowds turned up to see him hanged: Victorian morbid curiosity with hangings. (See Hardy on this too.) Grace distrusts doctors and this may have been widely prevalent.

Measuring craniums was all in vogue, too. 31. Phrenology 33-4. Grace fears this and fights against it.

Women locked up in asylums who were not mad, “No madder than the Queen of England”. G. 34 Some women were driven mad by suffering, by poverty and through the trauma of loss during emigration. G. 34.

The food in the Penitentiary is poor. Self serving attitudes with prejudice and hypocrisy. Grace informs us:

“A hunk of bread, a mug of weak tea, meat at dinner but not much of it, because overfeeding on rich foods stimulates the criminal organs of the brain, or so say the doctors, and the guards and keepers repeat it to us.” . . . “ It is my opinion that they sometimes take what is intended for us.” 72

The Victorian interest in doctors/medicine/ research/ hidden knowledge
As a doctor, women “of the better classes” are “drawn” to Dr Jordan, “married ladies especially, with blameless reputations. They seemed drawn to him as if he possessed some priceless but infernal treasure” 94

“It was knowledge that they craved; yet they could not admit to craving it, because it was forbidden knowledge” 94 (The Tree of Knowledge is linked with this, perhaps.)

Dr. Jordan to the Governor’s wife reform group: “The nineteenth century, he concluded, would be the study of the Mind” 348 Jordan is interested in “the investigation of dreams as a key to diagnosis, and their relation to amnesia, to which he himself hoped in time to make a modest contribution. 348

The Rebellion of 1837 and its effect on servants
Grace: “At Dixon’s I was paid more, as I was now trained and with a reference. Dependable servants were scarce, as many had left for the States after the Rebellion”. 230 (Freedom and equality in the USA and an escape from a rigid class system.)

Grace gives contextual information on McKenzie, The Rebellion and its after effects 238

The servant/master-mistress world is graphically presented in the novel.

The Tory establishment feared rebellious servants. Servants who fall into this category are:

· Dora - note that this surly servant, a “large person with strong arms” (351) works in two place’s: Mrs Humphries’ and the Prison. Grace says that Dora is “untrustworthy, as she is always telling tales of her former mistress and master”. 352 She does not behave like a servant because to Simon “Her manners are as democratic as ever”. 375
· James McDermott (To Grace on learning of Nancy’s wish to sack them: “We should demand our rights”. 298
· Nancy (Tries to cross over)
· Grace (as a convicted murderer although she was not in the country during The Rebellion.
· The 1837 Rebellion led by William Lyon Mackenzie, a notable public figure who owned radical newspapers and pamphlets in Toronto. The Rebellion was put down brutally with deportations, deaths and ruined lives. 171 (Grace: “many of the Radicals were transported or hanged”.)

Grace on McDermott: “he’d enlisted again for a soldier, with the Glengarry Light Infantry, which had got such a bad reputation among the farmers, as I knew from Mary Whitney, having burnt a good many farmhouses during the Rebellion, and turned women and children out into the snow, and done worse to them besides, that was never printed in the newspapers. 264 (Not only is he presented as a bad egg the newspapers did not publicize the crimes of his military outfit.)

Many masters were sexual predators on young servants. “As Mary used to say, there are some masters who think you owe them service twenty-four hours a day, and should do the main work flat on your back. 231

The gentlemen who visit Kinnear at Richmond Hill (without their disapproving wives) “tell stories about the fine deeds they’d done in the Rebellion”. 288 (Kinnear was obviously on the winning side – the side of the reactionaries who wanted to maintain the status quo with their servants. To those who have more will be given!) Also it seems as if these “worthies” gave themselves fine titles after the Rebellion. Nancy is critical of them:

“She said that she did not think Captain Boyd was a real Captain, as some of them had taken up such titles just for having got their two legs around a horse on the day of the Rebellion”. 291 (Nancy resents the Government side’s actions during the Rebellion. In this she is siding with the servants!)

Feelings of the employing classes ran high during and after the Rebellion

Context of Grace’s conviction
Verringer: “ ‘There is still a widespread feeling against Grace; and this is a most partisan country. The Tories appear to have confused Grace with the Irish Question, although she is a protestant; and to consider the murder of a single Tory gentleman – however worthy the gentleman, and however regrettable the murder – to be the same thing as the insurrection of an entire race’”. 91

Remember that Grace’s trial took place only six years after The Rebellion and the Lawyer (no relation to the rebel, as he says,) claims this too: “The old boy (McKenzie) has long been pardoned, and is seen as the father of reforms. But feeling ran high against him in those days; that alone could have put a noose around Grace Marks’ neck” 432 The supporters of the rebel (Lyon) “Mr McKenzie and his cause wre the only ones to say a good word for Grace”. 432 (Remember that Mr Kinnear was a Tory and fought against The Rebellion. This contributed towards Grace’s long term in prison!) “Jurisprudence”, according to MacKenzie, as also “much laxer then.” 433

Grace was also “seized on American soil, without a warrant” (An illegal arrest!) 435

Lyon MacKenzie took the part of the poor Scots and Irish, and emigrant settlers generally.

Jeremiah on hypocrisy and self-righteousness
Jeremiah, commenting on the hypocritical self righteousness of those who exercise power in Canada and the USA. He passes between both borders as a peddler and recognises hypocrisy and cant under whichever flag it appears:
“But when you cross over the border, it is like passing through air, you wouldn’t know you’d done it; as the trees on both sides of it are the same.
(Jeremiah is a free spirit in the novel and he is not hedged in by class or boundries.) He recognises that:
“Laws are made to be broken, he said, and these laws were not made by me or mine, but by the powers that be, and for their own profit” 309

“In many ways it is the same as here, but they use a different sort of language to excuse themselves; and there they pay a great lip service to democracy, just as here they rant on about the right order of society and loyalty to the Queen; though the poor man is poor on every shore.” 309

Jeremiah suggests that most of the preachers in the USA are like Sinclair Lewis’ “Elmer Gantry”: “Many of the preachers there have no more faith in God than a stone”. Still, he admits that for preachers that “below the border there’s a great demand for it”. 310 (Much of what he says is still applicable today. Atwood is using this character for direct criticisms on aspects of life in the USA.)

Spiritualism
(Thinks Jordan) Spiritualism is the craze of the middle classes, the women especially. 95 (Mrs Quennell, the Governor’s wife is later revealed as a medium who hold séances.)

Mrs Quennell moves on the “Mesmerism” which is regarded as “much more scientific”. She has Dr. Jerome Du Pont (Jeremiah the Peddler) staying as her guest and expert on mesmerism. 283-4

‘You are staying with Mrs. Quennell, I believe,’, says Simon.
‘A most generous hostess. But infatuated with the Spiritualists, as are many these days.” (Du Pont 350)

Jeremiah the Peddler knows the popularity of “Mesmerism and Magnetism which is always a draw”. 309

Victorian Hypocrisy
Grace is not allowed scissors but is allowed scissors but is given access to knives and skewers in the kitchen when acting as a servant in the Governess’s house. 75

Servant/Master-Mistress world in which the monied seem to be quite helpless without servants
Grace on Lydia and Marianne’s dirty washing, although “not dirty at all”. 75

Mrs Humphries breaks the “crockery” and “ruins the food” when she fills in for Dora. 161. (When she falls over after fainting through lack of food, etc.) 161

The rich educated at Harvard (Boston)
Mrs Alderman-Parkinson’s sons, “r George and Mr Richard”. 196

Women and prostitution
Grace relates the desperate situation many women had to contend with in and around Toronto. (Good contextual information) Some women “were often found floating around in the harbour”. 176 (An important page for context on the position of women during the 1840s)

When Nancy falls pregnant she knows that a similar fate could befall her.

Toronto is a place of both wealth as well as poverty
After leaving the station on his return to Toronto after investigating Grace: Everything is new and brisk, bustling and bright, vulgar and complacent, with a smell of fresh money and fresh paint about it. Fortunes have been made here in a very short time, with more in the making. There are the usual shops and commercial buildings, and a surprising number of banks.” 426

Harsh weather Conditions
The harsh winter of Toronto is described on pages 194-5.
On the mania for collecting, etc.
Grace “cut off a piece of the back of her hair to remember her by, and tied it together with a thread”. (Grace on Mary Whitney) 229

©

"Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood": Doctor Simon Jordan

To address the Assessment Objectives think about how themes are expressed through characters

Doctor Simon Jordan

His background
He is from a privileged background and he went to Harvard P.152

Yet money is an issue. Simon has money but he has to be careful as it seems a business venture of his father’s did not work out. His mother not only wants him to find a wife, she wants him to succeed financially. (See the end of the letter from Simon’s mother on how she quotes his father on money, “ it is a substance which does not grow on trees.” p. 339

His mother wants to see him “settled” and in a “home” of his own with wife with a “sound mind and healthy body” and suggests Mrs Cartwright’s daughter to him, amongst others. p.406

Simon has a long history of preferring prostitutes as they would not hold any claim on him in terms of responsibility.

Jordan's interest in doctors/medicine/ research/ hidden knowledge
As a doctor, women “of the better classes” are “drawn” to him, “married ladies especially, with blameless reputations. They seemed drawn to him as if he possessed some priceless but infernal treasure”. p.94

He wants to “reform” mental institutions. When he gives a speech at the Governor’s wife’s social meeting he “began with a pleas for the reform of mental asylums”. p.346

Simon’s Speech ( Ch. 34)
Dr. Jordan to the Governor’s wife reform group: “The nineteenth century, he concluded, would be the study of the Mind”. (p.348) Jordan is interested in “the investigation of dreams as a key to diagnosis, and their relation to amnesia, to which he himself hoped in time to make a modest contribution. p. 348

He wants to find out “How to measure the effects of shock” . . . and “How to diagnose amnesias with no discernible manifestations . . .” p.347
(Quite ironic given what happens to Simon later in the novel!)

“As the eminent French philosopher and scientist Maine de Biran had said, there was an inner New World to be discovered, for which one must “plunge into the subterranean caverns of the soul”. p. 348

“The nineteenth century, he concluded, would be the study of the Mind . . .” p. 348

Simon is interested in doctors/medicine/ research/ hidden knowledge
As a doctor, women “of the better classes” are “drawn” to him, “married ladies especially, with blameless reputations. They seemed drawn to him as if he possessed some priceless but infernal treasure”. p.94

“It was knowledge that they craved; yet they could not admit to craving it, because it was forbidden knowledge” p. 94 (The Tree of Knowledge is linked with this perhaps.)

Ultimately he fails to see through his professional relationship with Grace and he never builds his much vaunted clinic. Otherwise he lacks direction and purpose

“Once he is with Grace, things are a little better, as he can still delude himself by flourishing his own sense of purpose. Grace at least represents to him some goal or accomplishment.” (p. 338) (Simon is relieved to be away from Mrs Humphries and is feeling more and more entrapped.)

Simon realises that Grace is withholding part of what she knows and deliberately forgetful.

“Grace’s will is of the negative female variety – she can deny and reject much more easily than she can affirm or accept. Somewhere within herself – he’s seen it, if only for a moment, that conscious, even cunning look in the corner of her eye – she knows she’s concealing something from him. As she stitches away at her sewing, outwardly calm as a marble Madonna, she is all the while exerting her passive strength against him. A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.”

“Some days he would like to slap her. The temptation is almost overwhelming”. p. 421 (Simon glimpses behind Grace’s outward façade.)

Dr Jordan begins strongly but fades in the novel. He loses energy and the audience’s empathy to Grace:

“The trouble is that the more she remembers, the more she relates, the more difficulty he himself is having. He can’t seem to keep track of the pieces. It’s as if she’s drawing his energy out of him – using his own mental forces to materialize the figures in her story, as the mediums are said to do during their trances.” p. 338 (This is not the first time that Grace is considered to be naturally inclined to be a medium. Jeremiah said so and Grace becomes the subject of the medium, Du Pont (Jeremiah).


He has a tendency towards fantasy and the imagination
He imagines the Reverend Verringer wrongly as he waits to meet him:

“He’s not looking forward to it: the man has studied in England, and is bound to himself airs. There is no fool like an educated fool, and Simon will have to trot out his own European credentials”. p. 83.

Dr. Jordan thinks that “Verringer is in love with Grace Marks! Hence his indignation, his fervour, his assiduousness . . .Does he wish to winkle her out of jail, vindicated as a spotless innocent, and then marry her himself? She is still a good-looking woman, and would be abjectly grateful, abject gratitude in a wife being, no doubt, a prime commodity on Verringer’s spiritual exchange”. p.91 (Jordan maybe somewhat cynical here).

“Sonnabula”
Simon recalls Bellini’s Opera from his youth, “Sonnambula”: a simple and chaste village girl, Amina, is found asleep in the count’s bedroom, having walked there unconsciously; her fiancé and the villagers denounce her as a whore”. She is later seen sleepwalking “across a perilous bridge which collapses behind her into the rushing stream, her innocence is proven beyond a doubt and she awakes to restored happiness”. ( p. 373. The parallels here with Grace, Simon, etc are obvious. The passage also suggests wish fulfilment on Simon’s part, too.) As “Amina” is also “a crude anagram for “anima”. Simon wonders whether the soul may be unconscious and “who” may be doing the walking! Again, wish fulfilment, possibly in which Simon sees himself as “the count”.


On Simon’s imagination, fantasies and animalism
(When Mrs Humphries first collapses and is lifted by Simon to his bed)
He is “aroused by the sight of Mrs Humphries, “ a helpless woman extended upon his tumbled bed” in a semi state of dress.

The narrator“He has always been curious about these manifestations of the imagination as he has been able to observe them in himself. Where do they come from? If they occur in him, they must occur as well in the majority of men. . . he cannot always control such pictures. The difference between a civilized man and a barbarous fiend – a madman, say – lies, perhaps, merely in a thin veneer of willed self restraint. “ p. 163
(Third person)

In Chapter 32 Simon considers Mrs Humphries’ body as “His imagination runs . . . In reality this woman does not attract him: such images arrive unsummoned” p. 336 (Simon likes sex but knows that Mrs Humphries is offers sexual release rather than a meaningful relationship.)

His relationship with her is based on lust and sexual self-gratification. p. 424

“He’s driven by what feels like uncontrollable desire.” p. 425

It could be argued that in his relationship with Mrs Humphreys Simon shows another side to himself – a split personality

“Words of passion and burning love, of how he cannot resist her, which – strange to say – he actually believes at the time. During the day, Rachel is a burden, an encumbrance, and he wishes to be rid of her; but at night she’s an altogether different person, and so is he . . . He’s driven by what heels like uncontrollable desire; but apart from that – apart from himself, at these times, as the sheets toss like waves, . . . another part of himself stands with folded arms, fully clothed, merely curious, merely observing. How far, exactly, will he go? How far in? p. 425-6 (This is a good passage to use as evidence to suggest the double-sidedness of Simon’s personality. Like Grace, there is a secret side whom no-one sees – except the narrator and by extension, the readers. Remember also that Simon later develops amnesia after his injuries in the American Civil War; his later personality can only catch glimpses of his earlier one. )

His method and one used by Atwood’s other books too: the association of Ideas
“I have begun . . .with a method based on suggestion, and the association of ideas. I am attempting , gently and by degrees, to re-establish the chain of thought, which was broken”.
p. 97 (The apple and then other fruits and vegetables after his first meeting with Grace).

My object is to wake the part of her mind that lies dormant (On Grace) p. 153.

The significance of Simon’s Dreams
Sexuality and forbidden relationships
He reverts to childhood and dreams of the “secret world” of the maids in the “attic passageway” of his house; “the big house they had before his father’s failure and death”. p. 159

While dreaming “Simon is in the upstairs corridor again, in the attic, where the maids live”. He then dreams that he is back in Guy’s Hospital dissecting a young woman. p. 408

He also dreams of that Grace “is bending over him in the close darkness, her loosened hair brushing his face. He isn’t surprised, nor does he ask how she has managed to come here from her prison cello. He pulls her down – she is wearing only a nightdress – and falls on top of her, and shoves himself into her with a groan of lust and no manners, for in dreams everything is permitted”. p. 408 ( The dream is real only that it is Mrs Humphreys who joins him in bed. Simon here obviously desires Grace but he can only attest it in his dreams.)


“Women, the maids. Sitting on the edges of their narrow beds, in their white cotton shifts, their hair unbound and rippling down over their shoulders, their lips parted, their eyes gleaming.
Waiting for him.” p. 159 (Are not these dreams brought on by his subconscious desire (at this point of the novel) for Grace, who was also, a serving maid.) He realises that it is “Grace’s story, with its Atlantic crossing, its burial at sea, its catalogue of household objects; and the overbearing father, of course. One father leads to another” p. 160 (The sea and household objects figures strongly in this dream).

There is a tension between Simon’s professional treatment of Grace and his compassion and feelings for her.

(Simon on being a surgeon but the subtext is Grace)
“A cold hand and a steady eye were what was required. Those who felt too deeply for the patient’s suffering were the ones in whose fingers the knife slipped. The afflicted did not need your compassion, but your skill”. p. 217

Yet, instead of asking her for advice on how to hire a maid after the departure of Dora, he “thought better of it. He must retain his position of all-knowing authority in her eyes.” p. 336

Simon’s attitudes towards women and their “gratitude” and power within relationships.
He knows that Grace is playing a game during their conversations.
“She appears to welcome them, and even enjoy them; much as one enjoys a game of any sort, when one is winning, he tells himself grimly. The emotion she expresses most openly towards him is a subdued gratitude.

He’s coming to hate the gratitude of women” because “it puts you at a disadvantage.” He thinks that “their gratitude isn’t real; what they really mean by it is that he should be grateful to them. Secretly they despise him. He recalls with embarrassment, and a kind of shrivelling self-loathing, the puppyish condescension he used to display when paying out money to some pitiful shopworn streetgirl – the beseeching look in her eyes, and how large and rich and compassionate he felt himself to be, as if the favours about to be conferred were his, not hers. What contempt they all must have kept hidden, under their thanks and smiles” p. 422

(This is a fascinating passage which explores the power and sex relationships that Simon feels he has with women. He doesn’t feel in control and suspects that even when he is paying a prostitute it is he that is being manipulated through the selfishness of another.)

Simon feels the same way about the “gratitude”of Mrs Humphrey
“Rachel, as he has now been entreated to call her. The more miles he is able to put between himself and Rachel Humphrey, the lighter and less troubled in spirit he feels. He’s gotten himself in too deep with her. He’s floundering – images of quicksand come to mind – . . . .Having a mistress – for that’s what she’s become, he supposes, . . . is worse than having a wife. The responsibilities involved are weightier, and more muddled.” p. 422-3

Mrs Humphrey claims to have been sleepwalking when she went to Simon’s bed:
This is the very thing Rachel claims of herself: she was sleepwalking, she says. She thought she was outdoors in the sunlight, gathering flowers but somehow found herself in his room, in the darkness, in his arms, and already then it was too late, she was lost”. . . .”He doesn’t for a moment believe this story, but for a refined woman of her class he supposes it’s a way of saving face.” (Mrs Humphreys claims to be a somnambulist “since childhood”. The links with Grace are obvious. It also highlights the question for Simon whether he should believe “Grace’s” somnambulism when he immediately discounts “Rachel’s”. p. 423

The rituals of Mrs Humphrey’s melodramatic role-playing “bores” Simon. (Perhaps also because he is required to play the role of secret lover himself.)

Simon is not used to “respectable” women, having used prostitutes when he felt the need to do so. He finds that “Respectable women are by nature sexually cold”. p. 424 (Simon reflects on Mrs Humphreys and how she contrasts with prostitutes that he had formerly known in Europe: “A whore is cheap not because she’s ugly or old, but because she’s a bad actress”. p. 425 In a sense this links with the idea of role-playing by several characters in the novel.)

Simon does not want responsibilities“. . .such is his perversity that he would rather be in London or Paris. No ties, no connections. He would be able to lose himself completely”. p. 426


Simon temporarily takes the role of being a detective
He meets key people who knew Grace and travels from Toronto to Richmond Hill to see Kinnear’s house.

He also uses early psychology.

These are rough notes and have not been not worked up.
©

"Alias Grace" by Margaret Atwood: Nancy

Nancy
Nancy is a housekeeper and is therefore a servant.

Her character is changeable and cold. Grace on arriving at Kinnear’s, “she had not given me one word of greeting.” 243

According to Grace Nancy is taciturn. “Nancy was very changeable, two-faced you might call her, and it wasn’t easy to tell what she wanted from one hour to the next.” 261

With Grace, Nancy feels caught between hiring a drudge and having a sexual competitor with Kinnear.

After lending the clothes to Grace to go to church Nancy wanted them back.
She takes back the “dress and bonnet that very day as she was concerned that they might get soiled”.

How Nancy is linked to the theme of “the lady”
Nancy aspires to be “a lady”. She wears expensive earrings. (245) But her true situation is that of sexually compromised servant. Kinnear will never marry her.
She will not do jobs “beneath her position” and fit for “maids”. 255

She has let things go in Kinnear’s. It is hard to be “a lady” and maintain the role of servant. “Nancy had let things get behind and there was considerable mud that had been tracked in and not dealt with.” 250

To enhance her pretentions to be a lady she learns the piano. 246

“She asked me to brush out her hair for her, just like a lady’s maid, which I did with pleasure”. (Grace on Nancy 287)

She also had “a commodious bedstead,” “earrings and a brooch”, “pots of creams and potions” and “a bottle of rose-water too”. (Kinnear had been “a generous master” and he gives Nancy these “ladylike” things. But he would not marry her!) 287

However, The wives of visiting gentlemen “never condescended to darken the door of the house” 288

Kinnear escapes censure whereas Nancy does not. He also visits houses to meet “loose women”. Nancy disapproves of this. 287

Grace: I could hear the sound of Nancy’s voice from the parlour, and I knew she must be reading out loud. She liked to do it, as she thought it was genteel; but she always pretended that Mr. Kinnear required it of her. 322 (Nancy is reading “The Lady of the Lake”, a poem that once made Grace sad as she read it with Mary Whitney. The book’s title is later given to a later chapter when Grace crosses the water to the USA. The title “Lady” also hints at Nancy’s aspirations. At the end of the novel, Grace becomes the mistress and “lady” of her house in Ithaca, USA.

Kinnear laughs at Nancy’s attempt to be a lady. This is also an example of men’s thoughts on this issue:

Grace: ‘he (Kinnear) sat waiting reading a book which he had brought with him from the town. It was the newest Godey’s Ladies Book, which poor Nancy liked to have, for the fashions . . .he himself often took a peek at it when Nancy was not nearby, as there were things in it other than dresses; and he liked to look at the new styles of undergarments, and to read the articles on how a lady should behave, which I would often catch him chuckling over on those occasions when I brought him coffee.’ 370

Nancy’s advice to Grace on how to kill a chicken is heavily ironic. just take the axe and knock it on the head, and then give it a strong whack right through the neck”. (The incident foreshadows her own killing in a similar manner.) 289

She is mistress of the house in everything but the title of wife

She eats with Kinnear 263
“Nancy was mistress of the house, and was paid to arrange things . . .” 295

McDermott tells naïve Grace that “Nancy and Kinnear slept together, as bold as brass, and lived in secret as man and wife . . . all the neighbourhood knew it.” 295

“Nancy had a baby when she was working over at Wrights. (Becoming pregnant was a recurring danger for servants, especially if the man responsible was the employer's son.)

Nancy fears Grace as a rival
As her pregnancy by Kinnear becomes more obvious she fears Grace as a sexual rival and is eager to put her down. Her behaviour also shows the fractiousness this “dark” chapter that leads to the killing of Nancy and Kinnear.
“for God sake pin up your hair, she (Nancy) added. You look like a common slut”. 320 (Nancy was as vulnerable as any other servant caught in her condition. As Grace says, “Mary Whitney had done the same as her, and had gone to her death. “ 321

Nancy’s pregnancy is becomes obvious to Grace in “Fox and Geese”:
“But then all at once it came over me what was the matter with her. I’d seen it often enough before. The eating of strange food at odd times, the sickness and the green tinge around the mouth, the way she was plumping out, like a raisin in hot water, and her quirkiness and irritation . . . she was in the family way. She was in trouble”. 321

Grace on pregnant Nancy’s fear of her as a sexual rival for Kinnear. She gives her main reason for Nancy sacking Grace. “She was afraid that Mr. Kinnear would come to like me better than her. As I’ve said, Sir, she was in the family way, and it often happens like that with a man; they’ll change from a woman in that condition to one who is not . . .and if that happened, she’d be out on the road, her and her bastard.” “ 359

Nancy’s reading matter, “The Lady of the Lake” is about tragedy and death. This is somewhat ironic given what happens to her. Notice also how the theme of being a lady is present, too. 322-3

Nancy’s desire to be “a lady” sets up a tension for her role as “servant” and her self adopted role as “mistress” of the house.

Nancy tells Kinnear that she is “worried about the servants”.
“Which of the servants, Mr. Kinnear wanted to know; and Nancy said both of them, and Mr. Kinnear laughed and said of course there were three servants in the house, not two, as she was a servant herself.” She does think this a kind response a moves to her “duties in the kitchen” but Kinnear laughs and catches her. (Nancy did not broach with Kinnear her own pregnancy which surprises Grace.) This also links with role-playing as this is also thematic in the novel!

Nancy on Grace:
“She (Nancy) said there was something about me that made her uneasy, and she wondered whether I was quite right, as she’d several times heard me talking out loud to myself” 324

She fears Kinnear is giving Grace ideas about being “a lady” and giving her “ideas above her station”. 324

On the Rebellion (AO 5ii)
Nancy on the Rebellion and the men associated with it on the Government side who were willing to gives themselves undeserved titles:

“She said that she did not think Captain Boyd was a real Captain, as some of them had taken up such titles just for having got their two legs around a horse on the day of the Rebellion”. 291 (Nancy resents the Government side’s actions during the Rebellion. In this she is siding with the servants!)

Her surname was “Montgomery” the same name as the owner of a tavern “where the rebels met together”. Kinnear teased her about it but makes it clear the tavern owner would still have a tavern even when his former drinkers “were burning in Hell”. (This may also allude to the way in which Nancy played at both ends of the social scale: the servants and the employing classes.) 291

McDermott bears a grudge against Nancy and he detests her for her treatment of him. 245

©

"Alias Grace" by Margaret Atwood: Grace Marks

Some of these notes probaby need further tidying up so related points are all together. I'll get around to this later.

Grace Marks

General points
She is clever, observant (see her points on Simon 41-2) and self contained. She withholds knowledge of herself. For instance, she will not allow Dr. Jordan to know that she understands his symbolism of the apple. 44 Although he thinks that “She understands well enough”. She’s very perceptive of Jordan during their first meeting.

The “white peonies” represent innocence and perhaps “buried consciousness”. (In the front garden of Mr. Kinnear’s) 364 The red flowers on page 364 represent blood and death. Grace contrasts them in her dream with the white peonies (bashful innocence?) that she observed on arrival at Richmond Hill.

During “Falling Timbers” Grace recalls happier, more superstitious times with Mary Whitney: “I heard her laughing. But you often imagine things, when you are alone so much. It was this time that the red peonies first began growing.” 416

“Big blue eyes” (The keepers on Grace 73.)
Her “red hair” also brings forth comments from the keepers: “a little fire, they say it comes with the redness of the hair. But is it red where it most counts . . .” (The keepers hold most of the cliched notions of red-haired women as they make sexual comments about Grace. They, like many men of the period, are misogynous. See their further comments on 278-9) 277-8

“I have not talked much for the past fifteen years” (Before meeting Simon) 77

Father, “Not even Irish” 120 (An Englishman) Her mother was pregnant before marriage and “had to” marry him, “and it was covered up” 120. “Marks may not have been his real name”. He was a drunk and could be violent. 123. Big family! Grace acted as mother to her brothers and sisters. (“Nine of us” 121) She eventually has to leave them. 150

Grace’s family experienced dire poverty in Ireland. Her mother seemed to be always pregnant. 122-3.

She does “not like being in debt”. 177

There are several examples in the text of Grace working hard “from dawn to dusk” 302

Grace is intelligent
Grace is clever because she reflects and thinks things through

She works out that the “quilt pattern called Lady of the Lake” was not named after Sir Walter Scott’s poem but after a boat that was in turn named after the poem. This is “because it was a pinwheel design, which must have stood for the paddle going around. And I thought that things did make sense, and have a design to them, if you only pondered them long enough. And so perhaps it might be with recent events, which at the moment seemed to me entirely senseless; and finding the reason for the quilt pattern was a lesson to me, to have faith.” 396 (The poem’s content about kidnapped bride also relates to Grace’s predicament while on the run with MacDermott; something of which Grace is fully conscious. See 396)

Grace’s prudishness
She is somewhat prudish, “A leg is a leg, dirty or clean (When cleaning the floor and being observed by a man. (Dreams) 115 (She later remembers that Kinnear observed her with a raised skirt cleaning the floor.)

She oes not want to be thought of as “a mare” by McDermott. 265

Grace loses respect for Nancy after discovering Nancy’s true relationship with Kinnear “I let my scorn show, and answered her back more than was wise”. 297

Simon knows that he has to phrase his questions carefully to Grace when he wants to know if Kinnear ever “touched” Grace; “Did he take liberties?” because “Grace has a strong dash of prude in her.” 358

(It is worth noting the contrast in her reported behaviour when Grace becomes the sexually experienced Mary Whitney. She leads MacDermott on by tempting him with sexual favours.)

Sexual promises as Mary Whitney
“Then he sat down on the side of the bed, and said now it was time for me to keep my promise; and I said what promise, and he said I knew very well, for I had promised him myself in exchange for the killing of Nancy.” 384

Grace has a darker side
Early murderous thoughts
Grace has murderous thoughts on killing one or two of her brothers or sisters, “ and then there would be not be so many to feed, nor so many clothes to wash.” 124. (Suggested by the “Devil”)

On thoughts of killing her father:
“I would lie awake at night brooding over it” . . .
“I had begun to have thoughts about the iron cooking pot, and how heavy it was; and if it should happen to drop on him (her father) while he was asleep, it could smash his skull open, and kill him dead, and I would say it was an accident; and I did no want to be led into a grave sin of that kind, though I was afraid that the fiery red anger that was in my heart against him would drive me to it.” 149 (Grace is driven mad through fear, rage and being “dog tired”.)

Grace relates in precise detail the experience of emigration in her chapter on her passage at sea. Chapter 14 (A six to eight week voyage) To Jordan, “The ship was after all only a sort of slum in motion”.134.

Grace lacks sentimentality towards clothes (Is she cold or just simply, realistic?)
She is relatively unsentimental about clothes and sheets. This goes against her at her trial. (Jamie’s evidence on Grace wearing Nancy’s dress.

On the day of Nancy’s killing Grace is seen by Jamie Walsh wearing her “white stockings” He testified that “you were better dressed than usual and were wearing white stockings. He implied they were Nancy’s”. 372 (This damned Grace in most people’s eyes as cold-hearted but she may have been Mary Whitney at the time!)

She dresses in Nancy’s clothes when she leaves Richmond Hill
“The last thing I did was to take off the clothes I’d been wearing that day; and I put on one of Nancy’s dresses, the pale one with the white ground and the small floral print, which was the same one she had on the first day I came to Mr. Kinnear’s. And I put on her petticoat wit h the lace edging, and my own spare clean petticoat, and Nancy’s summer shoes of light-coloured leather, which I so often admired, although they did not fit very well. And also her good straw bonnet; and I took her light cashmere shawl, although I did not think I would need to wear it, as the night was war. And I put some rose-water behind my ears and on my wrists, from the bottle of it on her dresser; and the smell of it was a comfort of sorts”

She relates that she “burnt my own clothes; I didn’t like the thought of wearing them ever again, as they would remind me of things I wished to forget . . . and it was like my own dirtied and cast-off skin that I was burning”. 388

(This long passage is interesting because it shows Grace’s cold attitude towards wearing dead Nancy’s clothes. She had refused to make love in Kinnear’s bed to MacDermott but was happy to wear Nancy’s clothes! Remember that she was unsentimental about burying her mother in her “second best sheets” as her mother would not have need for the best one. There is a sense in the latter part of the passage of Grace casting off her identity by burning the clothes that she had worn before. The theme of “The Lady” is also present in the items and scent that Grace takes and wears. Is she Grace here or Mary Whitney? All this is remembered by Grace.

After having been arrested Grace’s “only anxiety appears to get some of her clothes sent to her, and her box”. The reporters write that she does have “any traces of broken rest and a guilty conscience” and appears quite calm, with her eye full and clear as though she slept undisturbed”. ( It is this calm lack of guilt and her willingness to wear Nancy’s clothes and send for Nancy’s box that puts people against her. See the Chronicle And Gazette, Kingston, August 12th 1843. Page 403.

On Grace’s attitudes towards possessions, particularly those of the dead:
“But although it was true this box and the clothes in it had once been Nancy’s, they were hers no longer, as the dead have no use for such things.”412

This did not go down well with the public at Grace’s trial.
(MacKenzie) “The foolish girl could not be dissuaded from dressing herself up in the murdered woman’s finery, an act which was viewed with horror by the press and public” 436 (MacKenzie goes on to say tell Simon that “If I’d had my wits about me, I would have advance that very fact as evidence of an innocent and untroubled conscience, or, even better, of lunacy”. 436)

MacKenzie “That woman has nerves of flint” 437.

On keeping secrets
Grace learned to keep secrets from an early age. (Fear of God). Her father had taken part in sectarian violence and murder with Orangemen against protestants who had “taken the side of the Catholics”/ “I was always very careful about keeping the secrets of others, no matter what they might be”. She is made to swear on a Bible. 125 (She keeps McDermott’s plan to kill Nancy and Kinnear too”!) She has a perverse pride in keeping a secret as she want to put the lie to men not being able to “trust a woman” 125.

On not “betraying” MacDermott“still I did not wish to be the means of betraying him. There is something despicable about betrayal”. 394

Grace and Class
Shifts in class. Grace is the granddaughter of a Methodist who could not get “a position” because “he had done something unexpected with the Church money”. 119 (Notice how Grace after falling into the servant class resumes her “position” towards the end of the novel. What happened to Grace’s grandfather also highlights the shiftlessness of most men throughout the novel. 119 Aunt Pauline remained lower middle class with her shop but still felt that she had “married beneath her”. 120 “As keeping a shop was not how a lady should live”.

The context of Grace’s conviction
Verringer: “ ‘There is still a widespread feeling against Grace; and this is a most partisan country. The Tories appear to have confused Grace with the Irish Question, although she is a protestant; and to consider the murder of a single Tory gentleman – however worthy the gentleman, and however regrettable the murder – to be the same thing as the insurrection of an entire race’”. 91

She is strong willed and self-contained
On the Penitentiary and its it keepers and inmates: “it is dog eat dog around here, and they are the bigger dogs”.

“I wanted her to be stronger, (Grace on her mother), so I would not have to be so strong myself.

“Did not cry” on the death of her mother. 139

She is unsentimental on clothes belonging to the dead. Buries her mother in the old sheets “since she’d always placed herself second best in life.” 139

She is patient: “One ought to bear all patiently, as part of the correction we are subject to; unless a way can be found of tripping your enemy without detection”. (And cunning!) 277-8

Third person narrator“Before he was hanged, McDermott said that you were the one who put him up to it, says Dr. Jordan. He claimed you intended to murder Nancy and Mr. Kinnear by putting poison into their porridge, and that you repeatedly urged him to help you; which he very piously refused to do.” 299

Grace “allows herself to smile” when contradicting this while claiming that if she really wanted to use poison she would have needed no help from McDermott. (Control)

Grace and her energy as “a medium”.
Dr Jordan begins strongly but he fades in the novel. He loses energy to Grace
“The trouble is that the more she remembers, the more she relates, the more difficulty he himself is having. He can’t seem to keep track of the pieces. It’s as if she’s drawing his energy out of him – using his own mental forces to materialize the figures in her story, as the mediums are said to do during their trances.” 338 (This is not the first time that Grace is considered to be naturally inclined to be a medium. Jeremiah said so and Grace becomes the subject of the medium, Du Pont (Jeremiah).

Grace role-playing the trapped romantic figure (In a modern context don’t we role-play too? See also the notes on themes.)

She is aware of people’s “romantic” view of her and role plays this view of her. She is never seen to “smile” or “laugh”:

Lydia: Why don’t you ever smile or laugh, we never see you smiling . . “
“But if I laughed out loud I might not be able to stop; and also it would spoil their romantic notion of me. Romantic people are not supposed to laugh, I know that much from looking at the pictures”. 27

Especially from the doctors she retreats into silence: “At last I stopped speaking altogether, except very civilly when spoken to”. “

On Simon Jordan on his first visit: “I look at him stupidly. I have a good stupid look which I have practised”. 43. (Fears him as he is a doctor. Past experiences makes her put her guard up against him.)

McKenzie calls her “Our Lady of the silences”. 433 (Enigmatic Grace.)

Atwood places a fragment of a poem from Longfellow on women and their fate:

. . . for it is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is
Speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence . . .”
(This fragment of poetry is at the head of the Chapter that has McKenzie say that Grace is “Our Lady of the Silences”.

G. Commenting on the Governor’s wife’s scrapbook on her and withholding her reactions and role-playing the penitent
“But I’ve learned to keep my face still, I made my eyes wide and flat, like an owl’s in torchlight, and I said I had repented in bitter tears and was now a changed person . . .” 29 She is aware of the penitential behaviour expected in “The Penitentiary”. See the matron 37. “They” want her to “confess”. 39

As a servant“I have now been a servant for three years, and could act the part well enough by this time”. 261

Grace on if Kinnear discovered discord between Grace and Nancy: “There is nothing such a gentleman would wish to get rid of sooner than a discontented servant – you are paid to smile, and it does well to remember it.” 297

Nonetheless sexual tension seems to have been in the air at Richmond Hill when Kinnear “put his hand over mine on the handle” of a bucket of water. 297

Maintains her “dignity” 40.

MacKenzie suggests to Simon that Grace may have derived some of her story and “corroborative details” from reading the newspapers after the trial: “Criminals will read about themselves endlessly, if given the chance. They are as vain in that way as authors. “ 434

MacKenzie does not believe Grace: “those four people kept popping in and out of one another’s beds” (Page number?)

The Press
Grace is “a celebrated murderess” (Stories in the press and public views of Grace, see 25. A list of items on her notoriety.

“Red hair of an ogre” G “ A wild beast”.

Grace isolated and alone
"I sing a song, just to hear a voice and keep myself company”. 37
She was often kept in solitary confinement for minor infractions or for “running mad”. 37-8

Grace was also moving towards a position of isolation by going to Kinnear’s. The journey to Kinnear’s exemplifies this. Chapter 23 The title of this section of the novel, “Snake fence”. The title hints at the danger that Grace is entering into. Grace’s journey to Kinnear’s is auspicious. (See the incident in Montgomery’s Tavern in which Grace is accosted by a travelling companion. Jeremiah intercedes. 239

Grace knows no one in the village is reluctant to venture there.
“. . .it struck me at once how very solitary I was, as I had no friends here except Nancy, if she could be called a friend . . .I did not know where my family was, which was the same as having none”. 301-2

Grace to Jamie Walsh: “I felt I would cry again, and said simply, I have no friends here.” 303

On McDermott wanting her to accompany him to the scaffold:
”The road to death is a lonely highway, and longer than it appears, even when it leads straight down from the scaffold, by way of a rope; and it’s a dark road, with never any moon shining on it, to light your way.”
On being pressed by Jordan on how she knows so much about this she says, “I have not been there, I say, except in dreams”. (Does this passage hint at the split personality within Grace?)

Grace as victim/vulnerable
“Mary said I might be very young, and as ignorant as an egg, but I was bright as a new penny, and the difference between stupid and ignorant was that ignorant could learn”. 172 (This can be tied to Grace’s thoughts on the last pages of the novel about being “naïve” and being a “victim”.)

Remember that Grace was only 16 at the time of her trial!
Jeremiah passes on the talk that he has heard about Kinnear and servant girls. “They say in the neighbourhood that he has a hankering after the servant girls, especially those close to home”. (Power and male relationships between the boss-servant class.) 307-8 He adds to Grace’s discomfort:
“Once a man gets a habit it is hard to break, he said. It’s like a dog gone bad – once a sheep is killed, the dog will get a taste for it, and must kill another”. 308 (Irony on killing and Jeremiah knows Kinnear’s character.)
Jeremiah tries to get Grace to “come away” with him because “You would be a lot safer with me than you are here, he said.” 310

Jeremiah “And I tell you truly that you are surrounded by dangers here”. 312

At her trial Grace faints at the mention of death and nearly dies herself when she falls on a spike that “went into my breast, right next to my heart”. (A piece of melodrama at the trial. But Simon does not know as he is not present to hear this part of Grace’s story. Chapter 43.)

Jeremiah and mesmerism and his bid to “save” Grace
(He tries to enlist Grace as his assistant for mesmerism in the USA. “I would teach you how, and instruct you in what to say, and put you into trances. I know by your hand that you have a talent for it; and with your hair down you would have the right look”. 311 (Fascinating! Grace would be good at trances! All this is ironic given the chapter on Pandora’s Box (48). As they worked together on that does this hint at Grace’s performance in that chapter as being fraudulent?)
But “marriage” is not on offer! Jeremiah: “Marriage never did any good, as far as I can see” 312

Grace was naïve (but she begins very young)
Grace is slow to pick up the servant Sally’s advice before taking up Nancy’s offer of a position at Kinnear’s:
“When I asked Sally’s opinon, she said she didn’t know if it was a suitable position for a young girl like me . . .she felt she’d done her duty by me in saing as much as she had, because I had no mother to advise me. And I didn’t have the least idea of what she was talking about”. 234 (When Grace briefly works at Mr Watson’s)

She does not realise how Nancy got snuff and ink stains on her dress. “she most likely slipped and fallen down”. 262

On being told by McDermott that Nancy and Kinnear “lived in secret as man and wife, though they were no more married than he was . . . and that all the neighbourhood knew of it”, Grace realises her naivety or at least that could be want she wants us to believe: “I was much surprised , and said so; . . . “I was not so knowing as I thought myself, and could scarcely see the nose before my face”. 295-6

She supported her younger siblings (for a time)
Her money supported her family at thirteen. 147. Still her father wants all her wage. She and the other sibling were beaten by their drunken father. 149. The father, “shouting that I was a slut and a whore . . . I feared that he might someday break my spine, and make a cripple out of me”. 149

On leaving Mrs Burt’s “The little ones cried as I went away, carrying my small bundle including my mother’s shawl, . . .” 150 (Grace goes to Mrs Alderman Parkinson’s) 150

Grace’s squeamishness on cruelty to animals“I was so squeamish and tender-hearted”. (On getting Jamie Walsh to kill a chicken for her. 289

“Some people have churns that are worked by a dog, which is penned up in a cage and made to run on a treadmill with a hot coal under its tail; but I would consider this to be cruel.” 266

And, on being asked to kill a chicken for dinner:
”I said, Oh no, I could not do that, I’ve never done it before and don’t know how; as I had an aversion to shedding the blood of any living thing, although I could pluck a bird well enough once killed; and she (Nancy) said not to be a silly goose, its was easy enough, just take the axe and knock it on the head, and then give it a strong whack right through the neck”.
(There is obvious irony here with Nancy explaining how the chicken could be killed. The passage also establishes Grace’s squeamish credentials on spilling blood and this may be posturing for Jordan. Yet the irony is rich when Grace says, “I could pluck a bird well enough once killed”. She took and wore some of Nancy’s clothes after the latter had been killed.)

Veils and looking (hypocrisy) 268-9
Grace to Simon: “Sir, at any polite gathering of society ladies and gentlemen . . .there is a good deal that can be seen slantwise, especially by the ladies, who do not wish to be caught staring. They can also see through veils, and window curtains, and over the tops of fans . . .But those of us who do not have to be bothered with all the veils and fans manage to see a good deal more”>

The symbolism of the book's ending for Grace
“The Tree of Knowledge” that Simon alludes to with the apple is returned to by Grace at the end of the novel when she makes a new synthesis of her life.

As Mary Whitney in the Asylum
Grace’s sub personality came through and Moodie’s observations.
“Inside the peach there is a stone” (Hint at the double soul) Grace79

This was the name she gave “at the tavern in Lewiston” when making her escape from Kinnears. 117

“She (Nancy) said there was something about me that made her uneasy, and she wondered whether I was quite right, as she’d several times heard me talking out loud to myself” 324 (Kinnear laughs this off saying that he often talked to himself. Still, this shows a division in Grace’s selfhood.)

Male characters’ views of Grace

First impressions from a pamphlet produced by Rev. Verringer found in a drawer by Dr Jordan:

She looks five years older than 16.
She looks like the “heroine of a sentimental novel” 67

When Jordan first views Grace through “a small window” he sees:

“An image almost mediaeval in its plain lines, its angular clarity: a nun in a cloister, a maiden in a towered dungeon, awaiting the next day’s burning at the stake, or else the last-minute champion come to rescue her. The cornered woman . . .” 68 “ . . . I must resist melodrama . . .”

Jordan’s view of Grace as “a female animal”

“Simon can smell her (Grace) as well as look at her . . .her scent is a distracting undercurrent . . .He is in the presence of a female animal; something fox-like and alert. He senses an answering alertness along his own skin, a sensation as of bristles lifting. Sometimes he feels as if he’s walking on quicksand” 103. (He becomes intoxicated by her).

Jordan wonders how Grace is to “fill in the rest of the time” after after her conviction. During a moment in which Grace threads a needle, a gesture that has a sexual connotation as she responds to Jordan’s question: “Do you feel you have been treated unjustly?”

‘I don’t know what you mean, Sir.’ She was threading the needle now; she wet the end of the thread in her mouth, to make it easier, and this gesture seemed to him all at once both completely natural and unbearably intimate. He felt as if he was watching her undress, through a chink in the wall; as if she was washing herself with her tongue, like a cat.” 105 (In a sense this also recalls Jordan’s recurring dreams about listening in and spying on servant girls when a boy. The passage also shows his lust for Grace”)

Dr Bannerling thinks she is “a sham” . . .”She is an accomplished actress and a most practiced liar”. He also thinks that Mrs Moodie has been taken in with a “piece of theatrical twaddle served up to her” by Grace. (On Moodie’s report of seeing Grace screeching and having “fits”, “hallucinations”, “caperings” (dancing) etc. 81

On other male colleagues who are also taken in by Grace: “this latter being an outstanding example of the old rule of thumb, that when a handsome woman walks through a door, good judgement flies out through the window”. 81 (Grace is obviously a stunning looking woman)

Dr. Bannerling sees her as “as siren” and that Jordan would do well to “stop your ears with wax”, as Ulysses made his sailors do, to escape the Sirens”. 82 (This may also be an indirect comment on Grace as a female Ulysses, who “crosses the ocean three times” and ends up at Ithaca, New York. Ithaca means “home”, “nostalgia”, “the journey home”; it was also the birthplace of Ulysses/Odysseus who was away for ten years on voyages from his home.)

Dr. Jordan thinks that “Verringer is in love with Grace Marks! Hence his indignation, his fervour, his assiduousness . . .Does he wish to winkle her out of jail, vindicated as a spotless innocent, and then marry her himself? She is still a good-looking woman, and would be abjectly grateful, abject gratitude in a wife being, no doubt, a prime commodity on Verringer’s spiritual exchange”. (Jordan maybe somewhat cynical here).

Kinnear on Grace’s potential to be “a lady”
( This is somewhat like GB Shaw’s “Pygmalion” (“My Fair Lady”):

“. . . I was certainly a handsome girl, as I had a naturally refined air and a very pure Grecian profile, and that if he put me in the right clothes and told me to hold my head high and keep my mouth shut, he could pass me off for a lady any day.” 324


Grace is associated with water
Simon through the third person narrator: If she has anything to hide, she may want to stay in the water, in the dark in her element. 374(Water has long been associated with consciousness. Grace also crosses water several times in her narrative.)

“I remembered the night we’d peeled the apples, and how she’d said I would cross the water three times, and then get married to a man whose name began with J. All of that seemed now like a childish game, and I no longer had any belief in it.” 416(Grace remembers an earlier conversation at Mrs Alderman Parkinson’s with Mary Whitney. Much of this comes true although at this point in the novel Grace cannot see that it will.)

Grace compares Simon with Dupont
At the end of Chapter 34 Grace finds herself comparing the two men: “And although I have an esteem for Dr. Jordan and he has been kind to me, I thought he looked a poor fish beside Jeremiah, like a man at a fair who’s had his pocket picked but does not yet know it’. 356 (Dupont managed to keep his friendship with Grace secret in this chapter.)

Grace's sexuality and reputation
The keepers trying to take down Grace from the position of “maiden”: “we heard about that, putting on your stays and stockings you was when you was nabbed”. 72

Narratives and storytelling (A crucial area linked with Grace)

On being told by Simon that girls had their own magazine and produced “literary offerings”. Grace wonders if this would not scare away men from “wanting” wives like that, “writing things down for everyone to see, and made-up things at that, and I would never be so brazen”. 78 (Yet it is Grace’s narrative that intrigues Simon and makes her sexually interesting to him! She is as the lawyer Mckenzie says, a “Scheherezade”.

“Grace clutches her two hand to the side of her head” during her narrative on Nancy’s death, ‘That is what they wanted me to say. Mr MacKenzie told me IK had to say it, to save my own life’. In truth Grace really is a Sherezade as she also had to tell her “story” during her trial to save her life! 368

As Simon writes Grace feels as if “he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me – drawing on my skin . . .” 77 (It is as if she, herself, is the quilt and forming his narrative).

After she says that she has been made an example of with the “death sentence Simon ponders “what does an example do afterwards Her story is over. The main story, that is: the thing that has defined her. How is she supposed to fill in the rest of the time?” 105

At its core Grace’s narrative is a “forest of amnesia”.

On storytelling:
. . . today I must go on with my story. Or the story must go on with me, carrying me inside it, along the track it must travel, straight to the end, weeping like a train and deaf and single-eyed and locked tight shut; although I hurl myself against the walls of it and scream and cry, and beg to God himself to let me out.” ( In a strong sense, Grace is a prisoner of her narrative! It is this that keeps her locked up.)

On veracity (truthfulness) and narratives
Dr Jordan does not get everything from Grace as she decides what to include and what to leave out of her narratives. Some points on urinating and pictures that should be withheld from newspapers, are shared with the reader on page 251 but are not shared with Simon Jordan:
“But I do not say this to Dr. Jordan. And so forth, I say firmly, because And so forth is all he is entitled to. Just because he pesters me to know everything is no reason for me to tell him.” Grace, 252

Grace plays with her narrative in Chapter 43 when she imagines what she may tell Simon. She knows that one day he will not return to listen to her: “I have become quite used to him somehow, and fear that when he goes away, as he is bound to do sooner or later, there will a sad emptiness in my heart.” “I could say this: 410 (It could be argued that she is manipulative but equally her needs as a human being are important, here.)

Remember that Simon is NOT PRESENT during this chapter and Grace is speaking her story to herself and unconsciously to the readers. (Does this not contribute to the theory that she is mad?)

He knows that she is being selective and withholds information:
“She hasn’t refused to talk – far from it. She’s told him a great deal; but she’s told him only what she’s chosen to tell. What he wants is what she refuses to tell; what she chooses perhaps not even to know” 374

She is imaginative too and very capable of inventing description, narrative, etc. The beginning of chapter 27 is a good example of this:

Today when I woke up there was a beautiful pink sunrise, with the mist lying over the fields like a white soft could of muslin, and the sun shining through the layers of it all blurred and rosy like a peach gently on a fire.

In fact I have no idea what kind of a sunrise there was. In prison they make the windows high up, so you cannot climb out of them I suppose, but also so you cannot see out of the either, or at least not onto the outside world”. 275 (To be fair here she does admit to inventing this description and gives reasons why. Yet she has the perceptive intelligence and capacity to invent.)

At the end of the Chapter entitled, “Fox and Gees” Grace gets pleasure from delivering an entertaining narrative for Simon, who in turn, has been feverishly making notes:

“It does my heart good to feel I can bring a little pleasure into a fellow-being’s life; and I think to myself, I wonder what he will make of all that”. 328 (Grace plays to part of Sheherezade to a tee here.)

There seems to be an element of selectivity in Grace’s narrative and this is in part because of the fragments that she can remember:

On the story that the Lawyer, McKenzie tried to get her to tell on what MacDermott said she did.

“What shall I tell Dr. Jordan about this day?” On the day of the trial she felt like a “stuffed” “doll”, . . . “my true voice could not get out.” 342

Note how she toys with her narrative as she struggles with her memory:

“Did I say, I saw you outside at night, in your nightgown, the moonlight?
(A number of possibilities are given beginning with “Did I say . . .”)
She concludes with “It might have happened.” 343 this added to Grace’s confusion about what really happened.

On men from the period during the Trial: veracity and belief
‘They told me I must be lying; they wanted to know more. Except for Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie the lawyer. But I am sure that even he did not believe me’.
‘I will believe you,’ says Simon. It is, he realizes, a fairly large undertaking.’ 357

Another interesting example is this:
“Because he (Dr. Jordan) was so thoughtful as to bring me a radish, I set to work willingly to tell my story, and to make it as interesting as I can, rich in incident, as a sort of return gift to him: for I have always believed that one good turn deserves another.” 286

On her narrative:
. . . today I must go on with my story. Or the story must go on with me, carrying me inside it, along the track it must travel, straight to the end, weeping like a train and deaf and single-eyed and locked tight shut; although I hurl myself against the walls of it and scream and cry, and beg to God himself to let me out.
When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion . . . It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else”. 346 ( in a strong sense, Grace is a prisoner of her narrative!)

MEN AND NARRATIVES (Unreliable)
The lawyer and the confession/newspapermen
“That is not my confession, I say, it was only what the lawyer told me to say, and things made up by the men from the newspapers”. 116
Grace noticed that the newsmen were young and “wet behind the ears” and “barely old enough to shave”. “They were all like that, wet behind the ears, and would not know the truth if they fell over it”. They also put years on her age. 116. “They will make up any old thing to suit themselves”. 117 Grace points out the newsmen’s inaccuracies in spelling names, etc. 116

(Good copy and a plausible confession mattered more than the truth)

MacKenzie had told Grace to tell “what must have happened, according to plausibility, rather than what I myself could actually recall” . . .”I was to leave out the parts I could not remember, and especially to leave out the fact that I could not remember them.” 415

Ironically, MacKenzie wanted Grace to pretend that she was “very ignorant” and “little better than a half-wit, and very soft and pliable, easily imposed upon.” 419 (He coached her to tell lies about her experiences.

Destiny
She is “the destined maid” from the extract of Coventry Patmore’s “Angel in the House” 1854, page 382

Grace and the theme of being a Lady‘I have no reason not to be frank with you, Sir, she said. ‘A lady might conceal things, as she has her reputation to lose, but I am well beyond that.’
‘What do you mean, Grace? He said. (Jordan)
‘I was never a lady, Sir and I’ve already lost whatever reputation I ever
had”. 104
For most of the novel she is a servant both in an outside prison. But she becomes a lady in the final chapters!

(Remember that this is something that Nancy had aspired to. The theme is associated with the rigid classed based society in Canada’s Toronto. Notice how Grace becomes “a lady” when she moves across the water “for the third time” when she moves to Ithaca, New York. Society in the USA was much less stratified and class orientated. It was more democratic. Her creativity is underscored by the suggestion that she is going to have a baby.)

Aunt Pauline remained lower middle class with her shop but still felt that she had “married beneath her”. 120 “As keeping a shop was not how a lady should live”. 120

On Nancy (and her desire to be a lady)“She asked me to brush out her hair for her, just like a lady’s maid, which I did with pleasure”.

Kinnear on Grace’s potential to be “a lady”
( This is somewhat like GB Shaw’s “Pygmalion” (“My Fair Lady”):

“. . . I was certainly a handsome girl, as I had a naturally refined air and a very pure Grecian profile, and that if he put me in the right clothes and told me to hold my head high and keep my mouth shut, he could pass me off for a lady any day.” 324

Grace and quilts
“But I do not say this to Dr. Jordan. And so forth, I say firmly, because And so forth is all he is entitled to. Just because he pesters me to know everything is no reason for me to tell him.” Grace, 252

Symbolic significance in Grace’s words:“A log cabin quilt is a thing every young woman should have before marriage, as it means home; and there is a red square at the centre, which means the hearth fire. Mary Whitney told me that. I don’t say this, as I don’t think it will interest him, being too common” 112 (Interesting withholding of symbolic information from Simon by Grace.)

She adds that she the quilt that she would make for herself would be “Tree of Paradise”. 112-3 (Grace repeats most of the information here to Simon that she eventually carries out in the novel’s final pages, including the quilt’s specific design).

Simon calls the quilt’s name into question, “Trees of Paradise, or Tree?” Grace says “Tree” because of the title of the quilt regardless of the number of trees. “Because that is the name of the pattern”, Sir, I say”. (Much of this conversation is brought on by Simon’s introduction of the potato and its link with what is underground.

Grace has an excellent knowledge of the Bible. See her points on “Jacob’s Ladder”, etc. 114

Grace is clever because she reflects and thinks things through.
She works out that the “quilt pattern called Lady of the Lake” was not named after Sir Walter Scott’s poem but after a boat that was in turn named after the poem. This is “because it was a pinwheel design, which must have stood for the paddle going around. And I thought that things did make sense, and have a design to them, if you only pondered them long enough. An so perhaps it might be with recent events, which at the moment seemed to me entirely senseless; and finding the reason for the quilt pattern was a lesson to me, to have faith.” 396 (The poem’s content about kidnapped bride also relates to Grace’s predicament while on the run with MacDermott; something of which Grace is fully conscious. See 396)

Dreams
(See in the notes on “Split Consiousness” how Grace’s divided self is linked with dreams.

Men as teachers (though Grace is consciously aware of such role-playing and humours Simon) Simon asks her about her new quilt and Grace (in the first person) answers: “Yes is its, Sir, it is a Pandora’s Box for Miss Lydia. This puts him in an instructive mood, and I can see he is going to teach me something, which gentlemen are fond of doing”. 168

Dreams of her mother in “her winding sheet” but the dream takes a strange turn, “I knew that this was not my mother at all, but some other woman, and she was not dead inside the sheet at all, but still alive” 193 (Significance? Maybe this is a premonition about Mary as she is sleeping near Grace.)

Reverie (daydream)
As the tension rises at Kinnear’s Grace dreams about water “rising slowly up like the sea; and I fell into a reverie, and was remembering back to the time I crossed the great ocean, and how at that time of day the sea and the sky were the same indigo, so you could not tell where one left off and the other began. And into my memory there floated an iceberg, as white as white could be; and despite the warmth of the evening I felt a chill”. 269
(Here the difficult crossing by ship is recalled and the icebergs the death of Grace’s mother, guilt, etc. This could also be a sign of Grace’s amnesia and the unconscious. The “icebergs and what is submerged represent her observable and hidden memories. Remember that icebergs only show one fifth of their size above surface!) Grace (and Atwood) use word and image associations here.)

She is aware of Simon’s interest in her dreams and is willing to make up dreams for him. See midway down 281. Yet she thinks “like most gentlemen he often wants a thing to mean more than it does”. 282

Grace dreaming before Jamie Walsh wakes her.“I was dreaming what a bear had come out of the forest, and was looking at me”. (The dream reveals how she felt hunted) 303 When Kinnear asks her about the young man she was with she feels as if she was “spied upon” 305 (Sexual tension: Kinnear spied on her with his telescope.)

She is a somnambulist. (A sleepwalker)

“He is using a kind voice, kind on the surface but with other hidden desires beneath it” 45

She has lost part of her memory. 46

See “Fox and Geese” pages 325-7 when Grace slips into unconsciousness during the night of the thunderstorm and sleepwalks. The catalyst seems to be the storm and Kinnear’s playful seduction of Nancy

Beds and sleeping
Grace shared a bed with Mary Whitney and Nancy: “Nancy and I went to bed together, as was always the case when Mr. Kinnear was away, on account of her fear of burglars”. 361 “That night Mary Whitney appeared to me in a dream. It was not the first time; she’d come before, but never to say anything” 363 (In examples traumatic events take place.) Grace is aware of McDermott’s plan to kill Nancy and asks him (out of self preservation) to delay it . 360

During her dream in Lewiston it is Mary Whitney and not Nancy who welcomes her back to the parlour in Richmond Hill “for I had been on a journey, I was sure of it, and had been absent a long time.” 399

Grace's plit personality
Verringer argues this on pages 91-2
“Some lesion of the nervous system, and that the Devil himself is simply a malformation of the cerebrum”.

“Alias Grace” suggests the focus on one personality within two entities.

Jeremiah said to Grace, “You are one of us”. (She thought his comment strange) 179 (It was probably because of her comments on numbers and her view that “There are sharp rocks ahead”. 179

After Mary’s death Grace, who is alone with her says, “Let me in”. Grace thinks she must have heard wrongly and that Mary rather said, “Let me out” . . . “ I was hoping Mary’s should would fly out of the window now, and not saty inside, whisperings into my ear, but I wondered whether I was too late”. (Hints here of Mary’s soul unable to escape because of the closed window and taking up residence in Grace’s body. As Grace is superstitious this may involve some auto suggestion on Grace’s part. In any event, Grace was traumatised by Mary’s death. She was only 14-15) 207

Grace’s amnesia brought on by the discovery of Mary’s death and the trauma that followed: “at that moment I fell to the floor in a dead faint”. 208

“I kept asking where Grace had gone. And when they told me that I myself was Grace, I would not believe them, but cried, and tried to run out of the house, because I said that Grace was lost, and had gone into the lake, and I needed to search for her.” 208 (After waking from a deep sleep Grace comes to herself again.) 208 “But I had no memory of anything I said or did during the time I was awake”. (Grace’s amnesia begins). 209

“She (Nancy) said there was something about me that made her uneasy, and she wondered whether I was quite right, as she’d several times heard me talking out loud to myself” 324 (Kinnear laughs this off saying that he often talked to himself. Still, this shows a division in Grace’s selfhood.)

On McDermott wanting her to accompany him to the scaffold:”The road to death is a lonely highway, and longer than it appears, even when it leads straight down from the scaffold, by way of a rope; and it’s a dark road, with never any moon shining on it, to light your way.”
On being pressed by Jordan on how she knows so much about this she says, “I have not been there, I say, except in dreams”. (Does this passage hint at the split personality within Grace?)

During the night of the thunder storm as Kinnear seduces Nancy, Grace loses her consciousness when she goes to bed. Even the description of the house splitting in two suggests a divided self:

“The rain was pouring down like ten thousand and the house working in the wind like grinding teeth; and I was sure that the every next minute we would split in two like a ship at sea, and sink down into the earth. And then, right next to my ear, I heard a voice whispering: It cannot be. I must have been frightened into a fit, because after that I lost consciousness altogether.” 325 (This then leads into a dream. Dreams and consciousness are strongly connected. In this dream Grace sleepwalks in another consciousness (as Mary Whitney). See final paragraph of 325. The dream is sexually charged: “ I felt a drowsy languor stealing over me, and urging me to yield, and surrender myself; as to do so would be far easier than resist”. (Note here that there is also not just an association of words but an association of ideas. Before going to bed Grace was aware that Kinnear was seducing Nancy and this sexual play is transposed into Grace’s consciousness.) Grace goes on to dream of “Death” as a horse rider. 326.

Grace is unsure whether she is asleep or conscious at one point in “Hearts and Glizzards” “I whisper, Talk to me . . .I think I sleep” 344-5 and, “Here I com, I am coming now. You never obey me, you never do what I say, you dirty girl. Now you will have to be punished”. ( Split consciousness, the voice is probably Mary Whitney, who has been subsumed into Grace and is only present during sleeping hours.)

Grace dreams that Mary Whitney comes to her during her final night with Nancy.
“In this dream, I dreampt I was walking in a place I had never been before, with high walls all around mad of stone, grey . . .” 364
Note how the white peonies of her “dream” during the night of Nancy’s murder “were still coming up from the stones” and represent buried consciousness. Innocence even, Grace’s and perhaps, Nancy’s. The “ dark red flowers” of Grace’s dream represent Nancy’s blood” as she sees and acts as Mary Whitney but remembers as Grace:
“Then up ahead I saw Nancy, on her knees, with her hair fallen over and the blood running down into her eyes.” (Grace’s dream on the night of Nancy’s death 364-5) (The kerchief around Nancy’s neck was Grace’s and as Mary Whitney she and MacDermott pulled on each end to strangle the dying woman. But this is left out of this dream as Nancy “came apart” into patches of colour, she scattered, a drift of red and white cloth petals across the stones”. 365

‘That is why they put me away’. . .
‘They said I was awake. But I do not wish to say any more about it’. 365

On the morning of Nancy’s killing:“I felt light-headed, and detached from myself, as if I was not really present, but only there in body”. 366

And,

“Everything was the same but not the same, and when I went to wash my face and do my hair, my own face in the mirror over the kitchen sinkwas not like my face at all. It looked rounder and whiter, with two great startled eyes, and I didn’t wish to look at it.” 366-7

And on making Nancy’s final breakfast:

‘I went to the garden to gather chives . . .I reached out my hand for the chives, and it was as if my hand was not mine at all, but only a husk or skin, with inside it another hand growing.” 368

When she “becomes” Mary Whitney Grace has no inhibitions. She is sexually provocative. There is nothing of the “prude” in her when her personality splits into the sexually experienced, Mary Whitney.

Sexual promises as Mary Whitney“Then he sat down on the side of the bed, and said now it was time for me to keep my promise; and I said what promise, and he said I knew very well, for I had promised him myself in exchange for the killing of Nancy.” 384

Split personality while escaping from Richmond Hill
MacDermott is driven beyond endurance by Grace/Mary’s sexual suggestions:

“Then he was very angry; for he claimed I had asked him to stop the wagon, so I could get down and relieve myself by the roadside; and having done so, that I had spread out my own shawl, not two minutes before, and had invited him to join me on it like the hot bitch I was, at the same time saying I would now fulfil my promise.”

I knew I had done no such thing, having been sound asleep, and I said so.” 391 (It seems is if Grace is changing into her other personality (Mary Whitney) as she dozes beside MacDermott in the wagon on the journey to Toronto.)

On the run on the paddle steamer Grace chooses to be known as “Mary Whitney” 395

When telling of the events of the Inquest she says to the imagined Simon (for he is not present) “For as you know, Sir, I could not rightly remember the events of that terrible day, and did not feel I had been present at them at all, and had lain unconscious for several parts of it, but I was well aware that if I said this I would be laughed to scorn . . .” 413

At the trial Jamie Walsh said “I was standing by the pump with my arms folded, wearing white cotton stockings; and when asked where Nancy was, I laughed in a teasing manner, and said he was always wanting to know things; but that Nany had gone to Wrights’, where there was someone ill, with a man who’d come to fetch her.

I remember none of this”. 419 (Grace perhaps as Mary Whitney after the murders)

Grace distrusts doctors
The abortionist doctor 206
Dr. Bannerling
Dr. Reid visits Nancy and Grace, with her previous knowledge of Mary Whitney’s experience with a doctor, associates him with death:
“as with crows, when you see two or three of them gathered together you know there is a death in the offing, and they are discussing it.” 315 (Nancy is pregnant, nonetheless, Grace sets the tone here of death and seems to foreground it.)

She distrusts Simon, at first.

On freedom and the mind
“Rock of Ages . . .”

“I like this song, as it make me think of rocks, and water, and the seashore, which are outside; and thinking of a thing is next best to being there. “ 227 (This could be linked to the idea of Grace being a female Ulysses.)

Grace’s knowledge of the Bible
“I knew my Bible backwards and forwards – which was not far from the truth” (Grace on her knowledge of the apochrypal “Susannah and the Elders”.

The story is highly ironic given the fact that a young lady has been “falsely accused of sinning with a young man, because she refused to commit the every same sin with them; and she would have been executed by being stoned to death” 259 (Nancy sees Grace as a sexual rival for Kinnear during Kinnear’s telling of this story)

Is she sacrificial?
Her nightdress is “coarse-woven and of a yellowed colour; I should not say iet was mine, because we own nothing here and share all in common, like the early Christians . . .” 275
(There is something suggestively sacrificial about her because she is locked up for so long (a) because she is a young woman (b) she is Irish and (c) she never admitted guilt.)

The sermon in the church appears to be ironic “The sermon was on the subject of Divine Grace, and how we could be saved by it alone, and not through any efforts on our own part, or any good works we might do.” 293
(Is Grace not in charge of her own destiny? Was she fated to suffer as she did? The title of the sermon also draws attention to the oxymoronic nature of Grace’s name: “Grace Marks”. The sermon is also about the need to “guard against complacency” (Something that could be said of Grace in these chapters. )294

She is very knowledgeable about plants and knows the Latin terminology. This also hints at her self - education
She likes radishes because “I relish the sharpness of it, which is like the peppery smell of a nasturtium” 286

Grace is the prisoner of her notoriety
What keeps Grace in prison for so long is her notoriety that was stoked by the ballad, news stories and politicians, Susana Moodie’s dramatic accounts, etc. The climate in ultra conservative led to a vindictive attitude towards those convicted of murderer, especially those who were Irish and who had been convicted of killing their employers. The uprising and the fears that it invoked was the main contextual factor.

The newspaper reporters forgot Kinnear and concentrated on Grace, the “murderess”: “because it is more important to be a murderess than the one murdered, you are more stared at then.” 343-344.

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"Alias Grace" by Margaret Atwood: the significance of quilts

The quilt structure

The quilt sections represent the story features of each section (Chapter) For example, “Jagged Edge” and “Rocky Road”.

Some chapters begin with the design of a quilt and others do not. Consider why.

Symbolism:Peonies: represent shame, bashfulness, red for anger.

Narrative style
The ending of the ballad is represented in the novel. (Tree of Paradise).

Letters as a stylistic feature of writing were used in early novels. These help fill in detail on the characters and aid the reader's objective view of characters and events. Chapters 6 and 14

This links to other notes on Grace and narrative: its power to shape within and outside her character.

“I worked away at my quilt blocks, for the quilt I am making for the Governor’s wife, there are only five blocks to be finished”. 76

Chapter 19 is important for the significance of quilts in Grace’s narrative. The quilts embody her story.

Quilts and their symbolic significance is explained by Grace on pages 185-6. Grace wonders why women “have chosen to sew such flags, and then lay them on the tops of beds” 186. See also, 187 for more on quilts.

Does this passage relate to the relationship between men and women? Possibly.

Beds, too, are explored for their significance. 186 It remind me of “The Bed of Ware”. 186

Quilts are related to marriage 254 “And I thought of the quilts I would make for myself, after I’d saved up enough wages and was married, and with a house of my own.” 254

A “quilt” is pulled over Mary Whitney after her death. 206

There is a paragraph on page 217 in which the narrator used the imagery of quilt-making, “sew”, “web”, "Ariadne”, “patch” etc. and it is about the difference between an “angel” and a “monster” and how the mysteries of the nervous system “remain to be revealed”. 217

The absence of quilts could have a significant meaning too. Grace on Kinnear (“His bed did not have a patchwork quilt but a dark bedspread that matched the curtains”. 256 ????

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"Alias Grace" by Margeret Atwood: Several Themes

Themes in Alias Grace
I taught this the academic year before last. There are bound to be students out there who will find these notes and several others that I made useful for studying M. Atwood's "Alias Grace". Some of my students obtained maximum marks for this text in their exam.

Sexuality and desire
First impressions from a pamphlet produced by The Rev. Verringer found in a drawer by Dr Jordan:

She looks five years older than 16.
She looks like the “heroine of a sentimental novel” 67

”… the brim of a bonnet encircles her head like a dark aureole. The nose is straight, the mouth dainty. The expression soulful – the vapid pensiveness of a Magdelene, with the large eyes gazing at nothing. 67


Lust and Female animalism
Lydia and animalistic imagery
Dr Jordan at one point sees Lydia as “a healthy young animal”.
(Sensuality) “A cloud of scent rises from her, lily of the valley, enveloping him (Jordan) in olfactory gauze.” She is “unconscious of the effect she is producing on him”. “He crosses his legs”. 99
“There is a subdued recklessness about her, thinks Simon 99 (An perceptive appraisal of her considering her sexual adventures later in the novel. (Going out with too many military men and marrying Verringer in a rush.)

Lydia “flirts” with Simon 101. He does not want to get tied down as “he has his name to make”. 101 Lydia loves the melodramatic notion of Grace being “abducted”. 102 But this only leads Simon to think of Grace.

Jordan’s view of Grace as “a female animal”
The line of her cheek has a marble, a classic, simplicity“Suffering does indeed purify”

“Simon can smell her (Grace) as well as look at her . . .her scent is a distracting undercurrent . . .He is in the presence of a female animal; something fox-like and alert. He senses an answering alertness along his own skin, a sensation as of bristles lifting. Sometimes he feels as if he’s walking on quicksand” 103.

James McDermott speaks of Grace jokingly as “a colt” to be broken in. Something Grace takes strong exception to the remarks telling McDermott that she as not “a mare”. 265

MacDermott is a misogynist (a woman hater) and feels led on by Grace’s sexual promises as Mary Whitney

MacDermott wants to sleep with Grace in Kinnear’s bed.

To my surprise he thought that was a fine idea, and said it would give him great pleasure to sleep in Mr. Kinnear’s bed, where Nancy had so often played the whore; and I reflected that once I’d given in to him, he would consider me a whore as well, and would hold my life very cheap indeed, and would most likely kill me with the axe and throw me into the cellar as he had often said a whore was good for noting but to wipe your dirty boots on, by giving them a good kicking all over their filthy bodies. SoI planned to delay, and put him off as long as I could”. 385 (Grace “humours” MacDermott and probably saves her life by doing so. Sex is held out as a lure. Sex and a form of prostitution is also present in Simon and Mrs Humphrey’s relationship as well as Kinnear’s and Nancy’s.)


See also the end of “Fox and Geese” on Kinnear’s seduction of Nancy and Grace’s slipping into a sexual dream. 325-6


The them of being a Lady
‘I have no reason not to be frank with you, Sir, she said. ‘A lady might conceal things, as she has her reputation to lose, but I am well beyond that.’
‘What do you mean, Grace? He said. (Jordan)
‘I was never a lady, Sir and I’ve already lost whatever reputation I ever
had”. 104
For most of the novel she is a servant both in an outside prison. But she becomes a lady in the final chapters!

(Remember that this is something that Nancy had aspired to. The theme is associated with the rigid classed based society in Canada’s Toronto. Notice how Grace becomes “a lady” when she moves across the water “for the third time” when she moves to Ithaca, New York. Society in the USA was much less stratified and class orientated. It was more democratic. Her creativity is underscored by the suggestion that she is going to have a baby.)

Aunt Pauline remained lower middle class with her shop but still felt that she had “married beneath her”. 120 “As keeping a shop was not how a lady should live”. 120

“She is no lady” says the man who tries to accost Grace at Montgomery’s Tavern as she travels to Kinnear’s. Again, women of the servant class could be imposed on by any men. 239

Being a lady
Nancy aspires to be “a lady”. Wears expensive earrings. 245 But her true situation is that of sexually compromised servant. Kinnear will never marry her.

Nancy learns the piano 246 (To imitate the genteel)
Nancy also reads improving, moralistic literature as she aspires to be genteel:

Grace: I could hear the sound of Nancy’s voice from the parlour, and I knew she must be reading out loud. She liked to do it, as she thought it was genteel; but she always pretended that Mr. Kinnear required it of her. 322 (Nancy is reading “The Lady of the Lake”, a poem that once made Grace sad as she read it with Mary Whitney. The book’s title is later given to a later chapter when Grace crosses the water to the USA. The title “Lady” also hints at Nancy’s aspirations. At the end of the novel, Grace becomes the mistress and “lady” of her house in Ithaca, USA.

Kinnear laughs at Nancy’s attempt to be a lady. This is also an example of men’s thoughts on this issue:

Grace: ‘he (Kinnear) sat waiting reading a book which he had brought with him from the town. It was the newest Godey’s Ladies Book, which poor Nancy liked to have, for the fashions . . .he himself often took a peek at it when Nancy was not nearby, as there were things in it other than dresses; and he liked to look at the new styles of undergarments, and to read the articles on how a lady should behave, which I would often catch him chuckling over on those occasions when I brought him coffee.’ 370


Kinnear on Grace’s potential to be “a lady” (This is somewhat like GB Shaw’s “Pygmalion” (“My Fair Lady”):

“. . . I was certainly a handsome girl, as I had a naturally refined air and a very pure Grecian profile, and that if he put me in the right clothes and told me to hold my head high and keep my mouth shut, he could pass me off for a lady any day.” 324

Dora does not fit Simon’s idea of a “lady” or even a “female”.
“Dora opens the door to him. He regards her with digust: a woman so porcine, and, in this weather, so distinctly sweaty, should not be permitted out in public. She’s a libel on the entire sex”. 375


In Toronto even MacDermott notices Grace’s appearance as “a lady”:
“And he told me with a bit of a sneer that I looked very elegant, and quite the lady, with my pink parasol and all.” 394

Relationships between men and women
On Simon’s imagination, fantasies and animalism (When Mrs Humphries first collapses and is lifted by Simon to his bed)
He is “aroused by the sight of Mrs Humphries, “ a helpless woman extended upon his tumbled bed” in a semi state of dress.
“He has always been curious about these manifestations of the imagination as he has been able to observe them in himself. Where do they come from? If they occur in him, they must occur as well in the majority of men. . . he cannot always control such pictures. The difference between a civilized man and a barbarous fiend – a madman, say – lies, perhaps, merely in a thin veneer of willed self restraint. “ 163

Jordan wonders how Grace is to “fill in the rest of the time” after after her conviction. During a moment in which Grace threads a needle, a gesture that has a sexual connotation as she responds to Jordan’s question: “Do you feel you have been treated unjustly?”

‘I don’t know what you mean, Sir.’ She was threading the needle now; she wet the end of the thread in her mouth, to make it easier, and this gesture seemed to him all at once both completely natural and unbearably intimate. He felt as if he was watching her undress, through a chink in the wall; as if she was washing herself with her tongue, like a cat.” 105 (In a sense this also recalls Jordan’s recurring dreams about listening in and spying on servant girls when a boy. The passage also shows his lust for Grace”. The main image of Grace threading the needle seems to be a domestic as well as a sexual image and it is not lost on Simon.)

Marriage (trouble begins for men) Grace: It doesn’t say when a woman’s trouble begins”. 118 Her parents felt “trapped” in marriage. 121.

Her money supported her family at thirteen. 147. Still her father wants all her wage. She and the other sibling were beaten by their drunken father. 149. The father, “shouting that I was a slut and a whore . . . I feared that he might someday break my spine, and make a cripple out of me”. 149

Mary Whitney says, Thinks that “men are liars by nature”. 190 (Men and sex) Ironic that she allowed herself to get pregnant.

The dangers of servants falling pregnant from predatory members of the monied class

Grace says of girls who had families to go back to:
“now no decent man would marry her, and she would have to go on the streets, and become a sailor’s drab, as she would have no other way of feeding herself and the baby. And such a life would soon be the end of her.” 201 (Notice that when Nancy falls pregnant she is quietly terrified of a similar fate.)

Relationships between men and women – and melodrama
In the market as Simon buys groceries he realises that as a man of his class he is out of place and is unsure of what to buy Mrs Humphries. He feels that “the women of the poorer classes” are “laughing behind his back”. 164

Simon is aware of his insincerity as he speaks with Mrs Humphries after going out for supplies:

“’Think nothing of it. I could not let you starve.’ His voice is heartier than he intends, the voice of a jolly and insincere uncle who can scarcely wait to bestow the expected quarter-dollar on the grovelling poor-relation niece, pinch her cheek, and then make his getaway to the opera.” Simon silently curses and envies Major Humphrey’s freedom from Mrs H. 166.

Mrs Humphries hints that she has her body and will trade that:
“Women like me have few skills that they can sell”. 166 (The whole scene here is melodramatic and it is “slightly dampened” by “the trace of butter that remains upon” Mrs Humphries’ mouth”. 167

Masters as sexual predators
Many masters were sexual predators on young servants. “As Mary used to say, there are some masters who think you owe them service twenty-four hours a day, and should do the main work flat on your back. 231

Abortion
Back street abortionists were doctors who earned more cash on the side. 202-3 (Their prey was servant girls impregnated by their masters.)

Class
Shifts in class. Grace is the granddaughter of a Methodist who could not get “a position” because “he had done something unexpected with the Church money”. 119 (Notice how Grace after falling into the servant class resumes her “position” towards the end of the novel. What happened to Grace’s grandfather also highlights the shiftlessness of most men throughout the novel. 119

Canada is a rigidly class based society compared with the USA.

The Significance of Dreams (The ocean of the unconscious mind)
Sexuality and forbidden relationships

Simon’s thoughts as put by the third person narrator:
“One school of French alienistes recommend the recording of dreams as a diagnostic tool; their own dreams, as well as those of their patients, for the sake of comparison. They hold dreams like somnambulism, to be a manifestation of the animal life that continues below consciousness, out of sight, beyond reach of the will. Perhaps the hooks – the hinges, as were – in the chain of memory, are located there?” 161

Simon reverts to childhood and dreams of the “secret world” of the maids in the “attic passageway” of his house; “the big house they had before his father’s failure and death”. 159

“Women, the maids. Sitting on the edges of their narrow beds, in their white cotton shifts, their hair unbound and rippling down over their shoulders, their lips parted, their eyes gleaming.
Waiting for him.” 159 (Are not these dreams brought on by his subconscious desire (at this point of the novel) for Grace, who was also, a serving maid.) He understands that it was “Grace’s story of the Atlantic crossing that led to Simon’s dream. 160 He realises that it is “Grace’s story, with its Atlantic crossing, its burial at sea, its catalogue of household objects; and the overbearing father, of course. One father leads to another” 160 (The sea and household objects figures strongly in this dream).

Identity
This is bound up with the novel’s title. Grace gains the confidence to speak and tell her story. Atwood grew up not knowing much about her country’s past. Canada lived under the shadow of Britain and its much larger neighbour, the USA. As Grace discovers herself and gains the confidence to write letters, etc. the reader learns about Canada’s past, particularly Toronto’s. It isn’t just Grace who has amnesia, Canada has it too! In an interview Margaret Atwood admitted to growing up not knowing very little about her country’s past. It was such a “dead” topic; she gave an example in a book-meeting in New York of Britain once having a radio program entitled, “Canada or dead”. (!)

Role-playing
Nancy’s desire to be “a lady” sets up a tension for her role as “servant” and her self adopted role as “mistress” of the house.
Nancy tells Kinnear that she is “worried about the servants”.
“Which of the servants, Mr. Kinnear wanted to know; and Nancy said both of them, and Mr. Kinnear laughed and said of course there were three servants in the house, not two, as she was a servant herself.” She does think this a kind response a moves to her “duties in the kitchen” but Kinnear laughs and catches her. (Nancy did not broach with Kinnear her own pregnancy which surprises Grace.) LINK to Role-playing! This is also thematic in the novel!

Think also of Grace’s “roles” and Jeremiah’s!

On role-reversal – becoming a quasi servant!
Mrs Humphries has to adopt the role of a servant (Dora leaves) which she does not “ carry up” as would be “humiliating” but eats with Simon at a shared table, “as breakfast is all she can manage”. 334
Through “gratitude” she assumes the role of mistress. 335-336 even though (this woman does not attract” Simon, he gives way to his senses. 336

Simon Jordan
Seeks to retain the role-position of “all knowing authority” with Grace (He cannot ask her for advice on how to hire a maid after Dora leaves.)

( Dupont on acting and role-playing)‘I myself, says Dr. Dupont, “tend to place prostitution in the same class as the homicidal and religious manias; all may be considered, perhaps, as an impulse to play-act which has run out of control. Such things have been observed in the theatre, among actors who claim that they become the character they are acting. Female opera singers are especially prone to it. There’s a Lucia on record who actually did kill her lover.’ 349-50)

Dupont is great at role-playing
Grace on meeting Dupont with the Governor’s wife’s meeting: But who should I see, looking straight at me with a little smile, but Jeremiah the peddler. He was considerably trimmed as to hair and beard, and got up like a gentleman, in a beautifully cut sand-coloured suit, with a gold watch-chain across the vest; and holding a cup of tea in the best mincing gentleman’s manner, just as he used to do when imitating the same, in the kitchen at Mrs Alderman Parkinson’s” 354 ( Dupont knows the power of mystique by calling himself a doctor and giving himself a French-sounding name that could easily be confusingly Canadian.) He has the voice too because Grace appreciates it when Dupont settles her after meeting her: ‘Good, good, he said, just as pompous as a real doctor.’ 355

Journeys
Grace can be seen as a female Ulysses, who “crosses the ocean three times” and end up at Ithaca, New York. Ithaca means “home”, “nostalgia”, “the journey home”; it was also the birthplace of Ulysses/Odysseus.)

Important examples of Grace’s journeys:
· the journey from Ireland
· the lonely and hazardous journey to Kinnear’s at Richmond Hill.
· the inner journey in prison that she relates through her narratives
· the escape to America only to be captured and brought home
· the final journey to Ithaca New York in which she is accompanied by the Prison Governor and his daughter.

Grace’s life is a journey!

Atwood draws on the detective genre made popular in the mid 19th century by Wilkie Collins. Jordan conducts an investigation into Grace.

Madness“She (Nancy) said there was something about me that made her uneasy, and she wondered whether I was quite right, as she’d several times heard me talking out loud to myself” 324 (Remember that Grace had suffered the trauma of Mary Whitney’s death not long before.)

The Peonies act as motifs
They can be either white or red in colour. White is associated with Nancy and Red with memories of Mary Whitney. See the example on page 417

When confusion is high and others like MacKenzie or Moodie mistake her narrative Grace want to reiterate her point “But they were peonies, all the same, Red ones. There is no mistake possible.” 418

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