Alias Grace
Margaret Atwood
Doubleday
1996
Ms. Hen decided to read this because she likes Margaret
Atwood, and she had heard of the Netflix show, and was curious about the book.
She checked it out of the library, and even though it was a hardcover, she read
it nonstop for a week, and did not do anything else with her spare time. Ms.
Hen thought it was that good.
ALIAS GRACE is historical fiction about a young Irish woman
living in Canada, Grace Marks, who is in prison for murdering her employer,
Thomas Kinnear, and the housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. She was convicted along with her fellow
servant James McDermott, who has been hung for the crime, but her sentence was commuted to life in prison. The novel centers
around Dr. Simon Jordan interviewing Grace, trying to discover if she is
innocent because she cannot remember what happened during the time of the
murders. Dr. Jordan is a doctor of the mind, and he has traveled to Europe to
visit lunatic asylums there, in hopes of starting a quality one in the United
States, where he is from.
Grace never has any good luck. Her father is a drunk and
beats her mother, and does not work. He is English, and in Ireland, he gets in
trouble for associating with Orangemen. The family emigrates to Canada, and
the mother dies on the way. Grace has to do all the work of taking care of the
family, and her father sends her out to get a job in service. Grace makes a
friend, Mary Whitney, whom she shares a bed in the house where they both are servants. She is employed at lots of other houses
until she ends up at the Kinnear residence in the countryside. Nancy hires her
because she cannot do all the work alone.
Grace doesn’t know what is happening in the house, until
James McDermott tells her that Nancy is Mr. Kinnear's mistress. Grace thinks Nancy is strange, because she is
friendly one moment, and nasty the next. Grace doesn’t like working at the
house. Grace tells Dr. Jordan all about her life, up until the times of the
murders. She thinks that he will help her get out of jail. She doesn’t know
what has happened to her family or the people she has known. Dr. Dupont, who is
in disguise, and is someone Grace has known previously, hypnotizes Grace, and
she becomes possessed, or so it seems. Dr. Jordan is upset that the people in
the audience want him to write about the hypnosis, but he doesn’t want to do so
because he thinks it would make him a laughingstock in the medical profession.
Ms. Hen thinks this is one of the best books she has read in
while. She has read some great books lately, but this is one of her favorites
this year. She thinks that ALIAS GRACE is historical fiction about how terrible
it is to be a woman, and THE HANDMAID’S TALE is futuristic fiction about how
terrible it is to be a woman, so they are variations on the same theme. Grace
feels threatened by men; she cannot go anywhere or do anything without the fear of
men. Her friend Mary Whitney tells her she should not go to the privy (outhouse) by
herself at night alone, because something could happen to her. That is what
women had to deal with in the early nineteenth century, and the problems continue today,
but in different ways.
Even though this novel is tragic, Ms. Hen was happy that it is full of hens and chickens.
One significant scene in which chickens played part is when Nancy tells Grace
to kill a chicken for dinner, and Grace can’t bring herself to do so, “I went to
the henyard and caught a plump young fowl, a white one, crying all the time,
and tucked it securely in my arm, and went towards the woodpile and the
chopping block, wiping my tears with my apron; for I did not see how I could do
such a thing.” Jamie Walsh comes along and kills the chicken for Grace. Grace
is delicate and can’t handle killing a chicken, but she changes and becomes a
different person when she helps McDermott kill Nancy.
Ms. Hen cannot begin to describe how much she loved this
book. She thinks she feels this way because she understands the character,
someone who is trapped, and does not have any choice about the course of her
life. But Grace lived her life, and she dealt with her troubles. This novel is based on actual events, and Ms. Hen shudders when she thinks that these things
could have happened to someone. The world is a difficult place for women, and
always has been.
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