[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

I don't think we have to keep an entirely open mind. With Lizzie Borden, for example, while she was acquitted, I think the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence says she did it. I think as readers we can apply the same standard of "reasonable doubt" that applies in a courtroom. In the end, people tend to get the justice they can afford (see O.J. Simpson, as another example), but I don't feel compelled to say either that Borden and Simpson were judged innocent therefore they were or that we can't know.

I didn't mean to suggest we need to keep an open mind to the extent of denying a mountain of evidence, as the jurors in the O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony trials did. But when we look back a hundred years or so, and think about the vastly different circumstances, prejudices, ingrained beliefs, etc., it's easy to see how people who were not rich, white, privileged males may have been victimized in a system predisposed against them. Especially in an era before DNA and fingerprinting.

(My view: Simpson did it, Anthony did it, Borden probably did it.)

In regard to fictionalization I'm willing to go along with a speculative and/or expanded narrative so long as the known facts aren't altered. In a case like this, of course, it's wide open. But there also seems to be some reaction that Atwood went too far, e.g., Simon's entire involvement and interior monologue and also Jeremiah and Jamie as key elements in the resolution. This goes far beyond the specific whys for Grace. I have no issue with using a known case as a jumping off point, but I think this was too far along the fiction spectrum to justify using real personages.

I don't understand this objection. Would it have changed the book significantly if Atwood had called her characters by different names? I think Atwood would still have declined to pronounce a judgment on her protagonist's guilt or innocence, because that wasn't the story she wanted to tell.

O/T Can't resist commenting on Alice Crimmins; was her pushing for a second trial a sign of innocence or hubris?

I can't see Alice Crimmins as anything but guilty, but that's a visceral reaction, based on being a child when the murders occurred. I can still see in my mind's eye a newspaper photograph of those two little children. As much as I can understand now that Crimmins may well have been hounded and victimized because of her lifestyle, that childhood belief won't go away.