Quote:
Originally Posted by CharredScribe
I think Atwood captures well the fascination society has with women who are believed to have committed murders. Murders committed by men seem almost humdrum, unless they are extraordinary in some way. This dovetails nicely with the themes of religious panic, in which 'fallen' women are fodder for people prone to fevered paroxysms about the imminent downfall of society.
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I think both of these points are well taken. I can't remember if it's been mentioned that the setting was during two periods of religious revival North America; the murders took place during one and the campaign to free Grace during the second. Upstate New York as noted in the text was a particular hotbed. Spiritualism in particular would continue to recur, notably and naturally after the American Civil War and the Great War.
One wonders about the nature of Simon's injury and to what extent it was physiological and to what extent psychological? In a way,
Alias Grace is the flip side of
Handmaid's Tale, a regiment of women, or else it speaks to society's tendency to overreact to the zeitgeist, whatever it be.