New Leaf November 2018 Discussion • Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Dr Jordan was in many ways shallow and unlikeable. Mind you, having a mother who goes in for emotional blackmail in every letter she writes to him wouldn't help his relationships with other women I suspect. Mama and her chosen daughter-in-law Faith Cartwright got the better of him in the end.

I found the whole side story of Dr Jordan to be an intrusion, as I really wasn't interested in him, where I was interested in Grace. If she was just playing a part, she clearly did it remarkably well and for a long period of time.

I agree. I’m at about 70% complete now in the hypnosis section. There is just not a lot to like about this character. Sure, he provides a mechanism by which Grace can share her story with the reader, and he is a character through which Atwood can address the mental health science of that era, but still.... Ugh!

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by gmw

I was a bit disappointed that the author didn't to more with Jeremiah/DuPont, but perhaps he served his main purpose by muddying the waters...

I thought the Mary Whitney alter ego theory existed strongly before this scene with Jeremiah/DuPont (in the book, rather than the minds of the characters in the book, if you see my distinction); ...

So I've come away from it thinking that Atwood built the theory and then did almost everything she could to make it ambiguous - and that was the primary role for Jeremiah/DuPont. In a pure fiction story I'd have said it was a waste of a good character, in this ... I still thought it was a waste of a good character.

I agree with the statements about Jeremiah too. He was a much more interesting character. Perhaps because he seemed to have an emotional connection with Grace before the crimes which humanizes the potential muderess. I also think the Mary Whitney alter ego theory was apparent early on.

I read an interview with Atwood in which she said she had an opinion about whether Grace was guilty or innocent, but Atwood was not going to disclose it. She doesn’t want people to know her opinion.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I agree with the statements about Jeremiah too. He was a much more interesting character. Perhaps because he seemed to have an emotional connection with Grace before the crimes which humanizes the potential muderess. I also think the Mary Whitney alter ego theory was apparent early on.

I read an interview with Atwood in which she said she had an opinion about whether Grace was guilty or innocent, but Atwood was not going to disclose it. She doesn’t want people to know her opinion.

That seems sensible of her, given that she has deliberately left it open to the individual reader's interpretation. Her stating what she thought either way would no doubt influence her readers' conclusions.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

That seems sensible of her, given that she has deliberately left it open to the individual reader's interpretation. Her stating what she thought either way would no doubt influence her readers' conclusions.

And would have undone all her hard work in keeping things (mostly) ambiguous in the book.

For the sake of conversation, I'm not going to be bashful. Based only what I've read in Alias Grace (a work that is self-admittedly fictionalised, so my conclusion is worth very little), I think the odds are that Grace was guilty - at least in the case of Nancy Montgomery (that was never actually tried). And I'd put a small amount of money on this being Atwood's conclusion too. I collected the following little snippets in support:

As Grace and McDermott are escaping across the lake (ch39), Grace thinks:

I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed.
It is almost the same as being innocent.

Is this not tacit admission that she is not innocent?

The person (still living at the time of the book) in the best position to assess Grace soon after the events was MacKenzie the defence lawyer. Yes, he may be as prejudiced as any other man of his time, but there are no better choices. When questioned by Dr Jordan about the Nancy Montgomery case (ch45):

‘But in your opinion, [Grace] was innocent,’ says Simon.
‘On the contrary,’ says MacKenzie. He sips at his sherry, wipes his lips daintily, smiles a smile of gentle reminiscence. ‘No. In my opinion, she was guilty as sin.’

When Grace is considering a Keepsake Album (ch46), she thinks:

But what should a Keepsake Album be? Should it be only the good things in your life, or should it be all of the things? Many put in pictures of scenes and events they have never witnessed, such as Dukes and Niagara Falls, which to my mind is a sort of cheating. Would I do that? Or would I be truthful to my own life.
A piece of coarse cotton, from my Penitentiary nightdress. A square of bloodstained petticoat. A strip of kerchief, white with blue flowers. Love-in-a-mist

I can't help but think that that strip of kerchief, being "truthful to my own life", is an admission that she helped kill Nancy.

And in the last chapter (ch53) we have Grace thinking:

It is not the culprits who need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones who cause all the trouble.

That seems an unexpected thought for an innocent person to have had, but an unsurprising thought for a guilty person.


I wouldn't like to hang anyone on the evidence above, but those items tip the balance for me, as far as what I read in the book.

ETA: And I mean really guilty - not "guilty but excused because the balance of her mind was disturbed" (or whatever the phrasing should be).

[Bookpossum]

Excellent points gmw! That first item in particular seems to indicate she was involved and she knew it, ie the action was done by Grace rather than by an alter ego. On the other hand, was she feeling guilty by association and subsequent actions, such as not seeking help from the butcher when he came?

I think Atwood steered a very skilful course in leaving us with doubts even at the end.

[gmw]

Yes, I agree Bookpossum, there seems little doubt that Grace had real reasons for feeling guilty even if she was not directly involved in the murders.

I think adding the Mary alter ego was a clever choice, by the author. Aside from being an interesting and seemingly credible - but also controversial - explanation in its own right, it provides explanations for small slips like those I quoted. According to Wikipedia's article on Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities):

The primary identity, which often has the patient's given name, tends to be "passive, dependent, guilty and depressed" with other personalities being more active, aggressive or hostile, and often containing a current time line that lacks childhood memory.

This description would seem able to explain all my little snippets, above, and blow my theory out of the water. It might be interesting to look at the original source material and see how closely DID seems to fit the raw facts ... but for now my overall impression remains as it was: guilty.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Atwood suggests that things got out of his control when Grace was hypnotised.

Did you find that section of the book persuasive? I thought it quite a neat explanation of how things had happened, as I mentioned above.

I thought it a neat explanation; however, I doubted that Grace's contemporaries would find it at all exculpatory, but it seems they did so.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

So I've come away from it thinking that Atwood built the theory and then did almost everything she could to make it ambiguous - and that was the primary role for Jeremiah/DuPont. In a pure fiction story I'd have said it was a waste of a good character, in this ... I still thought it was a waste of a good character.

As with Bookpossum, I thought it a shame Grace didn't take him up on his offer. I think that's also a comment on Victorian mores especially as regards women, an essential passivity and unwillingness as well as inability to break out of social constraints. A book about Jeremiah would have been more interesting!

Originally Posted by gmw

Spoiler:

The Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, does an effective job of describing how inmates become institutionalised - even to the extent of committing new crimes so as to be returned to the life they know.

On one level Grace appears to skip a lot of that, but then she has been being brought out of prison to interact with non-prisoners at the Governor's home, so this may have protected from the effect - to some extent.

When they first spoke of Grace going to New York I assumed New York City, and could imagine this would be a huge change for Grace and very difficult to adapt to. Then realising they meant a rural setting it seemed an ideal solution for her, with the possible downside of reminding her of Richmond Hill. Finding out that Jamie Walsh was rescuing her, and was apparently not at all concerned about marrying a murderess ... it felt like too much to credit.

Grace made enough tangential comments about Jamie that I knew there had to be a payoff, eventually. Like you, it doesn't mean I bought it, though.

I recently finished a very good novel myself where the protagonist, having come to the end of her resources and committed a murder, waited for the authorities to come and take care of her. I think it also ties back to Victorian times and why the workhouses were so very horrible; so no one would be tempted to go there unless they truly were at the end. The extremely demeaning and ungenerous attitude of the privileged and powerful, of course!

[issybird]

I think the problem of innocence involves both the moral and legal concepts, which are different matters. One can be innocent in one and not the other.

And on an entirely different issue, one of my dissatisfactions with the book involved motifs where I didn't see the point or find them successful. Upthread, I said that I thought the frequent references to blowing veils and cloths as well as tree limbs could have involved hanging. Of course it also referenced the notion of concealment. That was fine.

However, there was a persistent water motif and frankly, it beats the heck out of me. I won't give my very long list of water references but only cite a few: Grace as fish (and Simon as angler), her mother's internment at sea, the baby snatched out of the river, Simon's dream of walking down the corridor to plunge into the sea, the woman on the cliff, crossing the water three times.... And then there's Dr. Jordan's name itself. What does that particular river mean in this context?*

I'm asking because I couldn't come up with a good explanation for this and ended up ascribing it to the same motivation that gave us such tedious detail about life in a Victorian house: because Atwood wanted to and not because it served a real purpose.

*I did wonder if this could be a tangential reference to the famous neurologist Dr. W.H.R. Rivers who treated shellshock victims during the Great War; I think that's reaching a bit but not impossible.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by darryl

@Bookpossum. Full marks for trying to get some discussion going. Everything you say about the various themes is true. But personally I think that they have been so done to death that I am totally bored with most of them. Their relevance must surely lie in what lessons they have for today. And the themes in this book seem to have only marginal relevance. They are useful as a reminder of how much progress we have made, as well as a warning of what can happen again, and indeed continues to happen in much of our modern world.

I think the concept of a Victorian novel written from a 20th/21st century perspective is quite intriguing and has much to recommend it. Victorian novels are great reads in themselves and illuminating about the human condition. I cannot agree that the great themes relating to the human condition have been, or can be, done to death. Whether or not they're done successfully is a different matter.

The modern perspective is important because a novel that was just a pastiche wouldn't work, in part because of what we bring to it and in part because it would be impossible for the author successfully to immerse himself in the Victorian era to the entire exclusion of our own. The 19th century setting is important, though, and two reasons in particular occur to me. Part of it is the plottiness which requires length and which modern novels of the high-concept variety don't lend themselves to. And part of it, frankly, is the lack of technology. Railroads, steamships and a reliable post are about the extent of it; even the telegram is pushing things a bit. It's akin to writing golden age mysteries in the age of cellphones. No classic plot would stand up to that.

I have mixed feelings about "lessons" from literature. Mostly I just want a good story. Part of that is accuracy and insight into the human condition which can enrich one's understanding, but once I'm supposed to be learning something my eyes glaze over. Didacticism is to be avoided at all costs.

[issybird]

OK, here's a thought on water: could it have implied tides and a women's menstrual cycle? Tying into specifically women's issues including hysteria? At that, people still invoke "raging hormonal imbalances" to justify keeping women out of positions of power.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by issybird

OK, here's a thought on water: could it have implied tides and a women's menstrual cycle? Tying into specifically women's issues including hysteria? At that, people still invoke "raging hormonal imbalances" to justify keeping women out of positions of power.

I had vaguely noticed the many references to water, but not lined them up, as it were, to realise just how many there were. Thinking about it now (thank you issybird) I see the link with death which appears all through western literature at least.

Crossing the Jordan of course, the river Styx, a dead person buried with a coin to give the ferryman. (On a personal note, I remember that when my father was dying, he tried to get out of bed because he said he had to cross over the water. So the literary/mythological references appear to have arisen from something deep within ourselves.)

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

I had vaguely noticed the many references to water, but not lined them up, as it were, to realise just how many there were. Thinking about it now (thank you issybird) I see the link with death which appears all through western literature at least.

Crossing the Jordan of course, the river Styx, a dead person buried with a coin to give the ferryman. (On a personal note, I remember that when my father was dying, he tried to get out of bed because he said he had to cross over the water. So the literary/mythological references appear to have arisen from something deep within ourselves.)

While I agree with you, the problem for me is that I don't see how it's especially germane to this particular story. It's an instance where I think Atwood did it because she could, but there's nothing behind it. Given the times and the context, death in itself wasn't a huge signifier.

Other possible interpretations of Jordan: someone changeable, moving, "as weak as water." But they don't really work, especially in the context of a time of religious religious revival; there's no sense of crossing the Jordan to the promised land. Or perhaps there is; from Grace's POV, was Dr. Jordan the river she had to navigate to get to freedom?

[Bookpossum]

Well, I suppose as you say

Atwood did it because she could.

My interpretation is probably too obvious because of course the story is full of various deaths, not only the two murders at its centre. Perhaps Grace is a person surrounded by the deaths of others, and the question is whether she is responsible for any of them.

It could be to do with moving through life towards something: in Grace's case, towards freedom. Dr Jordan certainly seemed for a time to offer her best chance to achieve that.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Well, I suppose as you say My interpretation is probably too obvious because of course the story is full of various deaths, not only the two murders at its centre. Perhaps Grace is a person surrounded by the deaths of others, and the question is whether she is responsible for any of them.

It could be to do with moving through life towards something: in Grace's case, towards freedom. Dr Jordan certainly seemed for a time to offer her best chance to achieve that.

I'm getting a little impatient with Atwood over this; I understand that she didn't want to pass judgment on Grace's innocence or guilt, in fact that's the whole story, but I think she was too prone to be suggestive without payoff.

Crossing a river to freedom also calls up the suggestion of Eliza escaping to Ohio, and in the context of this book there's a former slave now that slavery is no longer legal in Canada in addition to the imminent American Civil War. But too much of it is unearned, IMO.