Alias Grace is a novelized version of a completely fictional
attempt to unravel what actually occurred during a factual and later
sensationalized murder that took place not far from Toronto, Ontario, Canada in
1843. Margaret Atwood, the
author, is better known for another novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, about the
future. What unites these two books is an
implicit feminist viewpoint on gendered issues. That is, neither of these books
contains polemics, or rants, or arguments about why the way that gender has
been used is a problem, instead they argue through showing – and this is a
particularly persuasive argument because the reader finds him or herself making
the argument him or herself – not being preached to by an author.
In the process of writing about this book, I will likely do
some of that preaching, so this will be significantly less convincing of the
feminist perspective than the novel.
Also, as a man, I will inevitably note the places where the argument
fell flat. More precisely the spell of
having the reader take on the feminist perspective was broken. For instance, at one point the character who
interviews Grace, whom I will introduce in a moment, is staying at a boarding
house where the hired help has fled for non-payment, the man who owns the house
has fled to drinking and carousing, and the woman who is married to the man who
fled is indisposed, so he is left on his own to attend to the basics of living
for a brief moment. The narrator, who at
this moment is a woman, notes that he is essentially incapable because he has
never had to do various tasks for himself.
This would have been a stronger argument if she were talking
about cooking, but she was talking about sweeping floors and carrying a chamber
pot out to the outhouse and then washing it out. I think the larger point is an important one
that ties the book together – those who are cared for, as the upper crust and
professional class were until modern labor saving devices made that no longer
necessary, were much more dependent on their help than they knew. Heck, that is true today. I was talking with another faculty member
about how clueless we were about the administrative structure necessary to run
a University as students and even as junior faculty members. But my point is that in this moment Atwood’s
attempt to get us to see this wears thin – she points out mechanical aspects
that the caregivers engage in that we could figure out – professors have been
doing their own typing since the advent of quality word processors. On the other hand, we
still haven’t figured out how to recruit, admit, orient, and house the students
who so regularly show up in our classrooms at the beginning of every semester
like clockwork.
At the moment when she points out that character could not
do tasks that were within his means, Atwood is, in my mind, an unreliable
narrator. When we run into an unreliable
narrator, the narrative they are weaving cracks – we begin to question it. We wonder about her motives. At the moment illustrated above, I become
aware of Atwood’s wanting to preach, or, more precisely, to use me as the
instrument of her preaching – to use me, the reader, to do her dirty work. The central protagonist in this novel – Grace
– is, like Atwood at that moment, a highly unreliable narrator.
Grace Marks – a domestic employed by Thomas Kinnear – was found
guilty of murdering Kinnear. Another
domestic in Kinnear's employ, James McDermott, was also found guilty. McDermott, however, was hung and Marks was
not. She was imprisoned and also spent
some time in an asylum, but was ultimately pardoned, released from prison, and
mysteriously ended up in Upstate New York.
Neither McDermott nor Marks were tried for the murder of Nancy
Montgomery, who was also employed by Kinnear and was murdered at the same time
he was. She was, in addition to being
Kinnear's chief housekeeper, his mistress and she was pregnant with his child. McDermott and Marks were not tried for
Montgomery’s murder once they received the death penalty for Kinnear’s murder
as it wasn’t deemed necessary to have multiple death sentences.
With these facts, and the sensationalized and contradictory
accounts from the newspapers, Atwood weaves a tale that asks the question of
whether Marks was guilty of the murders or not.
The foil for determining this is an invented series of conversations
between Marks, who is imprisoned and working for the prison governor as a maid,
and a somewhat lost physician who is the son of an industrialist; Simon Jordan. This is the man I referenced above who was
clueless about how to sweep a floor. His
father’s Massachusetts company has failed and he is having to live on less and
less money. He has decided to come up
with a means of supporting himself by making a name for himself as a
psychiatrist so that he can open a humane asylum and actually cure those who
come to him. Grace is the case that will
make him famous if he can get to the heart of the question about her
guilt.
Charcot demonstrates hypnosis. |
This long novel, then, is dominated by the
pre-psychoanalytic conversation between a naïve, but knowledgeable physician
who, like Freud, is aware of the work of Mesmer and, more importantly, the work
of Martin Charcot – the physician in Paris that Freud studied under and whose work
Freud translated. Charcot was the first successful treater
of hysteria – that vague disorder of women.
Charcot used hypnosis – and Freud started with that, but found it not as
helpful as something else he discovered – the talking cure. A treatment that was invented by another
mentor of his, Joseph Breuer and Breuer’s patient, Bertha Pappenheim. Freud would take this “talking cure” and
refine it into psychoanalysis.
Now at this point, you may think that my psychoanalytic
interests have completely derailed me and that I am making all of this up. Well, that may be. But there is another clue here that might be
helpful. One of the minor but key
characters in this novel, the only person who knows both Grace and Simon Jordan
in their respective homes, is named Dora. Now this is not a common name, but it is the
pseudonym of one of Freud’s five case studies.
It was a case that Freud was proud of because he used his ability to
interpret dreams to “solve” the case, but it was also a case that it took him
five years to publish because it was a failed case. Dora fired Freud. She gave him two weeks’ notice, the same way
that a domestic would give an employer two weeks’ notice. The
Dora in this book is, in fact, a domestic.
She was the domestic who quit working at the house where Simon Jordan
was staying, and she also worked as a domestic at the prison governor’s mansion
alongside Grace and gave her the inside scoop on what this man Jordan, who was so
interested in her, was really like at home.
So, I think we might have an alternate version of the Freud
tale. OK, maybe I’m going over the top,
but Freud’s father was a wool merchant – and Simon Jordan’s father’s failed
industrial venture was a Massachusetts textile mill owner. OK, maybe I’m grasping at straws – or threads
– but this is either an alternate, failed version of Freud’s method that is on
display – or it is a very pointed but very deeply veiled criticism of Freud and
how badly he misunderstood women. And
Dora would be the perfect case to use to point out Freud’s ineptitude when it
comes to women.
Actually, I think this book is taking on something much bigger
than Freud – it is taking on the culture of Canada in the mid to late 1800s –
and the deeply misogynistic and highly class based system that repressed not
just the Grace’s of this world, but also her partner in crime – or the real
criminal – McDermott. But I think it may
well be referencing Freud as an instrument of that culture – something that he
certainly was in the Dora case – at the same time that he was in the process of
upending that culture by listening to women and reporting what they said. Jordan Simon listened, but he never had the courage to report what he heard for fear that he would be laughed out of the profession - something Freud had to face head on.
So, let’s get back to the story. Grace is being interviewed by Simon in the
Governor’s mansion. She is an unreliable
narrator because she remembers too much detail – more than anyone could. She is like Scheherazade, stringing along her
listener and staving off her death by doing that. But she is also unreliable because we can’t
always tell what she is telling her listener and what she is simply
thinking. We don’t know what Simon knows
versus what we know. We know a story
that is too detailed and too clear and too linear to be an organic narrative. We also know things – including dreams about
Simon – but also memories of “dreams” that took place at Kinnear’s home before
the murders – that Grace deliberately withholds from Simon. We also know that Simon thinks that Grace is
withholding things from him, but what he thinks she is withholding is different
than what we have access to – and it isn’t clear to us what he thinks she is
withholding. It seems to me that he
feels she is withholding the key to understanding what goes on in the minds of
women – and that connects up with the idea that Simon may be a stand in for
Freud. As far as we can tell, what we have access to is largely of a piece with what she is telling- except that it hints that she may not be quite as prim as she appears in the tale told to Jordan.
The story of her life that Grace tells is an abysmal one. She is born in Ireland – but she is a
protestant and her grandfather was a minister.
Her mother married a man who drank everything he earned – and her aunt
shipped them off to Canada. Her mother
died on the trip over and Mary was left to look after the brood of kids and to
try to keep a rein on her father. They
were soon ensconced in a boarding house that might as well have been a chicken
coop and she escaped (feeling somewhat guilty about leaving the younger
children behind) to work, at the age of 13, as a live- in maid. Her father agreed to this arrangement because he thought that he would get her wages. He did collect a part for a while, but she soon became independent of him and lost track of him - she was truly on her own in a new world.
At the house where she landed, she was befriended by Mary
Whitney, who also worked there, but Mary was more worldly wise, and Grace learned from her how
the world worked for girls/women like her from Mary. Mary , thought, got herself pregnant by one of the
young masters of the house, but then died when her abortion went horribly
wrong. Grace feared that she wasn’t able
to let Mary’s spirit escape from the room she died by opening a window in time, just
as she had failed to let her mother’s spirit escape from the hold of the ship
they were on when her mother died. Grace
moved from this house to other houses, working for one owner after another who tried to
seduce and/or rape her, but she kept her virtue intact and she ended up working
for Kinnear because she felt befriended by Nancy Montgomery – the housekeeper
and, unbeknownst to her at first, lover of Kinnear.
As we creep more and more slowly towards the murder, we have
been treated to a wealth of details about the social lives of the households of
the professional class in Canada in the 1840s.
And we have been given a sneaky prism through which to view this. Grace is a protestant and the granddaughter
of a minister. She is one of us – the class
of people who read books. But she is
also, by virtue of her father being a n'er do well, a member of the class that does not read books – the Irish Catholics who
were coming from Ireland because of the potato famine and who were seen as not
just being members of a different class, but essentially a different race. We learn just a bit about the recent Canadian troubles
– the revolt of the working class against the landed gentry. McDermott, Grace’s partner in crime – or the
bully who did all the killing and then took her as hostage – was a
revolutionary. Grace is branded a revolutionary by
association at the trial, but that is not the person through whose eyes we
see. We see the inequalities of this
land through the eyes of someone who by all rights could very well be in the
gentry class.
We have been seduced by a Scheherazade who looks and feels
like one of us. And so, when she says
that she didn’t do it – which her story leads us to in the parts that she tells
to an absent Simon Jordan who is off finding objective evidence about what
happened – we believe her. Then when he
returns, and she is interviewed in a hypnotic trance by a peddler that she
previously knew who is now posing as a physician and hypnotist and she reveals to an audience that includes Simon Jordan that Mary
Whitney’s soul traveled into her and performed heinous acts – we believe her.
Grace is guilty – and not guilty – but of what? In both versions of the story, her own and “Mary
Whitney’s”, she did not kill Kinnear; McDermott did that. In her version of the story, McDermott also
killed Nancy, but in Mary’s version, Mary helped McDermott with the final
murder. To be legally minded for a
moment, Mary is not guilty of the only crime that she has been tried for. She may or may not be guilty of the murder of Nancy Montgomery, whose
statute of limitations has likely run out – but no matter – she is innocent. But Simon Jordan does not have a legal mind. He wants to know if she is guilty – and so do
we – but of what?
Mary Whitney’s story fills in blanks in Grace’s story –
particularly those moments when Grace doesn’t remember – or dreams of being
outside and being touched sexually but chastely by McDermott or maybe
Kinnear. In Mary’s version, when Mary is
in control of Grace’s body, she gets Grace to seduce both Kinnear and McDermott
– and puts McDermott up to the crime.
Nancy has decided to fire them both, and Mary eggs McDermott on to
murder them and take the valuables and they can escape to the States
together. In this version, McDermott
must have been confused by the contrast between the lustful and conniving Mary
and the chaste Grace who primly objected to whatever advances he would make.
So, we are asked to choose between two versions of Grace
(who takes the alias Mary Whitney when she runs away from the murder with
McDermott), and to judge her. I think that
if we judge her guilty, it might be as an accessory in the murder of Nancy - which she can't remember, but not of
Kinnear. If we were to judge her
innocent, we could do that by blaming her alter ego or the ghost inside
her of instigating the murders and of having a hand in them - or we could determine that the ghost was a ruse and that her version to Simon and then to us is real, and she was innocent.
But I think that if we do either, we have not gotten
something essential about Grace. Grace –
and the name is no accident – moves through her life – at least as she reports
it – without being buffeted by the currents around her. All the sexism, classism, neglect, and abuse
that she experiences doesn’t alter her essential goodness. But it also leaves her as a character who is
essentially passive. Freud – unlike Simon
Jordan – does not see the women that he meets with as blameless. Dora is, according to Freud, passionately
desirous of all the men in her life – each of whom, including Freud, uses her
to their own ends. Grace, left to her
own devices, and in her own mind, I think like Freud's Dora's view of herself, is innocent – and not, as
Freud would have her be, lusting after the men who are forcing themselves on
her.
Grace – her essence – is blameless in so far as she really
has no interest in the ways of men. She
would, thank you very much, like to lead her own life. She would like to be free to make a quilt –a quilt
pattern adorns each chapter, which is named after that quilt pattern. She would like to stitch a life of her own
making, but she is not free to do that.
I think that Atwood is encouraging us to create a world where Grace
could become who it is that she is. I
think. Perhaps the greatest feat of this
book is that Grace – and Atwood – can be guessed at, but not known. I think that Atwood would have us not be able
to assign guilt – or Grace, but instead to be stumped by this mystery.
And that, I think, may help understand the power of this
book. The essence of it is that Grace
remains unknown, despite the best efforts of others. The tragedy, too, is that she remains
unknown. If knowing another is to love
them – and loving requires a reciprocal engagement with the other – a process
of getting to know each other, perhaps Grace’s strength is to resist being known by
those who would force themselves upon her.
In a world where love is, perversely, seen as taking knowledge of
another from them – either through raping them or through interviewing them to
get at their secret – she avoids the degradation that both would subject her
to.
Simon Jordan is not so lucky. He is seduced, essentially against his will,
by the woman who is boarding him. He is
known by her and gets to know her – but the knowing is false and shopworn. He desires to know and be known by
Grace. But he does not have the tools,
nor do they have the platform, from which to get to know each other. He ends up feeling isolated and alienated within the context of a
non-loving erotic relationship – and this ends up being his fate in the
afterward of the book.
The cost for Grace is that she remains unknown. When she is finally pardoned, she is shipped
to Upstate New York to become the mail order bride of the boy from the next
farm over from Kinnear’s who had a crush on her, but then betrayed her at her
trial. She forgives him and they
marry. But what gets her husband horny
are tales of her mistreatment in prison.
He is in love with having saved her – but still not with her. She is a morally superior being – consistent with
her tale of innocence, but an unknown one – the cost of being the virgin (vs.
the whore, in the age old dichotomy).
Women are, in this book, the stronger sex. They endure more, they survive – Grace is the
only one left standing, along with the boy next door – from the Kinnear
household, which she notes (including the boy next door) early in the
text. She also remains intact, which
Simon Jordan does not. Guilty or not,
she survives – and, in the bleak world depicted in this text, that is an
accomplishment.
To access a narrative description of other posts on this site, link here. For a subject based index, link here.
To subscribe to posts (which occur 2-3 times per month), just enter your email in the subscribe by email box to the right of the text.
Interesting to read a perspective from one of Jordan's tribe--a peak into how the other half (or 20 %)thinks.
ReplyDeleteI think that Jordan embodies some very important aspects of my tribe - especially us male members of that tribe. I find myself wanting to distance myself from your characterization of me as a member of his tribe, but I think you are onto something. I think Jordan's wish to help, and his inability to connect is not an unusual stalemate position that emerges in men's treatment of women. I think that Atwood is sensitive both to the mistreatment of women - which is central in the book - but also to the ways in which naive attempts to bridge the gaps between us leave us dissatisfied and underscore our isolation.
ReplyDelete