Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace re-imagines the sensational murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery, which occurred in 1843. The story revolves around Grace Marks, the house servant convicted of the murders, along with her alleged accomplice, John McDermott, who was hanged for the crime. The novel is driven by the same sensationalism that created fascination and uproar among the public and in the newspapers: was Grace Marks in fact guilty of murder?

When the novel begins, Grace has been in prison for 8 years. She’s served time in the penitentiary, an insane asylum, and back again, and now works as a servant for the wife of the prison Governor, who is part of a committee working to have Grace exonerated. An American doctor, Simon Jordan, studying in the field of human mental illness (although then it was referred to simply as insanity), is entreated by the group to study Grace in hopes of producing proof of her innocence.

Dr. Jordan is perhaps a good representative of doctors at the time. He is familiar with the small amount of research available on the human mind, acknowledges there is still much to be discovered, and hopes to uncover some of the mysteries himself, thereby making his name in the world. Also, like many doctors at the time, he is not to be trusted.

The only first person account, other than letters, is that of Grace Marks. Grace fears doctors, with good reason, and so does not trust Dr. Jordan. And neither does the reader. As Grace relates her life story, working up to the time of the murders, we see Dr. Jordan’s life begin to disintegrate. And because his story is told from the third person omniscient, we see into his mind with perhaps more clarity than we see into Grace’s; for although she gives a first person account, the reader cannot help but question her reliability as a narrator. A deep vein of mystery, questioning, and distrust runs through the novel. The more we see of the minds of the characters, the more disturbing the human psyche becomes. Men in particular as seen as untrustworthy, their sexual appetite overtaking any good character they might posses.

As Grace relates her story, Atwood brings up intruiging questions, that perhaps even today cannot fully be answered. What is insanity? What is it that keeps our own sanity in check? What is the difference between the mind and the soul? These questions are pondered and never fully answered in the book.

My Rating: 5 stars
Re-readability Rating: 4.5 stars