Alias Grace is Margaret Atwood's first novel-length foray into historical fiction. However, it has a lot in common with her first speculative novel, The Handmaid's Tale, since both are primarily about incarcerated women. Alias Grace is inspired by the true story of a 16-year-old housemaid, Grace Marks, accused of murdering the head housekeeper and their employer, with the help of another servant. There was much doubt about her guilt, raised in part by Grace's own conflicting accounts. While the male servant was found guilty and hanged for the murder of the employer, Grace's own death sentence was converted to life in prison, and she was pardoned much later.
**My thoughts on Alias Grace are primarily about an important plot twist, so just skip this post if you don't want to know the crucial reveal.**
First, the title is a spoiler once you reach this turning point. During a hypnosis session, Grace speaks with a different voice and claims to be her dead friend Mary Whitney. It would appear that Mary committed the murders, which would account for Grace's fainting fits and her claims to remember nothing of the crimes. So the title would mean that in addition to Grace using Mary's name as an alias during her brief time on the lam, Mary used Grace's body to commit the murder of housekeeper Nancy Montgomery.
The slippery part that Atwood leaves unresolved is whether the hypnosis session is authentic. Is Grace actually suffering from dissociative identity disorder, formerly referred to as multiple personality disorder? Does she really harbor Mary Whitney as an alternate personality? This illness usually comes about after serious trauma. Was waking up with Mary dead next to her after her failed abortion sufficient trauma to cause Grace's personality to split? Charis in The Robber Bride also has a split personality, but hers is a reaction to incestuous rape, which is a more usual triggering factor.
Another possibility is that Grace and Jeremiah the peddler aka Dr Jerome Dupont (another alias), the supposed hypnotist, cooked up this scheme together. He is an experienced mountebank. He knew Mary and much of what she and Grace went through, so he could have coached Grace to pretend to be Mary and lay the blame on her. He seems genuinely surprised and shaken during the session, but we know he is a good actor.
A third possibility is Reverend Verringer's immediate diagnosis, that Grace is possessed. In this case, the novel slides from historical fiction into supernatural fantasy. The explanation would be that when Mary died, Grace did not know about the superstition which says to open a window, and so Mary's soul was trapped in the room with Grace, and occupied her body. The novel is full of such superstitions and omens, as is often the case in Atwood's writing. For example, Cat's Eye brushes up against this type of religious fantasy, when Elaine believes that the Virgin Mary has rescued her from her bullies.
Atwood does not purport to resolve this historical mystery, but she does introduce a fascinating wrinkle: what if this famous case of amnesia was actually a case of dissociative identity disorder? This disorder was discussed at the time, as Atwood affirms in the afterword. She will go on to incorporate historical fiction into her next novel, and first Booker winner, The Blind Assassin. Stay tuned!
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