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#31 | |
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#32 | |
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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. |
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#33 | |
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#34 | |||||
cacoethes scribendi
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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: Quote:
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): Quote:
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And in the last chapter (ch53) we have Grace thinking: Quote:
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). Last edited by gmw; 11-20-2018 at 06:48 AM. |
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#35 |
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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. |
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#36 | |
cacoethes scribendi
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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): Quote:
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#37 |
o saeclum infacetum
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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.
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#38 | |
o saeclum infacetum
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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! |
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#39 |
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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. Last edited by issybird; 11-21-2018 at 09:29 AM. |
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#40 | |
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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. |
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#41 |
o saeclum infacetum
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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.
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#42 | |
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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.) |
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#43 | |
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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? |
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#44 | |
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Well, I suppose as you say
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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. |
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#45 | |
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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. |
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