It’s been a while, but I’m back. I have, these summer holidays, been puzzling over Alias Grace. I have selected it as a Lit text for VCE Literature this year, and I must say that perhaps the strongest sentiment I’m feeling in response to the novel is one of bewilderment. There is absolutely nothing definitive, conclusive, or unequivocal about this text, and after recoiling from my laptop every time I went near it over the last month of blissful relaxation, I confess that I’m a bit rusty on the old keyboard. But here goes….
Passage Analysis – pp5-7
Disarmingly, Grace Marks’ first-person account of her story begins with a description of ‘red peonies’ coming ‘up through the loose gravel’. Establishing the role of peonies in this work of historical fiction as a residual visual motif linking the events of 1843 with the present, the initial reference in the first passage is puzzling. The contrasting allusion to the ‘white peonies that Nancy’ cuts the first day Grace comes to work for Mr Kinnear at his Richmond Hill estate draws attention to the inconclusiveness of a story where the pardoning of Grace Marks in 1872 for her role in the double murder of Mr Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery in 1843 does little to assuage the ambivalence surrounding her guilt. Evoking vitality, the red buds of Grace’s hallucination swell and ‘open’ before falling ‘to the ground’, belying an undercurrent of passion absent from the voice of a storyteller who intones moderation and poise. Moreover, the intentionality of Grace’s narration further complicates the overarching story and its reliability. Later, once the routine of telling her story to Dr Jordan in the Governor’s parlour has been established, the protagonist reveals to an unnamed audience her curatorial role in embellishing it for his benefit, surmising that his gift of a radish must be reciprocated with a story that is ‘interesting..and rich in detail’ (286), rupturing just as she garners rapport, the story itself and its believability.
Playing on the Victorian’s fascination with dreams and neuro-hypnotism, Atwood infuses Grace Mark’s narrative with somnambulistic re-enactments of the murder scene, all the while dismissing the conclusiveness of such elaborate reimaginings. The transposition of the impressionistic image of the white peonies that Nancy picks from Mr Kinnear’s Richmond Hill garden into red peonies seems to be a symbolic rejection of guilt and remorse. However, whether the absence of guilt is reflective of innocence or is perhaps more demonstrative of a pathologically disturbed mind is also impossible to gauge. Premising in the opening lines the ambiguity of Grace Marks’ status as a ‘murdereress’, the ensuing dream that seemingly bears the soul of Grace Marks is layered with many interpretive possibilities. The fleeting allusion to sinfulness, implied in reference to the ‘envy’ Grace attributes to her feelings about Nancy’s earrings, infers guilt, as does Nancy’s appeal for ‘mercy’, whilst the inclination to ‘run for help this time’ becomes a fantastical reimagining of Grace’s role as an accomplice and a desire to undo what has been done. Beginning in the middle of the story, this central constituent part binds the remaining parts of her tale as Grace Marks confesses that ‘this is what I told Dr. Jordan, when we came to that part of the story’.
What Grace tells Dr Jordan it seems, is not the entire story, nor even perhaps, the true story. The fluctuating transition from a dream-like state to a state of heightened sensory awareness further destabilises the plausibility of Grace Marks’ testimony and indeed elicits uncertainty about the sanity of the protagonist. Discriminating between past and present, in the opening passage, the converging of memories of Nancy’s murder with the factual details of her circumstance ‘It’s 1851. I’ll be twenty-four years old next birthday’, presents a protagonist whose sanity is validated then questioned. Accentuating her status as a convicted felon, the astuteness of Grace’s revelation that she is a ‘model prisoner’ confirms her assiduity and counters an assessment of Marks as a deranged mad woman. Cognisant of the role she must play in order for them to ‘let me go’, the simile ‘dangling’ over the ‘edge of a bridge’ illuminates the ‘strength’ required to be ‘quiet and good’, conveying a cunningness that once more, insinuates the murderess’s guilt.
