Club Protocol Release: Alias Grace KINDLE MOBI Atwood, Margaret H.A.

(Link to an article on the story behind Alias Grace: http://www.thewhig.com/2012/07/03/murderess-or-pawn )
Based on a true murder case committed in 1843, Margaret Atwood's ALIAS GRACE is a complex and beautifully written novel AND my personal favourite of all her fictions. The real Grace Marks was the first woman in Canada to be declared criminally insane, and so Atwood's fictional tale is partly told in an asylum (where Grace was trotted out to be viewed by curious and paying "asylum tourists!) to a young doctor who is interested in insanity and memory loss.
Grace's story unfolds in her own words, from her poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland and the emigration voyage that killed her mother, leaving her and her younger siblings to a neglectful father, through her short life as a servant, to the dreadful events of 1843. She has suffered many losses, including the death of her mother to ship fever, and that of her friend and fellow servant, Mary Whitney, from an illegally procured abortion. Grace finds wisdom and strength from several people, ironically each as powerless as she: Jeremiah, a gypsy-peddler-turned-charlatan who dabbles in hypnotism; the philosophical Mary Whitney, whose demise is based on a real case, and even the flute-playing Jamie Walsh, whose jealous betrayal sends Grace to prison, and whose remorse ultimately contributes to her belated redemption.
For students assigned this novel, the pre-Freudian psychoanalytical concepts involving memory, dreams, and unarticulated but well-developed transference and counter-transference are of particular interest, as is the subtextual story of the lives of women in the "man's world" of the mid-1800's, of the limited opportunities and rights of undereducated immigrant women in a class-conscious society, as well as the female metaphors of blood, flowers, and the "patches and threads" of quilting as metaphors for women's lives (particularly when seen through the obliterating glass of patriarchal history). Of further interest is Atwood's narrative style itself; Grace's story is related on several levels: chronologically, through her recollections; retrospectively, through the doctor's thoughts and actions; and medically, through his letters and reports by other observers.
To summarize, Alias Grace stands out as a novel which can be read both for pleasure and information, as well as for serious study, and, to reiterate, is in my opinion the best of Atwood's novels.



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