Alias Grace

“…Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word – musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.” 

Grace is somewhat titillated by her own infamy, seeming to relish it. This passage also supports a view that her personality is somewhat melodramatic and hysterical, though also imaginative and creative.

“I think of all the things that have been written about me - that I am inhuman female demon, that I am an innocent victim of a blackguard forced against my will and in danger of my own life, that I was too ignorant to know how to act and that to hang me would be judicial murder, that I am fond of animals, that I am very handsome with a brilliant complexion, that I have blue eyes, that I have green eyes, that I have auburn and also have brown hair, that I am tall and also not above the average height, that I am well and decently dressed, that I robbed a dead woman to appear so, that I am brisk and smart about my work, that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper, that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station, that I am a good girl with a pliable nature and no harm is told of me, that I am cunning and devious, that I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot. And I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once?” 

Grace describes her difficulty in understanding and defining her identity. She literally does not know who she is because she cannot remember what she has done. These conflicting views, imposed on her from the outside, complicate and confuse her own process of growth and self-identification. It is important to remember that Grace is barely sixteen years old when the murders occur; she certainly is not an adult.

“It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor’s wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.”

Grace displays her wit here, as she herself figures prominently in the Governor’s wife’s scrapbook. The Governor’s wife keeps a scrapbook of famous criminals and the reporting about them. Grace highlights the hypocrisy of a system that forces Christianity and the Bible upon the inmates, while the Bible contains many violent and bloodthirsty crimes. With Grace’s intelligence, the irony is not lost upon her.

“This is what really interests them – the gentlemen and ladies both. They don’t care if I killed anyone, I could have cut dozens of throats, it’s only what they admire in a soldier, they’d scarcely blink. No: was I really a paramour, is their chief concern, and they don’t even know themselves whether they want the answer to be no or yes.” 

Grace here comments on the prurient, hypocritical nature of the interest in her case. The murders, the blood, and the violence hardly disturb anyone. It’s the sex that they are really interested in knowing about. Did she have an affair with McDermott? Mr. Kinnear? Both?

“Where there's a doctor it's always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows.” 

Early in the novel, Grace explains her fear of doctors. The reader later learns that the ship’s doctor can do nothing to help save her mother and her mother dies. A doctor murders Mary Whitney. Grace has no trust or belief in the helpfulness or usefulness of doctors.

“Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a different direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.” 

Grace explains what it’s like to “go mad,” clearly speaking from experience. She has fits of hysteria, fainting, and amnesia when traumatic events occur. What she describes here also resembles the modern psychological notion of “dissociation.” This is an early hint that Grace does suffer from some sort of mental illness and that she is aware of it. This is also a foreshadowing of the conclusion of the novel, when, during the hypnotic session, Mary Whitney “takes over” Grace’s body and claims that she killed Nancy Montgomery. This “confession” absolves Grace of responsibility and solves the mystery of where Grace’s memories of the murders have gone. However, this quotation reveals that Grace knows more about madness and herself than she ever tells Simon.

“While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.”

But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It's like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but ripe and splitting open of its own accord.

And inside the peach there's a stone.” 

Grace describes the therapeutic process and its effect on her. At the beginning of her sessions with Simon, Grace describes becoming more comfortable with talking to him and sharing information about her life. The process, his genuine interest in her and her thoughts, is having a strong effect on her, even though she hides this from Simon. She is opening up to him, like the ripe peach. Furthermore, this passage creates a powerful metaphor for the psyche, or consciousness, with its many layers.

“The door of Reverend Verringer’s impressive manse is opened by an elderly  female with a face like a pine plank; the Reverend is unmarried, and has need of an irreproachable housekeeper. Simon is ushered into the library. It is so self-consciously the right sort of library that he has an urge to set fire to it.” 

Simon enters the Reverend’s house, and Simon is prepared to dislike him as a pretentious colonial bore. Simon thinks of himself as very worldly; as such he is not religious, or even a believer. He also has no patience for the social pretenses of others, such as the Reverend displays in his choice of housekeeper and his library. However, the Reverend is the head of the Committee trying to get Grace pardoned, and Simon’s boss, so polite social intercourse is the price that must be paid. Simon finds a very different sort of man than he expected, for Rev. Verringer is ambitious and intelligent.

“It was knowledge [women] craved; yet they could not admit to craving it, because it was forbidden knowledge—knowledge with a lurid glare to it; knowledge gained through a descent into the pit. He has been where they could never go, seen what they could never see; he has opened up women’s bodies, and peered inside. In his hand, which has just raised their own hands towards his lips, he may once have held a beating female heart.” 

Simon here thinks about women’s reactions to him as a medical doctor. They seem to want to confide in him and ask him questions about their ailments and bodies. Questions that are not proper for them to ask, but they are curious about what is happening to them. He is very comfortable with his superior knowledge.

“She [Grace’s mother] was a timid creature, hesitating and weak and delicate, which used to anger me. I wanted her to be stronger, so I would not have to be so strong myself.” 

Grace here describes her mother. Watching her mother be bullied by her aunt and her father makes Grace want to be a strong person; however, Grace wanted her mother to stand up for herself and for her children. Because of her mother’s weakness, Grace essentially had no childhood. From a very young age, Grace had to care for her younger siblings. Her mother was too weak, sick, and busy being pregnant or recovering from pregnancies to be a real mother to any of her children. Though her mother’s many pregnancies and her pathetic death are a lesson to Grace, Grace did not have a mother who taught her how to survive or the things that a mother should teach her children. Grace is very aware of what she did not have.

“[W]hy is it that women have chosen to sew such flags, and then to lay them on the tops of beds? For they make the bed the most noticeable things in a room. And then I have thought, it’s for a warning. Because you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed. ” 

The bright red and orange colors of the quilts at Alderman Parkinson’s remind Grace of flags used by armies going to war, so Grace imagines women sew these colorful quilts to draw attention what happens in beds, as a caution. Grace reminds Simon that beds are dangerous places for women. They conceive babies and give birth to them, and frequently they die or the babies die in bed. Grace clearly associates war with sex and reproduction. Both result in death and destruction. Grace must be thinking in particular of her mother and Mary Whitney, as well as Nancy Montgomery.

“And the other quilt was called Attic Windows; it had a great many pieces, and if you looked at it one way it was closed boxes, and when you looked at it another way the boxes were open, the I supposed the closed boxes were the attics and the open ones were the windows; and that is the same with all quilts, you can see them two different ways, by looking at the dark pieces, or else the light.” 

Grace here describes a way of looking at quilts that is a metaphor for looking at her personality. Seen in one light, she is an evil demon or murderess; in another light, she is a victim of circumstances beyond her control and not responsible. Both the light and dark pieces are necessary to make a whole pattern or a whole quilt; the quilt pattern cannot exist without both, and the light and the dark depend on each other’s existence to create a meaningful whole. Grace is telling Simon, unconsciously, that he cannot have the light without the dark sides of her. She is both. 

“For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.”

Grace speaks specifically about Alderman Parkinson’s son. A spoiled young man, he is the father of Mary’s baby, though Grace has no absolute proof of this. Generally, she means that people take their positions and their privileges for granted, expecting that the world will continue to favor them. She is proven right by Simon himself, in his escape from Kingston and from his obligations to Mrs. Humphrey.

“What mysteries remain to be revealed in the nervous system, that web of structures both material and ethereal, that network of threads that runs throughout the body, composed of a thousand Ariadne’s clues, all leading to the brain, that shadowy central den where the human bones lie scattered and the monsters lurk…” 

Simon thinks to himself as he walks home after Grace tells him about Mary Whitney’s death. He considers his medical training as a surgeon, which was trying to teach him to be objective rather than compassionate and caring about his patients. He cannot help but feel haunted by the story of Mary Whitney’s horrible death. Especially after an emotional story such as that one, he cannot bring himself to reduce human life to only the flesh and bone he learned about in medical school. For him, all of the interesting mysteries of life are contained in the human mind, and in the interaction between the nerves and tissues and whatever animates them. This quotation is a departure from Simon’s typical self-absorbed behavior.

“He feels as if he’s been ambushed by a flowering shrub.” 

Lydia convinces Simon to speak at the Tuesday circle, and later at home he marvels at his foolishness. His metaphor for her, a shrub, indicates that he equates her with plant life. She has no intellect and no use other than to be ornamental—pretty to look at and nice smelling. His sense of surprise is revealed that a mere shrub could “ambush” him. Simon has similar beliefs about all of the women in his social group. That they are pure but uninteresting, beautiful and sexually exciting, but not challenging. They are not on his level. He believes himself superior to them, and his ego is his undoing.

“What did you do every day?

Oh, the usual, Sir, I say. I performed my duties.

You will forgive me, says Simon. Of what did those duties consist?

I look at him. He is wearing a yellow cravat with small white squares, he is not making a joke. He really does not know. Men such as him do not have to clean up the messes they make, but we have to clean up our own messes, and theirs into the bargain. In that way they are like children, they do not have to think ahead, or worry about the consequences of what they do. But it's not their fault, it is only how they are brought up.” 

Grace explains a significant difference between both men and women, and women of her class versus men of Simon’s class. Simon lives in a world where he does not need to think about cleaning, cooking, food, or making his own clothing. Everything is done for him. Working-class men too have women, their wives or daughters or mothers, to clean up after them, just as upper-class men do. Men, particularly upper-class men, do not live in the same reality that women or servants do.

“I had now been a servant for three years, and could act the part well enough by that time. But Nancy was very changeable, two-faced you might call her, and it wasn't easy to tell what she wanted from one hour to the next. One minute she would be up on her high horse and ordering me about and finding fault, and the next minute she would be my best friend, or pretend to be, and would put her arm through mine, and say I looked tired, and should sit down with her, and have a cup of tea. It is much harder to work for such a person, as just when you are curtsying and Ma'am-ing them, they turn around and upbraid you for being so stiff and formal, and want to confide in you, and expect the same in return. You cannot ever do the correct thing with them.” 

Grace tells Simon about her discovery, within days of starting work at Mr. Kinnear’s, that Nancy was not going to be her true friend like Mary Whitney was. Further, Nancy is mercurial, moody, and untrustworthy. Those qualities are the opposite of the loyal and caring Mary’s personality.

“…I said to myself that if you could not get Divine Grace by praying for it, or any other way, or ever know if you had it or not, then you might as well forget about the whole matter, and go about your own business, because whether you would be damned or saved was no concern of yours.” 

Grace describes her reaction to the preaching at the Richmond Hill church, giving insight into her character. Grace displays her usual common sense and practicality. If you cannot ensure salvation by anything that you do, then why worry about it? This is Grace’s reaction to most things beyond her control.

“They are hypocrites, they think the Church is a cage to keep God in, so he will stay locked up there and not go wandering about the earth during the week, poking his nose into their business, and looking in the depths and darkness and doubleness of their hearts, and their lack of true charity; and they believe they need only be bothered about him on Sundays when they have their best clothes on and their faces straight, and their hands washed and their gloves on, and their stories all prepared.” 

Grace is shocked and angry at how she and Nancy are treated at church. She does not understand why they are shunned. Grace also demonstrates her deep understanding of human nature, particularly people’s general social hypocrisy. Though their neighbor’s lives are certainly not spotless, Grace senses that she and Nancy are being judged and found wanting somehow.

“But then I head the neighing of a horse; and it came to me that this was not Charley, nor the colt in the barn, but a different horse altogether. A great fear came over me, and my body went entirely cold, and I stood as if paralyzed with fear; for I knew that the horse was not earthly horse, but the pale horse that will be sent at the Day of Reckoning, and the rider of it is Death; and it was Death himself who stood behind me, with his arms wrapped around me as tights as iron bands, and his lipless mouth kissing my neck as if in love. But as well as the horror, I also felt a strange longing.”

Graces tells Simon about her sleepwalking in her dream. A man approaches her and embraces her from behind; she doesn’t know who it is: Jeremiah the peddler, James McDermott, or Mr. Kinnear. This is the story that Grace gives Simon in thanks for the radish. She deliberately embroiders this story for maximum impact, well aware of the effect it will have on Simon; this is exactly the kind of thing he’s most interested in. Here Grace demonstrates her powers of imagination and dramatic storytelling, as well as her propensity for a touch of religious mania, where Death riding the pale horse of the apocalypse kisses her in Mr. Kinnear’s yard.  

“[T]hey are entering the forest of amnesia, where things have lost their names. . . . Anything she says now may be a clue; any gesture; any twitch. She knows; she knows. She may not know that she knows, but buried deep within her, the knowledge is there” 

Simon describes their journey through Grace’s life using the metaphor of a forest for her amnesia. Aptly, this metaphor applies to his own life: he seems lost in a forest of his own, wandering without direction. Optimistically and perhaps from his therapeutic experience, he senses that Grace knows more than she has said. He hopes that she will trust him enough, or simply trip herself up, and reveal the truth. Because all of the root vegetables he has brought to stimulate her memory and the required associative links have failed to garner a single admission or significant connection to her past, Simon realizes that he will have to be alert to catch whatever clues Grace reveals. He knows better by now than to hope that she will openly confess or reveal anything without choosing to. The knowledge may be there, but the trick will be to get her to reveal it. Simon rather naively supposes that she will simply tell him what happened in her narrative, whether by word, gesture, or fainting fit.

“Soon it will be daybreak. Soon the day will break. I can't stop it from breaking in the same way it always does, and then from lying there broken; always the same day, which comes around again like clockwork. It begins with the day before the day before, and then the day before, and then it's the day itself. A Saturday. The breaking day. The day the butcher comes.” 

Grace doesn’t know what she will tell Simon about the day the murders happened, which is a Saturday. She says that she has no memory of the murders, and Simon aims to help her remember, in order to either confirm her guilt or innocence. Here her sense of time is slipping away, as an indication that her grip on reality is slipping away, just as it did that day. Significantly, she says that the butcher comes; however, Grace has said she has no memory of the butcher coming that day. Another butcher, the murderer, does come. Grace here refers to the arrival of that other butcher, the murderer.

“When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.” 

Grace describes her journey into her own past, and her experience of life, through the metaphor of a blinding, violent storm. She is specifically talking here about the Saturday the murders occurred, and her memories of what happened, which are symbolically “lost” in this storm of violent experience. She astutely identifies that life experiences are not neat and tidy and full of meanings that a person grasps at the time; it is only upon reflection and with the time to think things through that anyone can understand what has happened to himself or to others.