NAME: ANKITA GANGULY SEMESTER: 3

CANADIAN FICTION TERM PAPER

The Rashomon Effect of Alias Grace: Subject

Abstract: Alias Grace is novel by Margaret Atwood in first person narrative. Set in 1851,

it traces the journey of the maid Grace Marks from just a maid to one of the celebrated

murderesses of the century. The novel presents her life in prison since the age of 16 and her

transformations thereafter. This novel illustrates the public gaze which is instrumental in

creating the subject Grace is and the novel explores how the identity forged of Grace in the

novel is all based on what the doctors, newspapers and other people think about her. It gives

rise to the Rashomon effect that is when the same event is told from different perspectives, as

illustrated by the movie Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa where the plot line is formed by the

varying perspectives of the same event from all the people involved in it. The various

perspectives of that of the newspapers, people, doctors form the subject that Grace s in the

novel. Since the novel is in first person narrative, we also get a sneak peek into the gendered

identity that Atwood weaves through her words. This paper argues for the Rashomon effect

of the novel and the gendered identity it thus creates for Grace.

Keywords: Prison, gender, identity, Rashomon, effect.

Argument: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood is like a fictional prison memoir of Grace

Marks a maid convicted for murdering her employer and his housekeeper in the 19th century,

based on a real event that happened in Canada in the nineteenth century. This novel portrays
how prison life was female criminals in nineteenth century Canada. The novel is set in the

Kingstone Penitentiary and shows the hypocrisy of the bourgeoise class of the contemporary

who will relish the gossips surrounding a murder but will also abhor the murderess without

any proper knowledge of her crime. The first-person narrative of the novel endows Grace

with agency which her society has robbed of her otherwise.

Atwood here presents Grace as a spectacle of the public gaze and curiosity being one

of the celebrated ‘murderesses’ of the century. And the ‘prison’ motif of the text both literally

and metaphorically alludes to both the physical and mental claustrophobia and imprisonment

the circumstances subjected Grace to. Repeated allusions of ‘lunacy’ in the text also refers to

how society always brandishes transgressive women as mad and unstable and therefore as

outcasts in the society.

Generally, penitentiaries are places where convicts are expected to regret their crimes

and rectify their behaviours. The novel charts out a history of her conviction and

imprisonment. It is stated that she was also accused of lunacy and kept in the asylum. When

Dr. Jordan arrives at the scene and starts taking interviews of Grace, he asks for opinions of

the various doctors under whom Grace was treated previously. Various doctors give different

pictures of Grace. She was called hysteric by some. The disease of ‘hysteria’ was tagged as a

pre-eminently feminine disease and this disease was treated as a licence to ill-treat women in

asylums and to make them outcasts in the society.

The narrative in the novel revolves around many issues like confinement, madness,

sin. The idea of confession becomes very significant in the novel because everyone around

Grace attempts to make her ‘confess’ about her sins more to prove their efficacy than to give

her a better life. Grace talks about herself to Dr. Jordan. She informs him that she is from

North of Ireland – apparently a crime in the eyes of many as per Grace. She talks about her
childhood and her parents to Jordan. She gives details about her poverty-stricken childhood.

She details her immigration to Canada from Ireland and her agony at the death of her mother

on ship during the journey. She related all the hardships she had faced since her childhood.

Grace recalls her journey of settling in Canada and her gradually getting to work to

support her family financially. She also narrates growing up with traumatic experiences of

her father’s cruelty. These narrations on Grace’s part were in success to Jordan’s objective to

“wake the part of her mind that lies dormant — to probe down below the threshold of her

consciousness, and to discover the memories that must perforce lie buried there” (Atwood

113). The novel shows how everyone’s attempt here has been to unravel the darkest recesses

of her and bring to open the perplexities and wonders of mind which people thought enabled

her to commit a crime like murder.

The motif of sewing is quite significant in the novel. Throughout the novel, we see

Grace constantly sewing blankets of various intricate patterns. Sewing is an act of stitching

things together and thus here sewing might be seen as an attempt to put her life together

which is otherwise in ruin. In her first-person narrative Grace tells Jordan of her experiences

of working at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s place.

Prison is shown as a lonely place which engenders hopelessness and frustration. Dr

Jordan extracts the story of her past life from her and attempts to scrutinise her every word

psychoanalytically to probe into her mind. She details even all the minute events that

happened during her stay at the Parkinson place. Grace narrates her love for her friend Mary

Whitney who helped her much during her stay at the Parkinson place and whose name she

used while eloping with McDermott apparently her accomplice in the murder. Grace’s life as

narrated by her was mostly sorrowful with a separated family and loneliness and work only to

accompany her. Grace provides an ethnographic account of her life at Parkinson’s. This
narrative of her own lips about her own life gives her an agency- an agency to take control of

what she wants people to know about her and how much since otherwise Grace is an object

of public curiosity which is quenched by gossips and rumours.

The entire novel is in mostly first-person narrative form and this seems to be a

deliberate attempt of Atwood to create a space of agency through her narrative for Grace’s

voice to flourish which is otherwise throttled in a patriarchal society. The question of

‘memory’ becomes very significant. All the probing is done to extract from Grace’s memory

how and why she committed the murder of her employer Mr Kinnear and his housekeeper.

Recollecting and forgetting become important in the investigation of her case.

In the novel we see people assuming wildly about Grace’s character without even

trying to know what had actually happened. Her murder of Mr. Kinnear and his housekeeper

was thought of as “wild jealousy on the part of Grace, who envied Nancy her possession of

Mr. Kinnear” (Atwood 162) because as Simon says “The public will always prefer a

salacious melodrama to a bald tale of mere thievery”. Grace’s identity here is partly formed

by what people think of her. The novel also takes at the condition of the asylums in

contemporary Canada where hygienic conditions ran very low. It is a psychologically very

dense text and also exposes the horrible lives maids in particular and women in general have

to lead in an essentially patriarchal society where at every step they have to worry for their

honour and fight for their reputation.

After this her narrative of her time at Mr. Kinnear’s begins. Gossips form a core part

of the narrative. Gossips not only reveal people’s perceptions about an individual but also

people’s curiosity which can turn an individual into an object of ridicule and misery. At Mr.

Kinnear’s house she narrates her initial experiences as initially everything was good. She

gives detailed descriptions of his house. In the novel we see Grace has written her
“Confession”. Now the idea of a confession is very intriguing. Confession preconceives the

idea of sin committed. When a person writes a confession that person is already assumed

guilt of a crime. Here, even before Grace’s crime is fully proved, she is made to write a

confession as if to brand her guilty already.

Grace lists all the duties she performed at Kinnear’s. the oral narrative that Grace

produces governed by her personal places her in a position of authority where she decides

what to tell the readers about herself. Atwood places the rein in her hands regarding what to

inform the readers and what not, though this may also create some suspicion in the minds of

the readers regarding how much truth Grace will divulge about her past life. Dr. Jordan

constantly urges her to speak more about herself and she does so obediently but we the

readers cannot really vouch for the truth of her narrative. It does not escape our idea that she

might have lied as well the doctor. Because during the narrative we often catch Grace

thinking things to herself and not saying them to the doctor. It shows that she might have

willingly concealed many facts about the murder as well. She even thinks things like: “Just

because he pesters me to know everything is no reason for me to tell him” – this also poses

Grace as an unreliable narrator in the novel who very consciously does don’t divulge facts to

the doctor. Here, memory also comes into play, since she produces the entire narrative here in

the novel after 8 years from when the events had happened so distortions of memory is also at

work. When the events had happened, Grace was merely a child and when she is narrating all

these events to Dr. Jordan already 8 years have lapsed and she is a woman of 24 years when

she is giving these interviews to the doctor.

Gradually she talks about her feud with Nancy, the housekeeper of Mr. Kinnear over

matters regarding her master. She informs the narrators about the duplicitous nature of

Nancy. Here, Canada also appears as a land for the poor and helpless who come from various

places to Canada as a land of hopes and new beginnings. She also gives details about the past
life of McDermott, her apparent accomplice in murder. She also talks about her life in prison.

We get to know all the other characters in the novel mostly through her gaze. Grace also

appears to be a very manipulative narrator who often manipulates her narrative according to

what she feels like when and what she deems at times to be fit to be told. She appears as

someone who is very well aware how her life has sparked interest in others. She seems well

aware of her situation and of her status as an “object of interest”.

Grace performs her act of ‘story-telling’ very consciously telling it very richly or

blandly as per her moods and the kindness she receives from the doctor. At times she does it

out of a sense of duty or at times out of a pity for the doctor. She is also an intelligent

narrator. Gradually through McDermott Grace gets to know that Nancy and Mr. Kinnear have

slept together and they live as man and wife in secret. She feels very indignant about this and

feels deceived by it. Quarrels start to erupt between the two on account of the indignation

Grace starts feeling for Nancy. When Nancy gives notice To McDermott to leave his job

before the month is over and also threatens to withhold his wages, he also starts instigating

Grace against Nancy by warning her that she might soon do the same with her and it was the

right time to assert their rights over her. He also states that “both Mr. Kinnear and Nancy

deserved to be knocked on the head and thrown down into the cellar, and he was the man for

the deed” (Atwood 222). Doctor Jordan counters Nancy by saying that before getting hanged,

McDermott had said that instead Grace had tried to kill Kinnear and Nancy by poisoning

their porridge and had urged him to help her repeatedly.

Grace completely disavows McDermott’s statement. During her interviews with the

doctor, she also mourns her loneliness. Majority of the novel is occupied with Grace telling

her life-story. This strategy of the novel itself is intentional to give her the agency to tell her

own story by herself. Though many rumours swarm around her about her character and

nature, she still holds the rein of what to inform the readers and the doctor. Though many
opinions flood about her still she is also given the space to put her own word, to point out the

lies she feels people have talked about her. “She’s told him only what she’s chosen to tell”-

flourishes her agency over the narrative. Soon she informs the doctor of Nancy’s pregnancy

by Mr. Kinnear.

Grace’s story of her life forms the locus of pleasure for Dr. Jordan with all its dreams

and wonders. Grace’s interviews with Dr. Jordan were with an aim to discover the “the blank

mystery, the area of erasure; they are entering the forest of amnesia, where things have lost

their names”, to find out the mystery of the murder. The objective was to bring forth her

unconscious thoughts to the open and expose the ‘truth’ regarding the murders. Grace reveals

that her narrative has been mostly what other people like her lawyer has asked her to “say”

and there are things which she did not even say to him. Her narrative is also marked by her

distortions of memory as by the time she is saying all these, half of the things have faded

from her memory in the passage of time.

The novel is also flooded with her dream, her unconscious thoughts. Amnesia is a key

motif in the novel- both natural and manipulative. Atwood presents the character of Grace

Marks as not only an accumulation of what she tells about herself but also what all the

documents like the accounts of the trial, the opinions of the newspapers, the Confessions says

about her. Grace is also plagued by the feeling that no matter what she says no one will

believe her and also expresses indignation at doctor’s assumptions she was paid by Mr

Kinnear in turn of sexual favours. Her status of a “celebrated murderess” made people all the

wild thoughts about her and thought her capable of any lowly job. Her statements in the

interview kept varying from her confession since her confession was largely what her lawyer

had wanted her to say to save her life. The statements of other people like Jamie Walsh, the

butcher also vary from that of Grace’s.

great interest to the people around her. Grace narrates the murder of Kinnear and Nancy by

McDermott and the hiding of their bodies in the cellar. She also confesses taking valuable

items from the house after their death while escaping from there. Grace also informs how she

had eloped with McDermott after the murders and their escape to the States together. When

Dr. Jordan leaves for Toronto, Grace keeps on arranging in her head what to tell him when he

comes back. Her narrative more than truth seems like a story woven by her at time just to get

rid of questions or at times just to please the doctor. Grace goes on to complain that Law had

accused her guilty even before she said anything. And once people think one to have

committed a crime, no matter what one says that hallow of crime and guilt never really leaves

one’s head. She states: “The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell

more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable

people dearly love to read ill of others” (Atwood 306). Here, we see how any rumour is sold

off as commodity to please people in their leisure hours. People’s lives become commodities

to be laughed and sneered at by others in their leisure times over tea and gossip.

Grace further informs how she became such a media gossip and how she had to

manipulate her ways in apprehension of what the ‘newspaper’ would write about her and

consequently what image of her would get circulated among people. Broadsheet poems were

also printed on this scandal. Broadsheet poems were ballads through which spicy stories were

told mainly of crimes and scandals. They were sold on street sides for few pennies and almost

acted like newspapers of that era which carried spicy gossips and rumours to please the

curiosity of the people. So here we see how Grace’s life was turned into a commodity by the

contemporary era into a spicy scandal to laugh and sneer at. She became an object for the

people to “gawk and gape”, a spectacle to jeer at.

quench their thirst of curiosity regarding what had actually happened. Grace’s life is marked

by hardships, struggle, poverty and disappointments and we might also call her a victim of

bad circumstances. She loses all happiness and is imprisoned almost for ever. Gossipy nature

of human beings and inefficiency of Law are implicitly condemned in the novel. She

becomes an embodiment of wonder for others around her and coils into indifference at this

constant treatment as an object of spectacle.

Therefore, we may conclude that the life of Grace Marks, the celebrated murderess of

the nineteenth century Canada was indeed one of the most popular scandals conjured by the

media of the contemporary era. Her life was exaggerated by the press to sell their

commodities and to keep the spice trend of the country going. Rashomon effect indeed is at

work here which not only conditions her plight at the prison but also her gendered identity at

being one of the most popular “murderesses” of the century.

WORKS CITED

Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. Novel Anchor, 1997.

Rashomon. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, performances by Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori

and Takashi Simura, 1950.