Taylor Holmes, Kaitlin Peterka, Sylvia Himebook

“Out of the gravel there are peonies growing. They come up through the loose grey pebbles… huge dark red flowers shining and glossy like satin.” (5)

“In the one instant before they come apart, they are like the peonies in the front garden at Mr. Kinnear’s that first day, only those were white.” (5)

“We put flowers from Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s garden into the coffin… there were long-stemmed roses and peonies; and we chose only the white ones. I scattered the petals of them over her as well, and I slipped in the needle-case I’d made for her, but out of sight, as it might look wrong otherwise, being red…” (197)

“All the same, 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.” (22-3)

“But the sun cannot be stopped in its path, except by God, and he has done that only once, and will not do it again until the end of the world; and on this night it went down as usual, leaving behind it a deep-red sunset; and for a few moments the front of the house was all pink with it.” (230)

• Red is symbolic of violence and blood. This is when Grace sees Nancy dead. The red, here, is symbolic of Grace’s violent side.
• White is symbolic of innocence, faith, light, and goodness, and the color of the flowers they place on the coffin are white.
• The pink color is a mixture of both because red and white make pink. The red of the sunset serves as a forewarning, and the pink comes about as a merger between the good from within the house and the trouble to come.
• Grace places the flowers directly onto a coffin, which gives the two close proximity. Flowers function as symbols for women. They are, like women, connected to their biological functions and simplified to only have affinities pertaining to granting and sustaining life; thus flowers are often used to symbolize one’s fertility. Despite the traditional role flowers fill when describing a woman’s attributes, in “Alias Grace” flowers are used to show not only a woman’s ability to bring life but also her ability to be a voluntary vessel for death. Life and death do not operate independently, and women are shown to fully embody this dichotomy.

“Some wanted him to tell their fortunes by looking into their hands; but Agnes said it was meddling with the Devil, and that Mrs. Alderman Parkinson would not want word to get round of such gypsy doings in her kitchen” (Atwood 155). 

“Jeremiah had done a conjuring trick, as surely as he’d pulled a coin from my ear, or made believe to swallow a fork; and just as he used to do such tricks in full view, with everyone looking on but unable to detect him, he had done the same here, and made a pact with me under their very eyes, and they were none the wiser” (Atwood 306). 

What does the introduction of Jerimiah do to the narrative of Alias Grace? What parallels can be drawn between Grace and Jerimiah?

Outline: In the first quote we read about Jerimiah’s introduction. As can be inferred, he threatens Protestant 19th century Canada. His magic tricks terrify Mrs. Parkinson. He is an outsider to this society in the same way Grace is. More than that, he is a subversion to religious tradition in the same way that Grace is a subversion to gender roles. His entrance to the plot introduces mysticism to the story and, later on, will introduce the haunting element. In the second quote, we see greater emphasis on the parallel between Grace and Jerimiah. Not only are they similar for their outsider status, but they are on the same side during the trial. 

Group Members: Emma Daklouche, Chelsea Dixon, Derrione Mobley, Courtney Parks, Alisha Sanghani

Quotes on Memory:

1. “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.”
   1. Memory changes based on perspective. She may not remember something later on that happened in the moment or she may remember something that happened and that she forgot about when she was living the moment. “Hindsight is 20/20” scenario.
2. “A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.”
   1. Her memory protects her and imprisons her. She is limited by her own thoughts, the truths that she perceives and the truth that is there are different and thus information is limited and she could be at a disadvantage by it. The more difficult stuff that happens to Grace becomes a dream and thus it never really happened. There is a scene where she’s in a dream and it sounds like she got assaulted (pg. 279-81), and she simply repressed those memories. Her dream is very descriptive and sounds like a memory and not a dream. If she doesn’t tell anyone that it happened, if she doesn’t accept it and take measures to protect herself. 

Alias Grace is full of subversions. Subversions to patriarchy, subversions to gender roles, and subversion to mysticism. In the way that Grace’s empowerment via the way she controls her narrative subverts her female role in 19th century society, Jeramiah and the hypnosis subplot offer subversions to religion and medicine. Jeramiah is framed like an almost mystical character, performing tricks and hypnosis. His presence infects the medical and religious setting of Grace’s captivity, just as Grace infects the patriarchal narrative of the world she lives in. Note, I am not using the term “infect” in a negative sense. 

“When I was quite young, six or seven, I put my hand on my mother’s belly, which was all round and tight, and I said What is in there, another mouth to feed, and my mother smiled sadly and said Yes I fear so, and I had a picture of an enormous mouth, on a head like the flying angel heads on the gravestones, but with teeth and all, eating away at my mother from the inside, and I began to cry because I thought it would kill her.”

This quote says a great deal about the legitimate fears of child birth during the 1800s, and many, many other centuries. Child birth has always been a major health concern for women, not only is it a financial burden but the likelihood of death, while diminished now, was fairly high. Grace’s concern regarding her mother’s health and life is valid. The manner in which Atwood relays both the fear and reality of the situation is creative. She ties in the tombstones that symbolize death and turn them into the object of life within Grace’s mother, that could also be killing her. The addition of “another mouth to feed” also serves as a reminder of their troubled financial situation in which having another child would only make it harder for everyone else to survive and live. This sentence has summarized most impoverished experiences throughout most of society’s existence.

The end of Alias Grace was definitely not what I expected; however, I am not really sure what I was expecting from the ending… I feel like Grace’s life has become a grand story that people are eager to hear about. Grace is no longer Grace—she is a story. Grace’s story is not even a happy one, despite its seemingly happy ending. On page 446, Janet is crying because “I (Grace) was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she’d been reading.” The ending of Grace’s story is far from happy—content, maybe, but not happy.

Later, Grace goes on to tell us (and Dr. Jordan) that she has married Jamie Walsh. Jamie still feels extremely guilty for his part in proving Grace’s guilt during the trials. During these times of guilt, Grace feels the need to say she forgives him, and then Jamie asks Grace to tell him something about her life in prison or in the asylum. Hearing these stories almost seems to put his mind at ease. I thought this whole scene was odd—why would someone wracked with guilt wish to learn more about the terrible life Grace lead while in prison? Grace compares telling her story to Jamie to telling her story to Dr. Jordan. Her story has become such a big part of her life, but in creating this story has the real Grace become lost? Is there no longer more to Grace’s life beyond this story?

Quote

“‘I am at a crucial point”, says Simon. He does not wish to appear rude, but he does not want this man interfering. Grace is his territory; he must repel poachers. ‘It might upset her, and undo weeks of careful preparations.'” (301)

This quote happens as Simon is talking to Dr. Dupont, who wants to hypnotize Grace for research purposes. It demonstrates how Simon has become attached to Grace, and now views her as his own. He is very possessive and does not want her being studying by others, because she is his. He sees her as both a discovery and a person. He has grown attached to her story and persona, but also he still wants to be the one to take credit for any discovery that comes out of her about the murder or why she did it. It shows how controversial and complicated their relationship is becoming as Simon gets more and more involved and Grace caters to his ideas and plays her part.

One of the things I connected ot this book between the themes of the class and what we’ve previously read is the power of selective memory. In Alias Grace, we see that Grace doesn’t remember the day of the killings yet it was obviously one of the most important moments in her life that’s had a huge effect on her and the direction of her life. This gets to me because like Saleem in Midnight’s Children, it raises the question of memorizing important things and  the memory of important things. I feel like that’s not only an important trait of good novels, but also just an important trait to highlight in humans in general. Think about this, the doctor needs to get an accurate story from Grace, who’s already given him two or three accounts of what happened, all of them differing substantially. This reminds me of almost any important story in the history of human kind where there are different interpretations where there absolutely shouldn’t be any. The religious myths, and even a story of a child is subject to shifting memory, whether malicious with intent or not, the fact that we base our reality on something that shifts like quicksand is remarkable, especially when it has something to do with our emotions and how we feel. 

Theme  

   The importance of storytelling is a major theme in Alias Grace. Grace maintains her power by withholding information in her conversations with Dr. Jordan as a way to communicate her experiences in her best interest. This is the only power she has in this situation because they rely on her detailed account of what happened with Nancy and Mr. Kinnear. During this time, women were more vulnerable to having their stories skewed because of men altering the details to their own interests. This emphasizes the importance of her taking control of the narrative and what information needed to be said to Dr. Jordan.  Through her speech and mannerisms, she represents herself as someone who is stable and innocent, but it also raises question of the reliability of her narration. 

“But I don’t know why it is, a girl of fifteen or sixteen is accounted a woman, but a boy of fifteen or sixteen is still a boy.”

I find it unnerving how a story told that is meant to be set in the 1850’s is still so relevant today. At sixteen Grace is held accountable for anyone who shows interest in her, as we see earlier she is distressed by the man grabbing her at the inn not just for her own safety, but because it would look bad to her new employers, even though it’s of no fault of her own. This is easily comparable to how oft times white men who have committed crimes are portrayed as children despite being as old as in their twenties, and images of them when they were younger are the ones that articles and news sites choose to represent them, while other groups aren’t afforded the same privileges. Throughout Grace’s telling of the story her voice and experience is so strong that I keep forgetting that she is so young when all of this is actually happening. I wonder how the story would have been different if Jamie were the one thought to have aided McDermott.