Alias Grace’s Unique Style

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Canadian author Margaret Atwood, writes her historical fiction novel, Alias Grace, which depicts life in Upper Canada, a region presently referred to as southern Ontario. Published by Anchor Books, Alias Grace retells a famous nineteenth century murder case in the perspective of the so called criminal. Atwood wrote the novel to display the workings of the mind that play a role in character’s actions and also in the reader’s thoughts and opinions. She achieves this goal through her unique style of character development and detail. The story centers mainly around a young Grace Marks, who has worked since her childhood to sustain her family and to earn a living on her own. The Canadian government convicted her at the age of sixteen of plotting with James McDermott to murder their employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his mistress and housekeeper. However, she had no recollection of the murders, as she claimed to be unconscious at the time, despite numerous accounts from McDermott and the press that she was fully awake and even helped to strangle Nancy. Simon Jordan travels to Canada in hopes of jogging her memories and tries to figure out if she played an instrumental role in the murders. By creating a story around an actual event in history, one can create a surprisingly believable novel. Atwood successfully incorporates themes that repeat throughout the story, including the theme of sexuality playing a prominent role gender stereotypes. Men clearly possess a greater level of sexual freedom, especially during the daily harassment of Grace by the two prison guards who escort her to the governor’s house (240). Also, the reader should notice the omnipresence of God in the novel. Grace remarks, “They are hypocrites, they think church is a cage to keep God in… But God is everywhere…” (254). She believes that God watches all her actions; therefore, she tries to

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