Female Subservience in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace

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Brian Fantana Professor Smith AIID 207-04 12 December 2012 The patriarchal control over the sociocultural concept of female subservience present within Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace—a means through which the reader can indulge in the entrancing accounts of the controversial 1843 murder investigation of the Canadian maid, Grace Marks—instigated an unequal distribution of influence between genders in the favor of men, inhibiting the ability of women to voice their opinions on certain issues such as domestic violence, one of the major elements in the structure of Grace Marks’ family life as well as a common moral issue on which Atwood enjoyed writing her views, which were arguably consistent with feminist ideals; born in Canada in 1939, she had never formally identified with the feminist movement, but she had been around a long line of feminism activists. The role of women in society around the setting of the novel, as exemplified in the chosen passage and the harmful, psychological effects rooted in Grace’s childhood are largely responsible for much of her character development and actions throughout the novel. Grace’s father’s violent tendencies affected their family life greatly, as did his drinking habits, “as he was drinking up the bread out of his own children’s mouths” (Atwood 129). Although his violent tendencies, which occurred mostly when he was really drunk, took priority as their father’s main problems, he was generally just a bad and neglectful father, for the reason of working Grace like a dog around the house with chores, and for verbally abusing his children, too; referring to Grace’s older sister as an “ungrateful slut” (Atwood 127). Toward the end of the passage, in an account of a night on which her father abused her, she recounts that he called her a “slut and a whore” shortly after throwing
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