Throughout history, there are figures who become mythologized without being understood. With "Alias Grace," Margaret Atwood explores the trial of one woman in the 19th century. Many would be quick to label her a pariah, or someone deserving of her fate. However, Atwood's tender eye towards subtext and grand hypotheticals, she creates a rich biography for Grace that allows her story to become more tragic, full of unfortunate circumstance and even a sense that her reputation was doomed before the inevitable downfall. While it sounds like a simple martyr story, the author's gift comes in finding her humanity and turning this piece of history into an immersive experience. By the end of the novel, the reader will come to empathize with Grace, creating a subtextual connection to contemporary gender politics that is sometimes thought provoking and others haunting.
Like the best of historical fiction, "Alias Grace" is an interpolation of the grey area between what is and isn't known. At the start of every chapter, Atwood uses documentation of her subject that exists outside of the central text. It helps to symbolize the mythology that's built around her through poetry and observation of a public who never will understand her. To them, she is deranged, unworthy of forgiveness. Nobody cares that her story may be miscounstrued and instead goes along with the larger accepted opinion. By emphasizing Grace's solitary life as she deals with doctors who misdiagnose her condition and put her in unsanitary conditions, there is an understanding of how Atwood feels about the situation. Even as her story of immigrating to Canada reveals further wrinkles, there's more empathy than tragedy attached, making the story all the more horrific without being sensationalized.
While Atwood's work in "The Handmaid's Tale" may be more renowned, "Alias Grace" feels like a more methodical achievement that forces recontextualization. Instead of looking to the hypothetical future, she turns her eyes to the past and notices the ways that historical texts inform perception. It takes a certain eye towards the implied suppression underneath to really mold this text into something more nuanced. As a result, it not only encourages the reader to think differently about Grace's punishment, but ask what the larger judicial systems in contemporary society are doing to protect women. Are they any better than they were in the 19th century? Is everyone likely to have a more successful life? The easy assumption is yes, but Atwood is asking to consider the truth. Even if the answer is yes, it's important to protect those rights if just because everyone is deserving to have them for their full lives.
There's so much to admire about the hat trick in "Alias Grace" of turning historical fiction not into a fantasy that isn't full of optimism and hope - or at least not the direct kind. Instead it's a call to look at what readers consume and think about what is really being said. Between the factual documentation and the hypothesis is a greater truth. The issue is that with so much time between events it's hard to know the full story. Even then, Atwood's take is profoundly interesting and subversive in a way that elevates this seemingly banal piece of history into something more compelling. Grace is so much more than a subject in a poem. She was a person who deserved to receive so much more out of life. Thankfully Atwood was there to give her one last say.
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