Introduction
Margaret Atwood’s historical fiction novel tells the story of Grace Marks, a true-life criminal within the Canadian justice system in the 1800s. At the end of the novel, Atwood reveals what facts were available to her prior to writing the book. These included the newspaper reports that discussed the facts of the case and the less direct information regarding the interests of the scientific community at the time, particularly as it concerned individual behavior and its causes. In both the real case and the case presented in Atwood’s fictional novel, Grace Marks was accused of assisting in the murder of her bachelor employer and his pregnant housekeeper mistress and then running away with the stable-hand to the United States. Atwood’s story opens with Grace already having been in prison for the past 7 or 8 years. Her basic routine is sketchily outlined as sleeping at the prison and working as a maid within the governor’s mansion. Yet the routine is about to change slightly with the introduction of Dr. Simon Jordan, a young psychiatrist intending to open his own insane asylum who is interested in finding out more about the amnesia Grace claims to have regarding the hours in which the murders took place. As Grace tells him her story, it becomes clear that the events of Grace’s life, her hardships as well as her successes, are often shaped by her appearance rather than her actions.
Grace’s actions
Throughout her life, Grace demonstrates through her actions that she intends to someday attain the status of a proper lady someday, even when that thought seems furthest out of reach. As a small child, she was brought face to face with the facts of life as she witnessed her mother’s misery with her father brought about as a result of her inability to remain chaste while courting him and received the lectures of her aunt regarding her mother’s failures. She demonstrates her opinion of herself in the quality of her work as she helps her mother and attempts to take care of her brothers and sisters by keeping them as clean and well-dressed as she can within her limited means as a small child herself. As a serving maid, she is able to take pride in her ability to support herself and becomes even more familiar with the necessity of a young girl to guard her chastity if she is to have any hope of salvation in the form of a proper marriage while her intelligence is demonstrated as she works with Dr. Jordan.
Grace’s early life is characterized as being a life of responsibility and maturity. She is told by her Aunt Pauline, at some point before age 9 presumably, that her mother was forced to marry her father because she’d gotten pregnant. Her sense of responsibility even at this very young age is demonstrated in her decisions regarding the smaller children. While still in Scotland, she had already learned to go against her mother’s wishes by taking the younger children with her to the docks as a means of securing the family’s supper. “We were forbidden by our mother to beg, and we would not, or not in so many words; but five ragged little children with hungry eyes is a hard sight to resist, or it was in our village then. And so we would get our fish more often than not, and go off home with it as proud as if we had caught it ourselves” (108). In several scenes throughout her childhood, Grace can be seen to take this type of practical initiative, working with what she’s given for her own survival. In determining which sheet to bury her mother in, for example, she ends up choosing the old sheet because it is pointless to use the new sheet when so many surviving members of the family could still use it while the old sheet has much less life left in it. However, this does not indicate she was selfish in her efforts in that she shared the family’s limited food supply with a neighboring bunk and worked consistently to try to help her siblings.
Also while still in Scotland, Grace was taught to take pride in herself by taking pride in her work. This is repeatedly emphasized as her mother made a point of keeping her family as respectable as she could. Grace tells Jordan the family did not go to church often, not because they didn’t believe in God, but because her mother didn’t want her children appearing before the house of God in their tattered clothes and no shoes. The children were not permitted to beg regardless of their living situation and Grace, as well as her next younger sister Katey, was put to work sewing shirts with their mother. This was work that was done behind their father’s back and with considerable help from their Aunt, who also frequently brought in food and other necessary items that their father would not necessarily notice. “In those days, Sir, it was a matter of pride for a man to support his own family, whatever he might think of that family itself; and my mother, although weak-spirited, was too wise a woman to tell him anything about it” (109). In making this statement, Grace indicates her own strength of will and spirit. She seems to condemn her mother somewhat for accepting all that her father put her through as well as pointing out her mother’s resourcefulness in finding a means of ensuring the children were fed, providing again an example for Grace to take matters into her own hands when it seemed necessary.
While Grace might be able to make her life within the prison a little better by intentionally using her good looks to gain favors from the guards, she manages to retain her chastity and has a reputation for being somewhat prudish. Despite the coarse remarks of the prison guards on the way to and from the prison each day, Grace never responds to their baiting with anything other than a conventionally ladylike response. Within the governor’s house, she is careful to remain properly submissive at all times, with the single exception of her hysterical reaction to the appearance of the doctor. At the beginning of the book, she mentions the restriction against proper ladies sitting on furniture that had been recently vacated by a man as being somehow indecent while her friendship with Mary Whitney illustrates the extreme degree to which young maids were forced to live a life of complete and utter chastity if they wished to escape this sort of life into their future. Mary tells her, “Any kind of man will try the same; and they’ll start promising things, they’ll say they will do whatever you want; but you must be very careful what you ask, and you must never do anything for them until they have performed what they promised; and if there’s a ring, there must be a parson to go along with it” (165). After the example of her mother, Grace is very inclined to listen to what Mary has to say. Following Mary’s own disgrace and horrible death, she is even more adamant in protecting herself against the dreadful consequences of giving in to a moment of weakness. As it has been demonstrated to Grace through the examples she’s seen in her life, the only means by which she might defend herself in life is through an adamant insistence upon her own purity, which she maintains with a haughty composure throughout her prison experience. This dedication to the ideals of a ‘proper’ lady is emphasized in her continued interest in improving her education, although she does not flaunt this, her efforts to improve her speech, and her steadfast adherence to the ideals of true womanhood.
In her first meeting with Simon Jordan, Grace demonstrates her intelligence as well as her understanding of Jordan’s association game. Jordan produces an apple that he gives to her and then hints around to make her create associations between the object and an idea. Grace understands this game very well, as she explains explicitly: “The apple of the Tree of Knowledge, is what he means. Good and evil. Any child could guess it. But I will not oblige” (40). Throughout the rest of the story, Jordan continues to bring in objects intended to make Grace make associations with the cellar at the Kinnear home where the bodies of her employer and his mistress were found, but she continues to indicate confusion as to why he would continue to bring in such strange objects while he continues to be frustrated in his attempts to reach her through this method. This early quote about the apple, however, indicates that Grace is not as confused regarding Jordan’s game as she seems, even in her confidences to her reader. Not only is she intelligent in being able to consistently thwart Jordan’s attempts to bring her to specific memories, but she is capable of burying this knowledge within her mind as a means of maintaining this innocence. This ability of hers opens the possibility that she is actually guilty and fully cognizant of the crime she committed, but is also intelligent enough to understand that a beautiful woman, confused in mind and helpless, may get more help than a killer who couldn’t bear the thought that Nancy was to have her heart’s desire while Mary died although both had committed the same crime.
Grace’s appearance
Upon her introduction, Grace is repeatedly described as a middle-sized woman or person, although she describes herself as quite small for her age as a child and always handsome or pretty. While the newspaper reports provide conflicting ideas regarding her looks, it becomes evident that Grace has red hair, fair skin that freckles easily in the sun and She tells us, “in the afternoon light of the parlour my skin is a pale mauve, like a faded bruise, and my teeth are greenish” (23). In making this statement, she gives the reader an idea of how she sees herself, which is only due in part because of the crimes she’s accused of and the way the public sees her. At a deeper level, based upon what has occurred in her life because of her looks, Grace seems to be expressing the extreme degree to which her looks have shaped and defined her life as if she had been painted with such unnatural colors that she couldn’t help but attract intense attention. This becomes increasingly clear as the many characters involved in Grace’s story, with only two exceptions, turn out to be predominantly interested in Grace’s sexual activities prior to her arrest and thus prove to be interested more in her attractiveness as a sexual object than in her personal tragedy.
First job / determines her job responsibilities within the home
Intervening jobs/difficulty with employers lusting for her
Kinnear’s / employer and McDermott lusting for her, enough to kill
/ Nancy jealous of her for her youth and chaste state
Simon Jordan / begins to judge her also based upon her looks
Even before he’s had a chance to meet her, Jordan has managed to form an opinion regarding her despite his best efforts. He describes how he’d seen her picture in the newspaper reports about the trial but attempted to talk himself into believing she’d be much different now that she’d aged and spent so much time in prison. Although he tried to maintain an objective mindset, it takes no more than a vision of her in person for him to determine she is harmless and, therefore, innocent somehow of the crimes she was charged with. “It was an image almost medieval in its plain lines, its angular clarity: a nun in a cloister, a maiden in a towered dungeon, awaiting the next day’s burning at the stake, or else the last-minute champion come to rescue her. The cornered woman; the penitential dress falling straight down, concealing feet that were surely bare; the straw mattress on the floor; the timorous hunch of the shoulders; the arms hugged close to the thin body, the long wisps of auburn hair escaping from what appeared at first glance to be a chaplet of white flowers – and especially the eyes, enormous in the pale face and dilated with fear, or with mute pleading – all was as it should be” (59).
Conclusion
This passage demonstrates that without having said a word and even with all the newspaper stories, a murder conviction, past residence in an insane asylum, and her current position within solitary confinement in a prison, Grace is automatically placed within a romantic context of the damsel in distress in Jordan’s mind. While this immediate judgment based upon her appearance may seem to be especially helpful to her case, the final revelation that the beautiful body, whether inhabited by Grace or by an alter-ego or spirit of Mary, actually did take part in the murders is too much of a shock for Jordan to deal with and he becomes incapable of helping her in any way.