Grace Marks
Grace Marks (according to the text) is a "middle-aged woman with a slender, graceful figure”. Her face feels “desperate sadness”, which is very painful. The skin is “light” and, probably, was “very fresh”, before it faded in hopeless sadness. Her eyes are “bright blue”, her hair is “golden and chestnut” and her face has “a pointed chin”. Grace looks like a person, who is above his humble position. The image of Grace Marks gives an impression of the main character with an unusual perception of the world.
The main victim
At first glance, Nancy Montgomery looks like “a very nice and sweet woman”. When Grace sees her for the first time in Mr. Kinnear’s house, Nancy cuts off the peonies. She is in “a light dress with pink buds”, in “a skirt with triple frills” and in “a straw hat” covering her face. There is a shallow basket in her hands, where she is laying flowers. Bending down, she “holds her waist straight like a lady”. The image of Nancy gives an impression of the graceful, romantic and innocent woman.
Death of the best friend
When Mary gets to know that she is pregnant, she immediately has an abortion. Mary is “moaning because of her bleeding and pain”. At first, Grace cannot fall asleep. Then Mary falls silent and Grace falls asleep and wakes up only at dawn. When Grace gets up, she sees Mary is “dead in the bed with wide, frozen eyes”. Mary is “covered with a blanket”. Her “eyes are closed and her hair is neatly combed”. The image of Mary’s death gives an impression of Grace’s most terrible days, because her best friend is dead.
Quilting
Quilting is a popular motif in women’s literature. It is often used in historical fiction to symbolise female creativity. When many other types of creativity were closed to women, quilting was an acceptable form of self-expression. Atwood uses quilting imagery throughout Alias Grace to reflect her novel’s structure, plot, and themes.
Each section of Alias Grace begins with the name and image of a quilt pattern. The titles also refer to plot details. For example, ‘Rocky Road’ describes Grace’s life before and after the murders, and ‘Broken Dishes’ refers to the teapot that breaks on the voyage to Canada just after Grace’s mother dies.
Grace is a skilled needlewoman and works on quilts while Dr Jordan interviews her. The way she makes a whole quilt from different patches of material reflects her storytelling style. She gives the doctor scraps of her history, and he tries to make them fit together. The quilting technique also reflects the patchwork of sources that make up the novel (Grace’s narrative, Dr Jordan’s story, historical accounts, and letters.) As these accounts sometimes contradict one another, readers are left to put together their own version of the “truth.”
According to Mary Whitney, creating a quilt of one’s own is an essential rite of passage into womanhood. Mary tells Grace that most girls have made at least three quilts before they marry. This is significant because circumstances prevent both Mary and Grace from sewing their own quilt. Mary’s life is cut tragically short, while Grace is sent to prison. In prison, Grace is only allowed to make quilts for other people.
By the end of the novel, Grace fulfills her dream of making a Tree of Paradise quilt. She chooses this pattern as it combines two trees from the Bible — the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. Her choice reflects her belief that life is a complicated mix of good and evil. The pieces of cloth she chooses to make the quilt are also significant (taken from her prison nightdress, Mary Whitney’s petticoat, and Nancy’s dress.) While these items hold painful memories, they also represent essential parts of Grace’s life story.
Clothes
In Alias Grace, clothing is closely linked to the theme of identity. From an early age, Grace is aware that clothing influences how others perceive her. For example, when telling Dr Jordan about her childhood, she admits that her family rarely went to church as their clothes were not respectable enough. As she gets older, Grace wishes for gloves because her rough hands give away the fact that she is a servant.
Before the murders, Grace dreams about wearing a blue and white striped skirt. This turns out to be a premonition of the clothes she will be forced to wear in prison. Her prison uniform strips her of her former identity and clearly defines her as a criminal.
Grace is imprisoned for so long that, by the time she is released, her civilian clothes have fallen apart. Fashions have also changed — bonnets have been replaced by hats and crinolines by bustles. Once she is a free woman, Grace makes her new status as a lady clear by always wearing “gloves to town.”
One of the first things Grace notes about Nancy Montgomery is her clothes. Although Nancy is a housekeeper, she dresses like a lady. Later, Grace discovers that Nancy’s fancy clothes reflect her aspirations rather than her real status. As Thomas Kinnear’s mistress, Nancy will never be accepted by polite society. Her finery is nothing more than a costume.
Clothing also plays a key role in the outcome of the murder trial. During the case, it emerges that Nancy was strangled with Grace’s handkerchief. Much is also made of the fact that Grace wore Nancy’s clothes and took her dresses after the murders. These details reflect badly on Grace, making her appear guilty.
Peonies
At the start of the novel, Grace imagines red peonies growing in the prison exercise yard. Other people interpret these hallucinations as a sign of madness. In Susanna Moodie’s accounts, the peonies become red accusing eyes, reminding Grace of her guilt.
For Grace, peonies are associated with the two women who most influenced her fate: Mary Whitney and Nancy Montgomery. White peonies were Mary Whitney’s favorite flower, and they represent the innocent nature of Grace’s friendship with her. For this reason, Grace covers her friend’s coffin with white peonies after she dies. Nancy Montgomery is cutting white peonies when Grace first sees her. Grace takes this as a sign that Nancy and Mary are alike. However, she soon discovers that there is nothing innocent about Nancy or the goings-on in the Kinnear household. From this point, the peonies in the story are always red. The color change symbolizes the impending murders, and Grace’s lost innocence.
Water
By the end of the novel, Grace has crossed over water three times. She travels from Ireland to Canada, then flees to America with McDermott, and finally moves to the USA. For Grace, crossing oceans eventually brings the escape and new beginning that she has been looking for.
Dr Jordan also sees crossing the water as an escape route. When his mother pressures him to settle down, he travels from the USA to Europe and then on to Canada. However, as the doctor becomes more and more entangled in Grace’s story, water imagery is used to show that he is out of his depth. His dream of drowning while the servants swim away reflects his fear that the real Grace is slipping away from him. This image echoes Dr Bannerling’s comparison of Grace to a siren who lures men into drowning. When Dr Jordan eventually abandons his life in Kingston, he feels a tremendous sense of relief, reflecting, “He could have fallen in. He could have drowned.”
Sheets
Sheets have a dual purpose in the novel. As well as ordinary items of bed linen, they are used as shrouds for the dead. When her mother dies at sea, Grace looks for a suitable sheet to wrap the body in, struggling to choose between an old, holey one and their best sheet. In the end, Grace makes the practical choice. She chooses the old sheet but worries that her decision was disrespectful to her dead mother.
Laundering sheets is part of Grace’s job at Mrs Alderman Parkinson’s and is the source of some happy memories for her. She and Mary have fun performing the chore together as Mary hides behind the sheets making ghostly noises. However, Mary’s joking foreshadows her own death. In a later scene, Grace thinks she hears the voice of Mary’s spirit as she scrubs her dead friend’s bloody bedsheets.
Nancy Montgomery’s death is also foreshadowed before her murder when Grace dreams about a woman with long black hair floating in a winding sheet. After the murder, Nancy’s sheets, like Mary’s, are shown to be splattered with blood.
The sheet imagery in the novel connects domesticity with death and suggests that there is often a fine line between the two. This point is highlighted by Grace when Dr Jordan questions her over her feelings about beds. The doctor suggests that beds are a place of comfort, rest and pleasure. Grace, however, points out that women have many painful and unpleasant experiences in bed (including unwanted sexual relations, childbirth, and death.)
Food
Food imagery is used to illustrate Dr Jordan’s attempts to analyze Grace. When they first meet, he presents her with an apple hoping that it will remind her of original sin and her crime. Grace refuses to play along, however, saying that the apple reminds her of her sampler.
Grace is just as uncooperative when Dr Jordan presents her with a series of root vegetables. Jordan hopes that they will remind Grace of the cellar where the murder victims were kept. Instead, Grace responds with, “Fine words butter no parsnips … Also they are very hard to peel.”
The doctor’s attempts to access Grace’s subconscious mind are often compared to harvesting fruit. Grace makes up her mind that she will not be Dr Jordan’s ‘plum’. However, she also worries that she will reveal too much when she is talking to him, “like a peach … too ripe and splitting open of its own accord.” In the end, Dr Jordan has to admit that his introduction of fruit and vegetables into therapy has been “a dismal failure.”
As well as fruit and vegetable imagery, there are many references to meat and butchery in the novel. In prison, the convicts are rarely given meat because it “stimulates the criminal organs of the brain.” The idea of meat as corrupting and unwholesome is echoed in other disturbing images. When Grace bites Dr Bannerling, she says he tastes of “raw sausages.” Dr Jordan follows a similar line of thought when he imagines Dora strung up like a ham in a butcher’s window. Meanwhile, after Mary Whitney’s death, the smell of blood in the room reminds Grace of “a butcher’s shop.” This meat imagery is a reminder of the constant presence of death in Grace’s story.
