Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace
Alias Grace is the most recent novel by Margaret Atwood, Canada’s most prominent modern novelist. The novel is, as Atwood writes in her afterword, ‘a work of fiction, although it is based on reality’(538) centred on the case of Victorian Canada’s most celebrated murderess, Grace Marks, an immigrant Irish servant girl.
The manner in which Atwood imaginatively reconfigures historical fact in order to create a subversive text which ‘writes back’ to both the journals of a Canadian literary ancestor, and to Canada’s nineteenth century self -image, illustrates what critic Linda Hutcheon has called ‘the use of irony as a powerful subversive rule in the rethinking and redressing of history by both the post-modern and post-colonial artist ‘(131).
Atwood’s interest in the Mark’s case was first raised by her work on the journals of Susanna Moodie, a 19th-century emigrant to Canada. In a disparaging memoir entitled Roughing it in the Bush , published in London and addressed to an English audience, Moodie concentrated on the ‘otherness’ and ‘foreigness’ of Canada to refined European sensibilities, thus emphasising the privilege of ‘home’ over ‘native’ and ‘metropolitan’ over ‘provincial’. (Litvack 120). Life in the Clearings, Moodie’s sequel, intended to show the ‘more civilised’ side of Canada west, contained an account of her visit to the notorious Grace Marks in a Toronto Asylum. Moodie portrayed Grace as a shrieking, capering madwoman, and concluded her account with the pious hope that this ‘raving maniac’ would find some ‘peace at the feet of Jesus’ in the next world.
In the seventies, Atwood wrote a play for television which was based closely on Moodie’s recounting of the case, but in returning to the story twenty years later in Alias Grace, recounts a much more ambiguous, open - ended tale than the cut and dry ‘femme-fatale urges dim farmhand to murder’ account rehashed in Life in the Clearings.
Alias Grace can therefore be read both as a fictionalised account of a notorious true life case and also as a genuine instance of post-colonial ‘writing back’, as Canada’s most prominent present day (female) novelist, a leading exponent of modern Canadian literature, significantly revises a tale recounted by a female literary antecedent who spent most of her time unfavourably comparing the Canadian colony to ‘Home’.
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...llowing exchange between Simon Jordan and Grace’s ally, the Reverend Verringer, for it not only emphasises the manner in which Atwood’s novel is in some ways a ‘writing back’ to Moodie, but also casts a significant light on Grace’s entire narrative, by suggesting that patchwork quilts are not the only things she constructs from virtual scratch .The exchange between Verringer and Simon whilst discussing Susanna Moodie’s account of the Mark’s case is highly relevant :
‘Mrs Moodie is a literary lady, and like all such, and indeed the sex in general, She is inclined to- ‘
‘Embroider’, says Simon.
‘Precisely’, says Reverend Verringer. (p223)
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. London : Virago, 1997.
Hutcheon, Linda. ‘Circling the Downspout of Empire’. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London : Routledge, 1995. p130-135.
Le Clair, Tom. ‘Quilty Verdict’. (Review) The Nation, September 1996.
Litvack, Leon. ‘Canadian Writing in English and Multiculturalism’. English Post-Coloniality. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge, 1998.
Van Herk, A. ‘Alias Grace’. Canadian Literature (1998) 156, 110-12.
Eden Robinson’s short story “Terminal Avenue” presents readers with the dystopian near-future of Canada where Indigenous people are subjugated and placed under heavy surveillance. The story’s narrator, Wil, is a young Aboriginal man who struggles with his own inner-turmoil after the suicide of his father and his brother’s subsequent decision to join the ranks of the Peace Officers responsible for “adjusting” the First Nations people. Though “Terminal Avenue” takes place in Vancouver there are clear parallels drawn between the Peace Officers of Robinson’s imagination and the Canadian military sent to enforce the peace during the stand-off at Oka, Quebec in 1990. In writing “Terminal Avenue” Robinson addresses the armed conflict and proposes
Lawson, Mary. The Other Side of the Bridge. Vintage Canada ed. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007. Print.
Filewood, Alan. “National Battles: Canadian Monumental Drama and the Investiture of History.” In Modern Drama. 38. (Spring 1995) 71-86
How can you write about a culture whose history is passed on by oral traditions? Better yet, how can you comprehend a culture’s past which a dominant society desired to assimilate? These two questions outline the difficulty in understanding the historiography of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. In 2003, Paige Raibmon published her article, “Living on Display: Colonial Visions of Aboriginal Domestic Spaces.” Her work, although focused on Canada’s colonial “notions of domesticity,” presents the role of Aboriginals as performers to European notions of indigenous culture and identity. Early social historians believe that Aboriginals’ place in history is in their interactions with European Jesuits. A decade later, historians argue Aboriginals exemplify a subordinate culture fighting against assimilating and hegemonic forces. More recently, social historical perspective shows Aboriginals as performers of the white-man’s constructed “authentic-Indian.” Obviously, there is disparity between historians’ viewpoints but each decade’s published histories concur with James Opp and John Walsh’s concept of local resistance. Using Raibmon’s paper as a starting point, a chronological examination of select histories reveals an evolving social historiography surrounding historians’ perceptions of Aboriginals’ local resistance attempts.
To read the Civil War diary of Alice Williamson, a 16 year old girl, is to meander through the personal, cultural and political experience of both the author and one's self. Her writing feels like a bullet ricocheted through war, time, death, literary form, femininity, youth, state, freedom and obligation. This investigation attempts to do the same; to touch on the many issues that arise in the mind of the reader when becoming part of the text through the act of reading. This paper will lay no definitive claims to the absolute meaning of the diary, for it has many possible interpretations, for the journey is the ultimate answer. I seek to acknowledge the fluidity of thought when reading, a fluidity which incorporates personal experience with the content of Williamson's journal. I read the journal personally- as a woman, a peer in age to Alice Williamson, a surrogate experiencialist, a writer, an academic and most of all, a modern reader unaccustomed to the personal experience of war. I read the text within a context- as a researcher versed on the period, genre, aesthetics, and to some degree the writer herself. The molding of the personal and contextual create a rich personalized textual meaning .
Clinically referred to as blepharoplasty, eyelid surgery is a cosmetic surgery procedure that involves removal of excess skin, muscle or sometimes fat from the lower and upper eyelids to improve the appearance of the eyelids or correct vision problems related to overhanging eyelids.
JJ is a 7 year old boy. He has post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and impulse control disorder. He has been thrown out of numerous preschools and admitted to several hospitals for psychiatric issues. His mother has pursued all forms of medical and behavioral help for her son’s hyperactivity and aggressiveness. She came across medical marijuana while trying to research JJ’s problems and after discussing it with his doctors decided to give it a try. She took him off all his medications and put the marijuana in a muffin in amounts prescribed and monitored by the doctor. JJ’s behavior issues declined almost immediately. He is polite, eager to learn and interacts well with teachers and students at school. Now he talks through his questions and problems instead of acting out due to frustration. Marijuana has been used by people throughout the centuries and its use has provided many benefits. Therefore, it should be legalized for medical and recreational use in today’s society (O’Brien & Clark, 2002).
...in attempting to alter the policies and practices that keep them in their marginalized position, however one obstacle being that “conventions that refer to the rules may change, but rules that inform the conventions rarely do” (Fleras, 2010; p. 185). The frontier narrative has inadvertently placed a veil over Canadians that keep feelings of guilt and responsibility for the cruelty towards Aboriginals invisible, and simultaneously keeps visible the belief that it is because of the white-settlers that Canada has become what it has today. Some may argue that the frontier narrative is no longer relevant to Canada’s multicultural society, however as demonstrated, it is clear that the narrative has manifested itself and has played and continues to play a crucial role in the structuring of Canadian society and treatment of Aboriginals; the true first-settlers of Canada.
Thompson, John Herd, and Mark Paul Richard. "Canadian History in North American Context." In Canadian studies in the new millennium. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 37-64.
With the major and ongoing controversy of the legalization of marijuana, medical marijuana has been thrown into the limelight as an excuse as to why marijuana is “good.” But with medical marijuana’s supposed advancements, more and more doctors are prescribing it to anyone who claims to have a headache and now they are moving their clientele base to young children and teens who are not even old enough to know the long-term damage of the “medicine” their doctors are so willingly prescribing. While many doctors are beginning to jump on the medical weed train, others are continuing to speak against the effects; especially on minors. In order to prevent permanent damage to the young children, medical marijuana needs to be outlawed for anyone under the age of 18.
Bouson, J. Brooks. Margaret Atwood the robber bride, the blind assassin, Oryx and Crake. London: Continuum, 2010. Print.
Kelm, Mary, and Lorna Townsend. In the days of our grandmothers: a reader in Aboriginal women's history in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
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