Margaret Atwood’s novel Alias Grace is a work of historical fiction that has drawn upon several historical sources. As Atwood states these sources are often contradictory to each other and their creators have their own motives and biases in producing them. Atwood uses these contradictory versions of the same events very cleverly to underline the fact that the truth of Grace Marks’ guilt or innocence is no clearer now then it was at the time of her conviction. The novel also provides an interesting look at the historical records of women from different classes and circumstances. Alias Grace shows that history cannot always be discerned from the records and that the truth is often lost between them. When looking at records left behind by various classes of women in the novel the records of the lower class women are not simply statistics as would be expected. The reason that anything is known about Grace Marks or Nancy Montgomery is due to being a convicted murder and a victim respectively, in the Kinnear-Montgomery murders.
Both Grace Marks and Nancy Montgomery are servants and are therefore are of the lower class. Lower class women did not usually leave behind records other than statistics. They were usually working and had little or no leisure time. It would have also been unlikely for lower class women to have been literate or for them to have had the funds to purchase ink, paper and other means needed for writing. Before the murders and her imprisonment Grace would have had very little time to herself. As a servant she would have likely had little money to spare for paper, ink, or stamps for letter writing. Therefore Grace and other women of the lower class would not have had the same luxury as some upper class women who kept ...
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... alleged crime and conviction. Therefore there is no shortage of material about Grace Marks. However, the people writing down this information were subject to their own biases, other influences, and when writing from memory more likely to forget things or remember them incorrectly. Despite the records of her who Grace Marks truly was, like many lower class women who do not have such records, is lost to history.
Works Cited
Margaret Atwood, “In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction,” The American Historical Review Vol.108, no. 5(Dec, 1998): 1503-1516, accessed December 26, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2649966
Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (USA: Seal Books, 2000), .
Mrs. Moodie (Susanna Moodie), Life in the Clearings versus the Bush (London: R.Bently, 1853), http://eco.canadiana.ca.libproxy.uwinnipeg.ca/view/oocihm.43989/3?r=0&s=1
The layout of the book devotes each chapter to a key figure in Anne’s case. The story begins, fittingly, with Anne Orthwood, the young indentured servant, who had a brief affair with the young nephew of Colonel William Kendall who was of high social standing in the community. Pagan does a masterful job of describing the human aspect of the people surrounding each case. He ties the human element with the decisions made by the justices of the peace. These ties offer a clear understanding of the malleability of the laws and the legal modifications that were made by empowered justices. For example, indentured contracts became extremely pliable to local interests. Anne’s indenture was sold three times in two years, each was without her consent as would have been needed in England. The second sale of Anne’s indenture provoked the case of Waters v. Bishopp, in which Waters had discovered Anne’s pregnancy and sued Bishopp for breach of contract and selling a “faulty product”. The English followed the caveat emptor rule, in which a...
“Book Review | The Wars by Timothy Findley; Out of the Shadows: Canada in the Second World War by W. A. B. Douglas and Brereton Greenhous | Canadian Literature.” N. p., n.d. Web. 4 Jan. 2014.
...ths of the sixteenth century. Yes, women of that time and place left a very light mark on history. Eventually, the story the book tells spirals down into just some nasty courtroom feuds among family members. The story provides a driving narrative that brings into intimate contact disparate kinds that are still prevalent today. And the conclusion drawn from Anna's actions and reactions may surprise. In both everyday life and in times of crisis, women in the twenty first century has access to effective personal and legal resources.
Anne Moody's story is one of success filled with setbacks and depression. Her life had a great importance because without her, and many others, involvement in the civil rights movement it would have not occurred with such power and force. An issue that is suppressing so many people needs to be addressed with strength, dedication, and determination, all qualities that Anne Moody strived in. With her exhaustion illustrated at the end of her book, the reader understands her doubt of all of her hard work. Yet the reader has an outside perspective and knows that Anne tells a story of success. It is all her struggles and depression that makes her story that much more powerful and ending with the greatest results of Civil Rights and Voting Rights for her and all African Americans.
Anne Moody's story is incredible. She overcame divorced parents, heavy poverty, deliberate murders of her family and friends by whites, and numerous death threats. I believe she succeeded in her effort to write a book with enough power for the reader to appreciate the evil of racism and intense inequality. For Miss Moody and other blacks, life was not much different from slavery, which ha...
While they do not examine how living a life of gratitude in their family might have contributed to Sarah's pain that does not mean that they didn't love her deeply. What shines through is Sarah's strength, her ability for generosity, and her love for many in her life. The chapters of the book are each introduced by the dates when women who vanished were last seen by friends or family. This helps to emphasize how long it was before the police took these women's disappearances seriously. deVries discusses quite lucidly the impact of societal attitudes and stereotypes upon sex workers in contrast with their actual humanised, individual situations and choices. Ultimately, this book is a wonderful testament to a strong person destroyed by circumstances within and without her that echoed off of each other to a heartbreaking end. It is also indicative of a society which sees some women as disposable because of the presumption of labels, and to not treat a person as an individual first who regardless of labels, does not deserve such a violent outcome in their
Jewett, Sarah Orne. "A White Heron." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. 131-139.
Each of these letters provides details about the lives of middle-class married African American women living in the Upper South in the early twentieth century. By looking at these documents along with the finding aids that explain the collections they are a part of one could get a good sense of what life was like for a fictional woman of similar circumstances.
Filewood, Alan. “National Battles: Canadian Monumental Drama and the Investiture of History.” In Modern Drama. 38. (Spring 1995) 71-86
Kempe, Margery. "From The Book of Margery Kempe." The Norton Anthology of Literature By Women. 2nd ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 18-24.
Social gender separations are displayed in the manner that men the view Wright house, where Mr. Wright has been found strangled, as a crime scene, while the women who accompany them clearly view the house as Mrs. Wright’s home. From the beginning the men and the women have are there for two separate reasons —the men, to fulfill their duties as law officials, the women, to prepare some personal items to take to the imprisoned Mrs. Wright. Glaspell exposes the men’s superior attitudes, in that they cannot fathom women to making a contribution to the investigation. They leave them unattended in a crime scene. One must question if this would be the same action if they were men. The county attorney dismisses Mrs. Hale’s defenses of Minnie as “l...
Largely throughout the history of the United States of America, women have been intimately oppressed by their spouses in collusion with a patriarchal society. The Realist literary period saw no exception to this oppression of women. The Realist period, which lasted approximately from 1865-1910, involved many injustices on women, women’s rights, and equality. Males were supreme to females throughout this period, and women were denied many basic freedoms, including the right to vote. Women were regarded as frail, unequal, and inferior. However, the marginalization of women in this period did not go without protest. Women began to have an active voice on issues pertaining to their own rights as the end of the Realist period neared. Headways into women’s rights were made in this period around the turn of the century. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman chronicles the oppression and deteriorating sanity of Jane, who is being confined in a room by her physician and husband. This story is critical in telling of the oppression and subordination of women to their husbands throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin depicts a frail woman, who dies after a fright from her husband, who she believed was dead. The Awakening by Kate Chopin details the life of Edna Pontellier, who seeks individualism and life away from the control of men. Edna Pontellier assists in representing the audible and vociferous women’s rights movement that arose towards the end of the 19th century. American women in the Realist literary period encountered three elements that defined their societal status: oppression, inequality, and activism.
YORK, LORRAINE. "Wars, The (1977)." Oxford Companion To Canadian Literature (1997): 1168. Literary Reference Center. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
Throughout history, a plethora of different classes of people, cultures, and races have undergone some form of prejudice. Partiality against women has occurred, and continues to occur, in America. Susan Glaspell, author of "A Jury of her Peers," depicts a story of a close-knit community in the process of solving the mystery of a man's death, thought to be caused by his wife. In the investigation of Mr. Wright’s death, the women helping to search through the Wright farm for clues pointing to evidence of Minnie Wright’s murder of her husband were thought of as useless, when in reality, the women were solely responsible for finding and understanding Mrs. Wright's motives for murdering her husband. Glaspell uses imagery and a woman's point of view to depict how a woman may feel bound by limits set by society--- a feeling most easily understood by women who share the same perception of life.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...