One of the main themes of the postmodern movement includes the idea that history is only what one makes of it. In other words, to the postmodern philosopher history is only a story humans frame and create about their past (Bruzina). Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace is an excellent exploration of this postmodern idea. Through use of postmodern writing styles and techniques, Atwood explores how the framing of a story influences its meaning. By mixing different writing mediums such as prose, poetry, period style letters, and historical documents such as newspaper articles, Atwood achieves a complex novel that explores a moment of history in a unique way. The different genres allow for the reader to experience different perspectives of the same story- the murder of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery. Atwood masterfully weaves researched historical “facts” with fictionalized accounts of the murders, primarily through Grace’s story telling, into a complex and realistic version of the mysterious event.
Alias Grace exemplifies postmodernism’s preoccupation with the past. Other novels of the genre also explore the past through a modern lense. For example, John Gardner’s Grendel explores the famous epic poem Beowulf in a new, postmodern light. Similarly, Alias Grace uses the Kinnear-Montgomery murder to explore the societal issues of the past and compare them to the social issues of the present. As explained by Gillian Siddal,
[W[hile Grace Marks lived in the nineteenth century, Atwood produced the novel in the twentieth century, and thus her Grace has, anachronistically, access to postmodernist conventions that allow her to construct her life story. In a way that challenges essentialist notions of identity. [She refuses] to engage ...
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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 .
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In the novel, Alias Grace, written by Margaret Atwood, Grace Marks is presented as the central figure. Seen as an antagonist by the public is really disturbing for Grace. She is a very obedient and truthful individual. Although many people call Grace Marks a murderess throughout the whole book, not everyone knows the burden of being falsely accused of murder. Anyone being locked up for 26 years would go insane, which Grace gladly did not.
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