Post 2: We’re at The Good Stuff

Welcome back! I’m sure you have all been anxiously awaiting the second installment of this Alias Grace blog.

I will be one of the first to admit that the book was slow to pick up in the beginning. In this section however, we learn a great deal about Grace’s backstory and what led to her living with at Thomas Kinnears in the first place. Most importantly, we learn about Mary Whitney, whom Grace has mentioned often, but we don’t know much about.

Grace tells us about Mary Whitney and her strong, brilliant, and bright personality. Mary is one who does not passively accept hat happens around her, but questions it and wishes to make it change. She frequently laments about how unfair The divide between the classes is. On page 150, Grace says “But it angered her that some people had so much and others so little, as she could not see any divine plan in it,” (150). This is just one of many instances where we learn of Mary’s forward thinking attitude and ways. She also comments frequently on the condition of women, telling Grace she must always be cautious of men and their dangerous ways. Mary Whitney reminds me a great deal of Moira form The Handmaid’s Tale because of this.

On that note, Grace reminds me of Offred, the main character of The Handmaid’s Tale. They both are passive, always watching the world around them. They also have similar backstories involved a lot of loss. I think that this is Margaret Atwood’s MO if you will of the protagonists in her book, as The Blind Assassin’s main character Iris was the same.

The tale of Mary Whitney is not one that ends happily. After Grace tells us of all of her time with Mary, she tells us that Mary—an unwed young lady in the early 1800s—is pregnant. The scandal that this would cause Mary is horrifying for the two to think about, and so they devise a plan to go visit a special doctor. Grace gives Mary all of her savings so she may afford the operation, which is essentially and abortion. Shortly after the abortion, Mary dies leaving Grace with an unimaginable amount of guilt; she has just lost the only friend she has ever known.

Mary’s death forces Grace to leave her place of work in search of another. After going through a few places, she finds herself employed at a shoemakers. The shoemaker’s wife then introduces Grace to Nancy Montgomery, one of the people Grace is said to have helped murder.

At the point in the book where Lilly and I stopped, Grace is working for Thomas Kinnear (the other person she is said to have murdered) and everything seems to be normal. This most likely means that in the next section, they will be dead. My main reason for believing this is that Grace literally says “It is strange to reflect that of all the people in that house, I was the only one of them left alive in six months time,” (209). So, the murder scene must be coming soon.

Last time I read, I made a note of a few things: first, I don’t trust Simon (the doctor talking with Grace) at all. Not one bit. It seems to me as though he is there under suspicious circumstances, and he is utterly self absorbed and a little creepy. It seems as though every interaction he has with a woman is sexual to him. When his landlady passes out, he considers taking advantage of her. “He has no wish to alter [their] situation, despite an image that leaps into his mind, unbidden—aroused, no doubt by the sight of a helpless woman extended upon his tumbled bed,” (142). Later, he meets a potential suitor and immediately imagines her as “a famous Parisian courtesan who had herself presented at a banquet this way; naked, of course. He occupies himself with undressing and garnishing Lydia,” (pg 193). These thoughts are not few and far between, and I fear that he may try to take advantage of Grace later in the book.

The book is getting quite interesting at this point, and I was actually a little upset that I had to put it down on several occasions. I’m hopeful that the next installment will be just as good as this one!