Abstract
Part of the reason why Mary Harron’s miniseries Alias Grace holds such a fascination for the viewer has to do the way in which the narrative unfolds, never fully reaching either a definitive truth or any form of closure. In the literal sense then, it is rather a mystery about murders and the hermetic personality of the “celebrated murderess” Susanna Moodie alluded to in Life in the Clearings than a formulaic murder mystery.
Grace’s baffling and enigmatic figure takes center stage in this intricate web of open-ended narratives, but her figure also observes from a distance the complex structure of these multi-layered tales and their sometimes contradictory strands. As the original core of all the narratives, Grace is therefore framed as the mistress-weaver who toys with concealed, superimposed discourses only partly revealing “[herself] behind [herself] concealed” (E. Dickinson, “One need not be a chamber to be haunted”).
The manipulative autobiographical pact she makes with Doctor Jordan unfolds as some ongoing game in which actress Sarah Gadon’s masquerading body and narrative quilt forever reformat the truth—if there is any.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Its blood-curdling tessitura has achieved a cult status over the years. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYDxxHrlmUg.
Works Cited
Alias Grace. Created by Mary Harron and Sarah Polley, CBC Television, 2017.
Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace (1996). Virago Press, 2017.
———. “In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 103 No. 5, Dec. 1998, pp. 1503–1516.
Davey, Frank. Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone Canadian Novel since 1967. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
Hammill, Faye. “‘Death by Nature’: Margaret Atwood and Wilderness.” Gothic Studies, Vol. 5 Issue 2, Nov. 2003, pp. 47–63.
Howells, Coral Ann. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge UP, 2006.
Kay, Jeremy. “Sarah Gadon on starring in ‘Alias Grace’: ‘I was completely consumed.’” Screen International, 15 June 2018, N_A.
Mcwilliams, Ellen. Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman. Ashgate, 2009.
Moodie, Susanna. Life in the Clearings versus the Bush. Jefferson Publication, 2015. http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/21/63.pdf. Accessed 7 Jan. 2018.
Morrison, Toni. “The Site of Memory.” Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 2nd ed., edited by William Zinsser, Houghton Mifflin, 1995, pp. 83–102. https://blogs.umass.edu/brusert/files/2013/03/Morrison_Site-of-Memory.pdf. Accessed 21 Dec. 2018.
Moss, John, and Tobi Kozakewich. Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye. University of Ottawa Press, 2006.
Murray, Jennifer. “Historical figures and paradoxical patterns: The quilting metaphor in Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace.’” Studies In Canadian Literature-Etudes En Litterature Canadienne, Vol.26, no. 1, 2001, pp. 65–83.
———. “History as poetic indetermination: the murder scene in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.” Études anglaises, Vol. tome 56 (3), 2003, pp. 310–322.
Scheckels, Theodore F. The Political in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction. The Writing on the Wall of the Tent. Ashgate Publishing Company, 2012.
Wynne-Davies, Marion. Margaret Atwood. Northcote House Publishers, 2010.
Wisker, Gina, Margaret Atwood: An Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Zarum, Lara. “The Steely-Eyed Ferocity of ‘Alias Grace.’” The Village Voice, 4 Dec. 2017, https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/12/04the-steely-eyed-ferocity-of-alias-grace/.
Zinsser, William, editor. Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 2nd ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1995, pp. 83–102.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Paquet-Deyris, AM. (2021). The Unreliable Female (Narrator) in Mary Harron’s Miniseries Alias Grace. In: Wells-Lassagne, S., McMahon, F. (eds) Adapting Margaret Atwood. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73686-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73686-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-73685-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-73686-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)