REPRESSED RAGE
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
I first watched Alias Grace as the Netflix limited series. Then I read the novel. Then I rewatched the series with Kev. It contains some of my favourite mesmeric/hypnotic moments and memes!
(I should warn that this post contains spoilers: whether you prefer TV and/or a novel, Alias Grace is superb, so you might want to watch/read it before pressing on with this post.)
Alias Grace is a work of historical fiction by Margaret Atwood, the Canadian writer most famous for The Handmaid’s Tale. The story fictionalises the real-life 1843 murders of gentleman Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Canada West, a British colony in North America from 1841 to 1867.
Two of the Kinnear household servants, Grace Marks and James McDermott, were convicted of the crime. McDermott was hanged and Grace, aged just 16, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
While the novel is based on (scant) factual events, Atwood creates a narrative around a fictional psychiatrist, Simon Jordan, who researches the case. Jordan visits Grace as a convicted murderess, now aged 32, who has been hired out of prison as a domestic servant to the Governor of the penitentiary.
An advocacy group for Grace wish to have her pardoned and released, and hire Jordan in the hopes he’ll find her to be a hysteric rather than a criminal.
Grace does not remember what happened on the day of the murders and, it transpires, has other gaps and glitches in her memory. And so the story is pieced together while Jordan interviews Grace as she sews at the Governor’s mansion.
A recurring character of interest from the flashbacks to Grace’s early life in domestic servitude is Jeremiah Pontelli, a peddler who first meets Grace peddling haberdashery and such to her first house in Toronto. Jeremiah, also a magician, foresees Grace’s future and identifies her as a “one of us”.
Jeremiah goes on to become Dr Jerome DuPont, a ‘neuro-hypnotist’, who reconnects with Grace as her story reaches its dénouement. Jeremiah is canny enough to see that being a hypnotist is an opportunity for fame and fortune, and his trajectory hints at the training/reinvention scene that existed in the US in the 1840s.
He also sees Grace is a talented ‘clairvoyant somnambulist’, propositioning her to join him in his hypno-adventures – though Grace cannot accept when he tells her he’ll never marry her.
This all culminates in an electrifying séance, where DuPont and Jordan fight to crack Grace’s secrets.
I’ve speculated whether hypnosis/mesmerism is just a socially acceptable form of male mental illness. Well, something that inspired that thought is in the closing episode of the limited series. Jordan gives a speech that feels jarring with the rest of the series/story.
You can listen to it here, but here’s the quote:
“What we saw together in the Governor’s parlour has raised many questions for me about hypnotism and mesmerism. I wonder if they provide an opportunity for women to say what they think, and to express their true thoughts and feelings more boldly, and in more vulgar terms, than they could otherwise feel permission to. I wonder about Grace’s violent childhood and her experience as a young woman; abused constantly, harassed on every side. I wonder how much repressed rage she must have carried with her as a result. The question is, was this rage directed toward Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear, resulting in their murder..? Or at me?”
The speech is unique to the Netflix series; Atwood didn’t write those words. But they resonate; they feel like true subtext brought sharply to the surface for TV.
Ultimately, though, Grace’s secrets remain her own – consciously and/or unconsciously. If we consider Madame La Reveuse from The Island of Mesmeria asserting that she is the discoverer of mesmerism/hypnotism, rather than the mesmerist/hypnotist, Grace’s closing (albeit fictional) reflections are all the more poignant in our explorations of the gender and power dynamics of hypnosis and mesmerism.
Here is a girl/women objectified, sexualised, therapised, harassed, abused, persecuted, misunderstood. And here’s her deliciously ambiguous concluding speech (from the series):
“He listens to all of it. Like a child listening to a fairy-tale. I must confess that it reminds me of you, Dr Jordan. You were as eager as Mr Walsh to hear about my sufferings in life. Your cheeks would flush. And if you had ears like a dog, they would have been pricked forward, with your eyes shining and your tongue hanging out, as if you’d found a grouse in the bush. And, as with Mr Walsh, I may have changed some of the details of my stories to suit what I thought you wanted to hear. It did make me feel like I was of some use in this world.”
