Alias Grace---with potential SPOILERS

OK, I've started this thread for discussions of points that might be spoilers for people who haven't yet read or finished the book. We'll start with that title. JILL?

(General discussions without spoilers on this thread.)

Yes ... Jill???

Stacked in meetings at work but will come back to express my thoughts!

Pfffttt! Where are your priorities, woman?

Well, darn, I had something insightfully crafted in my head eight hours ago. I'm not even 40 yet and forgetful.

"Alias Grace" represents the two sides Atwood presents of the main character. There's the hard-working, highly moral Grace. Then there's the murderous Grace. Atwood (for me) never reveals which is the true Grace. It's up to the reader to determine, thus making the "other" version of Grace her alias to you.

Ah, very clever.

Or, Grace's beauty was an alias for the evil that lurked beneath (insert evil laugh).

>7 mrstreme:: ba ha ha ha ha !
(that's my evil laugh)

I kept wondering whether Mary Whitney was real, or if Mary had actually lived and assumed Grace's identity ... but none of that actually happened.

I like the way you described it though, Jill. And in the book Atwood reveals a kind of split personality situation which reminded me of the movie Sybil except there was only Grace and, well, Grace ... instead of about 17 other people.

So when I posted the review on my blog Jill asked me whether I thought Grace did it. I'm still not sure, and my opinion changes every time I think about it. At this moment I think that yes, the "murderous Grace" did it, and the "moral Grace" never knew it happened.

#5 Oh...I like that, Jill. I was trying to make one or the other the "real" Grace. I think you've made more sense of it. Like Laura, I thought for a while that perhaps the person we were experiencing as she related things to Dr. Jordan was actually Mary...but that never fit into the story. Grace's "black-outs" seem to have occurred when she couldn't deal with what was happening, (or what she had done?), and then conveniently persisted in blocking her memory of the events. There were several points in the narrative when I got the impression that Grace was playing with the doctor, in a devious sort of way. I marked this passage, for instance: "Dr. Jordan is writing eagerly, as if his hand can scarcely keep up...and I think to myself, I wonder what he will make of all that." As if she is the one evaluating him. (End of Book VIII, "Fox and Geese".) I think there may even be a third Grace, who on some level does know what happened and is instrumental in keeping the "moral" Grace from realizing it.

I read this quite a few years ago and had forgotten the detail, but I'm left with a sense of ambiguity, which your discussion encapsulates well...