Connections

__**Section 1**__ **By: Amanda Theriault**

Margret Atwood based Alias Grace on an actual event that has taken place in Canadian History. Below is a link to the trial of James McDermott and Grace Marks. []

This case raised aot of controversy in society in 1843, People debated on whether she helped James McDermott murder Thomas Kinner and Nancy Montgomery or she was an accessory.

Grace Marks can be compared to Karla Homolka. In Karla Homolka's case she as well got a lesser sentence then Paul Bernardo did, as well there were many debated in whether or not Karla helped Paul Bernardo kill the women that they did.

Below is a link to Karla Homolka's case []



__** Section 2 **__ **By: Laura Wiens**

Alias Grace is based on a true story, as stated above. One of the events Grace is a part of is the Great Irish famine.

The famine took place between 1845 and 1852. It is commonly known as the "Irish Potato Famine". During this time, about one million people died. Approximately 1.8 million more emigrated from Ireland. In the book, Grace and her family decided to emigrate to Canada, in hopes of a better future. This was a time of mass starvation, disease and death.

Margaret Atwood shows--through Grace's perspective, as a young child--the struggle to find food, earn enough to survive, and how difficult it was to fight sickness, as even Grace's own mother succumbs to disease while traveling to Canada.

This famine can be compared to countless others that have occurred in history, such as the Bengal famine of 1770 (estimated to have caused 10 million deaths) and the Northern Chinese famine of 1876-1879 (estimated to have caused close to 10 million deaths).

Link to the wikipedia page regarding the Great Famine in Ireland: [])

__**Section 2**__ ** by: Elizabeth Kuenzel ** In this section of the novel, dreams are an overriding theme which contain immeasurable significance. After hearing Grace's recounting of her childhood, Dr Jordan has an interesting dream. In his dream he is walking down a corridor in the servants' chambers of his old house, and he tries to open a number of doors unsuccessfully. The last door he is able to open, and behind it he finds an overwhelming flood of water which overcomes him, while he holds a few of his father's prized personal possessions. Dr Jordan automatically connects the flood in his dream to part of Grace's tale in which she is travelling on a ship. However, there may be an even deeper significance to his dream than just this. Dreams themselves are mysterious in many ways, and are often believed to be demonstrative of a person's innermost wants and desires. Some believe that dreams are also prophetic in nature, and that they can affect the general outcome of an event, and change the way things are supposed to happen. In his book "Dream Interpretation", Sigmund Freud argued that the foremost purpose of a dream in wish fulfillment. In children, whose wants and needs are much simpler and direct, the meaning of dreams are easier to understand and grasp. However, as a person matures their wants and needs also complicate, so the understanding of a dream becomes more difficult to grasp. In addition, the true desire that directs the dream is disguised by other subjects or objects found in every day life. For example, this dream suggests Dr Jordan's desire is to unlock grace's mind, like the doors in his dream. However, this is disguised by the flood, his surroundings and his father's possessions. This demonstrates how important dreams are in the novel and also suggests that dreams may be used as a type of foreshadowing. __** Section 3 **__ **By: Rachel Lee** In section 3 of the novel, Alias Grace, a noted medical practitioner named, Dr. Jerome DuPont, insists on hypnotising Grace even though Dr. Simon tells him it is a bad idea and could be solely harmful to both Grace and their current process in recovering lost memories. Grace ends up agreeing to the hynosis but when she sees Dr. DuPont for the first time, she realizes he is none other than Jeremiah the Peddler. Grace as well as the others, Dr. Simon Jordan, the Governor's family, etc, are all unsure and nervous about the hynosis and no one can really predict the outcome of the experiment.

I was able to connect this scene of the novel with a paper called, The Effect of Forensic Hypnosis Techniques on Eyewitness Recall and Recognition written by H W Timm. It was published in 1981 in the United States and it revolves around an experiment done in an intoductory criminology class. In this experiment, 45 volunteers attended class on the day an unannounced mockery assassination took place in their lesson. The volunteers afterwards were randomly placed into 1 of 3 different groups, group 1 recieving an typical forensic hypnosis treatment, group 2 receiving the same procedure without hypnotic induction, and the last group receiving neither the hynosis procedure or induction. In the end, results showed that group two had the most accurate responses which proves that forenseic hypnosis could be sucessful but is still risky because the experiment was only a preliminary investigation.

Link to description of the Effect of Forensic Hypnosis Techniques on Eyewitness Recall and Recognition: [] __**Section 3**__  **By: Melina Thogersen** As I read this section, I was able to make some connections to Grace and her story. The first connection I made was when Grace was working as a maid in the houses from the 1800s. It reminds me of my friend’s house that was built in the 1800s containing two staircases leading upstairs, the back one would have been used for the maids so they did not get in the way of the family’s staircase. In this section, Nancy and Grace were caught in situations where they had to avoid getting caught by Mr. Kinnear when going down the staircase to listen in on his conversations or avoid being seen. Grace says that it would have been helpful and the situation they were in would have been avoided if there had been a separate staircase for the maids. I found the 1800s would have been an interesting time period to live in, and reading Alias Grace has opened my mind to the history and the inquistiveness of this time.

Another connection I made to this book was Grace’s story of being in the insane asylum. I read a book before, called Shutter Island by Dennis LeHane, which was also made into a movie, and had the same theme of being insane. In Alias Grace, Dr. Jordan is trying to find out if Grace is actually insane and if she killed Mr. Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery. In Shutter Island, a US Marshal is sent to an insane asylum on an island to find out what happened to a missing patient. The similarities of these two novels are that in the end, the Marshal is confronted by the administrator that he is actually the Marshal’s psychiatrist and he was allowed to play out his fantasy in hopes of curing the Marshal, who in reality not a Marshal. The Marshal thinks they are lying to him and has figured out that he is really sane and they don’t want him to leave the island. It is unclear if this in fact true or not, ending the story. In Alias Grace, as we have read so far, it is unclear if she is really sane or if she has killed Nancy and Mr. Kinnear. __** Section 4 **__ **By: Breanna Willms**

Throughout the book nobody really knows whether Grace is guilty or innocent. Although she is eventually proven innocent, we know have no idea whether the real Grace Marks was actually innocent. There is another famous murderess who's status always remained a mystery. This lady is Lizzie Borden. Lizzie was accused of brutaly murdering her father and stepmother. Similarily to Grace, the victims were people who were in a close relationship with Lizzie. There are also many books written on Lizzie (just as there are for Grace) discussing her innocence. In one of these books, there is a theory that Lizzie may have suffered from seizures. These seizures could have put her in a state where she may have commited the murders without knowing it. This theory is pretty far fetched, but it reminds me of Margaret Atwoods theory that Grace was possesed by her good friend Mary Whitney, therefore not actually commiting the murders herself. Both of these women lived the rest of their lives as celebrities. However, neither had closure, as no one has ever discovered the truth in either of these cases. Were Grace Marks and Lizzie Borden both brutal killers? No one will ever know.