Historical Consciousness November 8, 2023

Introduction: in the last decades of the 20th Century, the relationship between history and
literature came under scrutiny as a number of prominent Canadian authors, including Margaret
Atwood, published historical fiction conceded with a wave of criticism about declining historical
knowledge in Canada. The headlines focused on how the nation was threatened by the citizens’
lack of both interest and general knowledge in their own past. Alias Grace is a novel about the
historical figure Grace Marks, and Atwood supplies much historical knowledge and data about
social reality and scientific knowledge and life in 19th century Canada.

Atwood and meaning of Historical Consciousness:

In 1996, Margaret Atwood reflected on the reasons for the apparent rise of interest in historical
fiction in a lecture that turned later into an article namely “In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing
Canadian Historical Fiction” by taking retrospective look at Canadian historical literature. This
lecture demonstrates how writers and literary critics shape the reconstruction of the literary past
according to the literary tastes and values of the present.
The historical novel Alias Grace revisits an episode in Canadian history. Atwood’s novel is a
writing back (criticize, reflect, give another version) to 19th C historical novel which conceives of
history as the field of truth in relation to which the fantastic inventors or writers are compared
and contrasted. This type of writing is an illustration of a loss of faith in the documentability of
truth, instead memorial consciousness is presented as an alternative. This is achieved
through the focus on a dissociated or fragmented form of collective thought which largely
depends on a sort of self-reflexivity, i.e., the question is not whether history is intelligible or not,
but the idea of the objectiveness/subjectiveness of historical interpretations is an issue of
ideological positions based on power relations.
In Alias Grace, historical consciousness, and the past through it is imagined from the standpoint
of the weak and the dispossessed rather than the powerful and wealthy. In doing so, Atwood
positions her novel within the postmodernist writings which highlight the experience of those
who suffered rather than those who made history by redistributing the roles of winners (Grace
Marks) and the losers (anyone who is defeated) in actual history. History is then approached as a
mode of consciousness rather than an objective process of linear relation (telling) of facts.
Atwood’s strategy in depicting history as a complex consciousness is achieved through the
creation of a complex character (Grace Marks) who looks on the past retrospectively through
a totally disturbed mind. Therefore, the question of what constitutes historical evidence, fact,
or truth, is the very fabric of historical consciousness. In other words, the reader is made to
consider, and question received as well as unchallenged notions of what constitutes historical
practice and even history itself.
In Alias Grace, Atwood returns to a historical recovery (recuperating) project to reconstruct
the “true story” of Grace Marks, the Irish immigrant maid, accused of double murder in 1843.
Through the use of the patchwork quilt motif, Atwood presents diverse historical texts to
complement her narrative which is itself made of different narrative or produced by different
narrators basically including Grace Marks herself. As such, Atwood presents a novel that gives
Historical Consciousness November 8, 2023

the reader a sense that s/he is gaining a deep understanding of what actually happened. In her
essay “In Search of Alias Grace”, Atwood discusses the writing of historical fiction from the
perspective of someone who had personally experienced how Canadian history was once taught
at school: “The main idea behind the way we were taught Canadian history…Canada has come
of age”.

Historical Consciousness and the Female figure in Alias Grace:

Through the case of Grace Marks, Atwood goes deep into Canada’s settler past. The novel,
indeed, plays on the instability of historical evidence. In fact, the protagonist claims to have no
conscious recollection of the murder, a fact that accounts for the reliance on such practices as
mesmerism and spiritualism.
It is important to note that Grace Marks is a representation of the inherently split settler subject
through Atwood’s portrayal of this character as schizophrenic, as she finds herself torn between
two societies including one represented by the American psychoanalyst Dr. Simon Jordan who
seeks in Grace his own case of identity loss and escape.
Atwood’s development of a dialogue between past and present and living and dead, serves to
consolidate the Canadian cultural and historical memory. By making her protagonist retell past
event of a notorious crime, Atwood allows her female character a voice of her own. Thus,
allowing a formerly figure to create her own story and retell a previously silenced feminine
experience. Accordingly, she enables her to recover lost female history. In her novel, Atwood
merges/combines the sociopolitical/cultural. Indeed, the author raises issues related to the 19th
century scientific, social, psychological, and political ideas touching on provocative subjects
such as American Slavery, abortion, and sexual relationships between “Masters and servants”;
the question around which Grace Marks traumas revolved.
Underlying the horrible conditions abroad the ship, the politically sanctioned ethnic groups are
depicted as subjected to subhuman/dehumanizing conditions (chapter 14). Many like grace's
mother died and those who could survive the journey were disillusioned as they were met with
hostility in Canada. Generally, immigrants coming from Ireland headed first to Quebec. Grace's
family, however, prefer to continue to Toronto “which was where they said Freeland could be
obtained” (p.148).
The case of Mary Whitney and her death as a result of abortion allows the text to shed light
towards not just on the issue of class structure in the mid-19th century society, but also it
serves to further complicate Grace's misery as she is dismissed from the Parkinson's which
caused her to lose her best friend, her job, and what seemed to her to become her home all at
once. The point is to emphasize and interrogate the insecurity the lower class had to face. Alias
Grace, therefore, highlights this societal fears associated with immobility of the lower classes
and of lower classes women in particular. Grace is condition in the novel reveals the Canadian
attitude towards immigrants who are reduced to servitude. In chapter 18, Grace Marks learns
from Mary Whitney that “It was against the Gentry, who ran everything, and kept all the money
and land for themselves” (p.177).
Historical Consciousness November 8, 2023

Although the rebellion took place in 1837, it is still discussed in 1843 and written about in the
newspapers that talked about Grace's trial. It is clear that the text/narrative aims at raising the
issue of the resistance against social determinism.