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For the purposes of this study, I define the term narrative as the recounting (by
a narrator to at least one narratee) of one or several real or fictional events.
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See, for instance, Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the
Practice of eory in Literature and Legal Studies (); Nussbaum, Poetic Jus-
tice: e Literary Imagination and Public Life (); Swain, ed., “Legal Fictions,”
New Formations (), –; Freeman and Lewis, eds., Law and Literature:
Current Legal Issues (); Dolin, Fiction and the Law: Legal Discourse in Vic-
torian and Modernist Literature (); Brooks, Troubling Confessions: Speaking
Guilt in Law and Literature (); and Moddelmog, Reconstituting Authority:
American Fiction in the Province of the Law, – ().
See also Webber, for whom the essence, role, and outcome of a legal instru-
ment such as the Constitution is a “commitment to a particular public debate
through time” ().
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parties presents and narratively represents the same event differently. In the
end, however, a verdict must be rendered.
For convenience’s sake, I use the term “counternarrative” in the singular even
though I show later in this study that Grace’s recounting of the past in Alias
Grace can be divided into two distinct parts, which correspond to different
litigation strategies.
e novel does indeed no more than resemble an adversary trial in the opposi-
tion of its narratives. Obviously, novels and courtroom justice differ. ey differ
foremost in that the reader—who might be viewed either as a jury member
(which is what Ian Watt argues in his Rise of the Novel []) or as a judge (which
I argue here)—has no direct or immediate impact on a person’s life and liberty.
Consequently, in a novel that opposes conflictory narratives for the sake of the
reader’s “verdict” on a given subject or issue, the traditional legal rules of evi-
dence and procedure fail to apply quite as stringently as they might in a court
of law. In Alias Grace, for example, Grace’s narrative opposes certain opinion
(rather than factual) testimonies concerning her state of mind or character. In
any Western courtroom, opinion testimonies are admissible only from expert
witnesses, or from lay witnesses on the condition that they be “(a) rationally
based on the perception of the witness and (b) helpful to a clear understand-
ing of [the witness’s] testimony or the determination of a fact in issue” (Black
). At the same time, some of the instances of spontaneity which are pos-
sible and permitted in a court of law are denied during the reading process.
Unlike a real judge, for instance, the reader cannot interrupt a testimony to
question the witness and is therefore restricted to an immutable “testimony”
that evades clarification. e author’s or implied author’s presence is equally
problematic when we think about literary texts as unfolding courtroom narra-
tives or as “trials.” I discuss the author’s intrusions and evasions in Alias Grace
on pages and .
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Unless otherwise mentioned, as here, the name “Grace Marks” stands through-
out this study for Margaret Atwood’s fictional construct.
Aside from being central to Alias Grace itself, Grace Marks is the subject of a
chapter bearing her name and of another passing mention in Susanna Moodie’s
Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush. Mrs Moodie’s account is one of the
narratives that the fictional Grace counters with her own in Atwood’s novel.
Grace Marks is also one of the runaway culprits of Kinnear’s and Montgomery’s
gruesome murders in Ronald Hambleton’s “true crime fiction,” A Master
Killing. Unlike Atwood’s Alias Grace, Hambleton’s work is far more concerned
with the Township of Toronto politics involved in the homicide investigation
and in the pursuit of the suspects than it is with either of the accused them-
selves.
e “Voluntary Confession of Grace Marks to Mr. George Walton in the Gaol
on the th November, ” included in Walton’s summary of the Trials of
James McDermott and Grace Marks consists of a brief, somewhat dry, factual,
exculpatory, four-page narrative in which Grace admits that she was an acces-
sory to the murders but only because she feared for her own life.
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Although in Atwood’s novel both Grace and Reverend Verringer () mention
her having taken the stand at her own trial, George Walton’s summary of the
trial shows no indication that the historical Grace testified on her own behalf.
Protection against self-incrimination is one of the fundamental tenets of crimi-
nal law. It is therefore probable that Grace may have indeed been silent during
both her trial and that of James McDermott, since in testifying against him she
might have also incriminated herself.
e legal concept of “intersectionality” in the area of equality law was coined
and defined by Kimberle Crenshaw in a series of articles (and notably in her
famous “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist eory, and Antiracist
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e term, of course, is a misnomer since Grace in fact reveals very little about
the murders themselves.
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Hilde Staels is the only critic so far to have noted that this reference to a fourth
man known from childhood is indicative of Grace’s sexual abuse at the hands
of her father (). Staels may be either partly or entirely right. Grace herself
tells the readers that until the murders, “nobody has ever taken advantage of
[her] although they tried” (). is comment suggests that perhaps Mr Marks
never succeeded in sexually assaulting his daughter. Of course, Grace could also
be lying or in denial about what happened to her.
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Very much along these lines, Stephanie Lovelady makes the perceptive ob-
servation that, as she addresses Jordan, Grace “always uses the cover of her
friend Mary” whenever she needs to utter words or thoughts that are less than
ladylike. “Mary,” Lovelady writes, “becomes a crutch to say what Grace cannot
while Simon is listening” (). e startling hypnosis session suggests that
Mary Whitney was also used as a crutch to do what Grace herself would not
or would never admit to doing.
Susanna Moodie’s rather colourful description of a maddened and incarcerated
Grace of course begs the question: what repressed anger of her own was Mrs
Moodie attempting to process through her portrayal of the convicted murder-
ess and alleged madwoman?
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Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. Toronto: McClelland, .
———. “In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction.”
Charles R. Bronfman Lecture in Canadian Studies, University of Ottawa,
November . Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, .
Baron, Jane B., and Julia Epstein. “Language and the Law: Literature, Nar-
rative, and Legal eory.” e Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique. Ed.
David Kairis. rd ed. New York: Basic, . –.
Black’s Law Dictionary: Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of American
and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern. th ed. St. Paul: West,
.
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