Obsession With a Murderess

Alias Grace caught my eye because I watched another show inspired by one of Margaret Atwood’s novels, called The Handmaid's Tale. Alias Grace is a short series about a woman murderer, Grace Marks, who is referred to as a murderess. Usually shows depict a man playing the role of a murderer, and that’s what makes this show so different from other murder mysteries. It is set in the 1850s and during this time, women were not taken seriously and their roles were mainly maids and housewives. It was such a big deal that a woman actually murdered someone, or was thought to have murdered someone anyways. There are many pieces of the murder and of Grace’s story through foreshadowing and flashbacks.
Grace finds herself in Toronto working in the Kinnear household, as a maid, after her family sailed from Ireland to Canada. Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper end up being murdered, and Grace and her boyfriend, James McDermott, who was also a worker for Kinnear, are blamed. While McDermott gets hanged, Grace gets thirty years in the Kingston Penitentiary. Grace had been imprisoned for fifteen years before the reverend brought Dr. Jordan to Toronto to interview Grace, in hopes he will write a report in Grace’s favor, so the board can get her released. Through the interviews, we get the story of Grace’s past through flashbacks. She has an awful past with an abusive and drunken father and her mother’s death on the ship over to Canada.
Grace’s mother’s death on the ship is foreshadowed. During one flashback, we see the family coming aboard the ship and Grace’s mother sees three crows in a row on one of the sails. She tells Grace that she will not see land again and that the crows mean death. Later in the flashback, sure enough, she dies due to a tumor in her abdomen. Another foreshadowed aspect of the show is about Mary Whitney’s death, Grace’s room mate and fellow maid in the Kinnear house. Eventually, we find out that Grace and James McDermott were planning on running away together after the murder, and on the paper for Grace’s trial in court, she used the name Mary Whitney. Grace tells Dr. Jordan that it was a particular name to her and then goes on to say that Mary was dead by that time so she wouldn’t have minded Grace using her name.
Grace said she had wicked thoughts before when she was talking to Dr. Jordan, and her first was when she boarded the ship to Toronto. Her four younger siblings were lined up against the railing on the ship looking back onto land at something and Grace considered pushing one or two overboard. She was standing behind them and said that way there would be one or two fewer mouths to feed and clothes to wash. Her second wicked thought was when her father was passed out on the bed and she was putting ashes into a large, black, iron bucket. This was after Grace had woken up from her father throwing her against the wall in frustration from breakfast not being done when he wanted it done. On top of knocking her out, as she woke up, her father was above her kissing her and saying sorry, then attempting to rape her. She was cleaning the ashes and picked up the bucket and carried it above her shoulder over to the bed, but stopped herself and went back to cleaning as before.
These aspects of Grace’s life are things that Dr. Jordan is interested in. The obsession with the murderess, Grace Marks, was throughout Toronto and that’s why Dr. Jordan was brought to interview her. Some people weren’t sure if she was completely guilty or not, and some people were for her being released, like the reverend on the board. Grace was so young when the murdered occurred, just sixteen years old, so some people thought she should be let out. They thought she could have been persuaded by McDermott. As I haven’t seen enough of the show to know whether she gets released from prison or not yet, I don’t know any more clues to the murder either. I do plan to finish the series, though, as it has sparked my interest to not only watch the first episode for this blog post, but to finish the series too.