Alias Grace

The bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments reveals the life of one of the most notorious women of the nineteenth century in this "shadowy, fascinating novel" (Time). • A Netflix original miniseries. It's 1843, and Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Captivating and disturbing, Alias Grace showcases bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood at the peak of her powers.

Unlock the more straightforward side of Alias Grace with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, a thought-provoking novel about the historical figure of Grace Marks, who was convicted of the double murder of her employers Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery in 1843. The novel opens 15 years later, when a young doctor hoping to establish his reputation as a pioneering psychiatrist is hired to interview Grace and ascertain whether or not she is truly guilty. Although the doctor, Simon Jordan, is determined to remain objective, he finds himself helplessly drawn into the narrative Grace weaves about her own past – and increasingly obsessed with his patient and the secrets she seems to be hiding. Alias Grace won the Canadian Giller Prize and was also shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize. It was adapted into a miniseries starring Sarah Gadon as Grace in 2017. Find out everything you need to know about Alias Grace in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

A Study Guide for Margaret Atwood's "Alias Grace," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

Essay from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 1,7, , course: Gender in Film and the Visual Arts, language: English, abstract: The ambiguity of Grace herself is especially interesting about this series. Therefore, my attempt is to first analyze the narrative style, especially concerning the different timelines as well as Grace’s unreliability and ambiguity as a character and narrator. Furthermore, I will connect this way of narrating to Grace’s quilting which is omnipresent in the series and can be read as another form of communication and narration especially for women at a time where they usually had to stay silent. With a rather powerful voice-over begins the telling of Grace Marks, by that time a 33-year-old maid that was convicted of murdering her former employer Thomas Kinnear and his house keeper Nancy Montgomery together with the stable boy James McDermott. While he gets hanged, Grace is sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, 15 years after her conviction, psychologist Dr. Simon Jordan is hired to talk to Grace to find out if she really was guilty of the murders or not. These are true events that took once place in 1843 and then were adopted for a novel written by Margaret Atwood: Alias Grace. Based on this novel the canadian US-American Drama-mini-series Alias Grace, written by Margaret Atwood and Sarah Polley and directed by Mary Harron, was released in 2017. It is the story of Grace Marks, the question of her innocence and guilt, that is constantly being asked by Dr. Jordan as well as the audience.

This collection of essays focuses on Canadian history and its legacies as represented in novels and films in English and French, produced in Canada mainly in the 1980s and 1990s. The approach is both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, aiming at articulating Canadian differences through a comparison of anglophone and francophone cultures, illustrated by works treating some of the different groups which make up Canadian society – English-Canadian, Québecois, Acadian, Native, and ethnic minorities. The emphasis is on the problematic representation of Canadianness, which is closely bound up with constructions of history and its legacies – dispossession, criminality, nomadism, Gothicism, the Maritime. The English/French language difference is emblematic of Canadian difference; the two-part arrangement, with one section on Literature and the other on Film, sets up the pattern of relationships between the two forms of cultural representation that these essays explore. Essays in the Literature section are on single texts by such writers as: Margaret Atwood, Tomson Highway, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Anne Michaels, and Alice Munro; Gabrielle Roy, Anne Hébert, Antonine Maillet, Bernard Assiniwi, and Régine Robin. The Film section with its mirror structure both supplements and amplifies this dialogue, extending notions of Canadianness with its emphasis on voices from Quebec and Acadia traditionally ‘othered’ in Canadian history. Filmmakers treated include: Phillip Borsos, Atom Egoyan, Ted Kotcheff, Mort Ransen, and Vincent Ward; Denys Arcand, Gilles Carle, Alanis Obomsawin, Léa Pool, and Jacques Savoie.

Waiting for the End examines two dozen contemporary novels within the context of a half century of theorizing about the function of ending in narrative. That theorizing about ending generated a powerful dynamic a quarter-century ago with the advent of feminist criticism of masculinist readings of the role played by ending in fiction. Feminists such as Theresa de Lauretis in 1984 and more famously Susan Winnett in her 1991 PMLA essay, Coming Unstrung, were leading voices in a swelling chorus of theorist pointing out the masculinist bias of ending in narrative. With the entry of feminist readings of ending, it became inevitable that criticism of fiction would become gendered through the recognition of difference transcending a simple binary of female/male to establish a spectrum of masculine to feminine endings, regardless of the sex of the writer. Accordingly, Waiting for the End examines pairs of novels - one pair by Margaret Atwood and one by Ian McEwan - to demonstrate how a writer can offer endings at either end of the gender spectrum.

An exploration of the proliferation of historical novels in English-Canadian literature over the last thirty years.

Everyone who ever set pen to paper on the subject of Grace seems to have been intensely subjective. In In Search of Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood describes her own search for the facts, what she found out, what eluded her grasp and how this process shaped her novel.

Novelist, poet, cultural critic, Margaret Atwood is one of the most fascinating, versatile, and productive authors of our time, a superb writer in any genre she chooses to tackle. This book was prepared on the occasion of Atwood's sixtieth birthday in November 1999. Its first aim is therefore to take stock of Atwood's multifarious works and international impact at the height of her creative powers. Secondly, the book serves as a wide-ranging introduction to the writer and her works. Fifteen informative articles written specifically for this volume by Atwood specialists from Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany, and France treat her life and status, her works (up-to-date survey articles on Atwood's novels, short fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism), and important approaches to her works (from the standpoints of gender politics, mythology, ecology, popular culture, constructivism, and Canadian nationalism). A final section on creativity, transmission, and reception includes an interview with Atwood on creativity, statements by some of Atwood's important transmitters, including publishers, editors, literary agents, and translators, and some 15 statements by Atwood's fellow writers, in which they explore her importance for them. A number of photographs of Atwood, several cartoons drawn by her, an up-to-date bibliography of works by and about Atwood, and an index round out the volume. Reingard M. Nischik is Professor of American literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Why do bodies matter? Body Matters is a collection of essays by feminists working in literary and cultural studies which addresses this question from a range of theoretical perspectives.

“There are two ladies in the province, I am told, who read,” writes Frances Brooke’s Arabella Fermor, “but both are above fifty and are regarded as prodigies of erudition.” Brooke’s The History of Emily Montague (1769) was the first work of fiction to be set in Canada, and also the first book to reflect on the situation of the woman writer there. Her analysis of the experience of writing in Canada is continued by the five other writers considered in this study – Susanna Moodie, Sara Jeannette Duncan, L.M. Montgomery, Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields. All of these authors examine the social position of the woman of letters in Canada, the intellectual stimulation available to her, the literary possibilities of Canadian subject-matter, and the practical aspects of reading, writing, and publishing in a (post)colonial country. This book turns on the ways in which those aspects of authorship and literary culture in Canada have been inscribed in imaginative, autobiographical and critical texts by the six authors. It traces the evolving situation of the Canadian woman writer over the course of two centuries, and explores the impact of social and cultural change on the experience of writing in Canada.

In her study of Margaret Atwood, Ellen McWilliams explores how the Bildungsroman has been appropriated by women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. Early works by Atwood are placed in dialogue with more recent novels, thus furthering our

Examines representations of political, psychological, and sexual violence in seven novels by American women.

Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction takes a new look at the complex relationship between Margaret Atwood's fiction and feminist politics.Examining in detail the concerns and choices of an author who has frequently been termed feminist but has famously rejected the label on many occasions, this book traces the influences of feminism in Atwood's work and simultaneously plots moments of dissent or debate. Fiona Tolan presents a clear and detailed study of the first eleven novels of one of Canada's most prominent authors. Each chapter can be read as an individual textual analysis, whilst the chronological structure provides a fascinating insight into the shifting concerns of a popular and influential author over a period of nearly thirty-five years.

Highlights the ways in which the emotional life, identity formation and the relationship between self and society can inform histories both of individuals and of nations.

Presents a collection of critical essays about the works of Margaret Atwood.

This is a study of the powers of Gothic in late 20th-century fiction and film. Susanne Becker argues that the Gothic, 200 years after it emerged, exhibits unchanged vitality in our media age and its obsession with incessant stimulation and excitement.