Alias Grace

National Review, Feb 10, 1997 by Mitt Beauchesne

T. S. ELIOT once wrote that Henry James had "a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." In Alias Grace, as in her previous novels, Margaret Atwood has allowed her somewhat less fine mind to be violated by a decidedly less fine idea: that being a trendy academic feminism which decrees that men are mostly misogynistic or condescending, and that women are pitted against one another for the favors of the patriarchy.

This novel is based on an actual nineteenth-century Canadian murder case in which a servant, Grace Marks, was convicted of murdering her employer and his housekeeper/mistress; the dramatic action concerns the attempt of an American doctor during Grace's incarceration to discern the "truth" regarding the murders. Of course, it hardly matters what Alias Grace is supposedly about, since its purpose isn't literary. Readers familiar with Miss Atwood's fiction will note the presence of several vintage stereotypes: the housekeeper is a catty competitor worried about ceding her place in her master's affections to a younger rival; there is the protective female friend who dies of a botched abortion; Grace alternates between the winsomely innocent and the whorishly evil, depending on what male character she's trying to impress; and the doctor is carrying on an exploitative affair with his landlady. This said, I fully expect Alias Grace to become a favorite classroom text of feminist English professors, and probably a movie starring Winona Ryder besides.