by Stephanie Ayadassen

Created on: December 10, 2006   Last Updated: November 16, 2011

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood is based on the true murders on Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear, and the imprisonment of Grace Marks, who, along with James McDermott, were the murderers. It has been described as a post modern novel.

Alias Grace has been described as a post modern novel. The post modern novel does not rely on traditional narrative modes to present character or theme: instead the reader has to construct a narrative from a variety of stylistic and formal fragments. This is very true of Alias Grace, as the novel is constantly jumping from place to place, scene to scene, and style to style.

The novel uses epigraphs at the beginning of each section, to give the reader a cryptic idea as to the theme of that particular section. The difference in both Grace's and Simon's narratives play a large part in presenting the characters.

Grace Marks is the main character in the novel, and she is presented to the reader in many ways; her narrative style, the ballad, the epigraphs, the opinions of her from the Governor's wife, her friends and her daughters, the section titles, and Simon Jordan's view of her.

Her narrative can be described as a stream of consciousness, because it tends to jump around, like a person's thoughts. For example, in the first section, she begins by discussing peonies, and then jumps to walking around the prison yard.

Her narrative portrays her as deluded, and possibly mad. She says that "a man is standing there with a candle, blocking the stairs that go up, and the cellar walls are all around me", but she is in the prison yard.

Further on in the novel, she is portrayed, through her narrative, as deceiving, as she says "I think of Mary Whitney, and the apple peelings we threw over our shoulders, that night, to see who we would marry. But I will not tell him that."

The ballad presents her as a very evil, cold-hearted killer, who sold herself to a man so that she could be rid of a love rival. This was a very popular view on Grace at the time of the murder trial, as James McDermott, her supposed paramour, fuelled that belief by saying that he would never have done it if she hadn't asked.

The ballad documents the supposed events of the murder, as well as discussing the love square that was occurring between James, Grace, Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear, and the hatred that James had for Nancy. It makes Grace a cold-blooded killer in the way it describes her asking James to commit the murder of Nancy:

"O no it cannot be,
Unless you kill

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