Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

Come, see real flowers of this painful world. —BASHŌ.

Okay, full disclosure: I wasn't even thinking about rereading Grace, but then I saw a reference to Basho somewhere else and remembered this epigraph and it took me a minute but I KNEW it was in this book

It’s 1851. I’ll be twenty-four years old next birthday. I’ve been shut up in here since the age of sixteen.

on to

Onto

Threatening to knock convict’s brains out

It only takes one asshole to ruin it for everybody else amirite

1859.

Mrs. Alderman Parkinson

Oh damn I forgot about her

So I cannot sit here without thinking of the ladylike bums that have sat on this very settee, all delicate and white, like wobbly soft-boiled eggs.

Well that's a flattering image

She does not like being the Governor’s wife, she would prefer the Governor to be the governor of something other than a prison. The Governor had good enough friends to get him made the Governor, but not for anything else.

Grace is unintentionally hilarious lolol

And I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once?

It was my own lawyer, Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie, Esq., who told them I was next door to an idiot.

I could not make head nor tail of much of what he said, but it must have been good pleading. The newspapers wrote that he performed heroically against overwhelming odds. Though I don’t know why they called it pleading, as he was not pleading but trying to make all of the witnesses appear immoral or malicious, or else mistaken. I wonder if he ever believed a word I said.

Oh well one must get used to such things in our situation, we are virtually prisoners ourselves you know,

No you're not

When I am dead and in my grave And all my bones are rotten, When this you see, remember me, Lest I should be forgotten.

Holy shit what kind of an autograph is that

Her face was all black by the time they found her, there must have been a dreadful smell. It was so hot then, it was July, still she went off surprisingly soon, you’d think she would have kept longer in the dairy, it is usually cool down there.

this is a Penitentiary and you are supposed to repent while in it, and you will do better if you say you have done so, whether you have anything to repent of or not.

The Governor’s wife cuts these crimes out of the newspapers and pastes them in; she will even write away for old newspapers with crimes that were done before her time. It is her collection, she is a lady and they are all collecting things these days, and so she must collect something, and she does this instead of pulling up ferns or pressing flowers, and in any case she likes to horrify her acquaintances.

They said in the newspaper that I was illiterate, but I could read some even then.

They want you to be able to read the Bible, and also tracts, as religion and thrashing are the only remedies for a depraved nature and our immortal souls must be considered. It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor’s wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.

That is what really interests them—the gentlemen and the ladies both. They don’t care if I killed anyone, I could have cut dozens of throats, it’s only what they admire in a soldier, they’d scarcely blink. No: was I really a paramour, is their chief concern, and they don’t even know themselves whether they want the answer to be no or yes.

But this doctor will not hurt me, the Governor’s wife promised it. All he wants is to measure my head. He is measuring the heads of all the criminals in the Penitentiary, to see if he can tell from the bumps on their skulls what sort of criminals they are, whether they are pickpockets or swindlers or embezzlers or criminal lunatics or murderers, she did not say Like you, Grace. And then they could lock those people up before they had a chance to commit any crimes, and think how that would improve the world.

Anthropometry

If my own death sentence had not been commuted at the last minute, they would have watched me hang with the same greedy pleasure. There were many women and ladies there; everyone wanted to stare, they wanted to breathe death in like fine perfume, and when I read of it I thought, If this is a lesson to me, what is it I am supposed to be learning?

He laughs as if it is a joke, and I can hear in his voice that he is afraid of me. A woman like me is always a temptation, if possible to arrange it unobserved; as whatever we may say about it later, we will not be believed.

I said I had a fear of doctors, that was all; of being cut open by them, as some might have a fear of snakes; but they said, That’s enough of your tricks Grace, you just wanted the attention,

They wouldn’t know mad when they saw it in any case, because a good portion of the women in the Asylum were no madder than the Queen of England.

One of them was in there to get away from her husband, who beat her black and blue, he was the mad one but nobody would lock him up; and another said she went mad in the autumns, as she had no house and it was warm in the Asylum, and if she didn’t do a fair job of running mad she would freeze to death;

You have to be strong to be a matron there

Sometimes they would provoke us, especially right before the visitors were to come. They wanted to show how dangerous we were, but also how well they could control us, as it made them appear more valuable and skilled. So I stopped telling them anything.

Of course they could not admit for an instant that they had been mistaken when they first put me in. People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart.

I used to speak that way as well, but I have learnt better manners in prison.

Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.

Sleeping in your clothes makes you tired. The clothes are crumpled, and also your body underneath them. I feel as if I’ve been rolled into a bundle and thrown on the floor.

Once you start feeling sorry for yourself they’ve got you where they want you. Then they send for the Chaplain.

He’s a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, as at my age a woman is an old maid but a man is not an old bachelor until he’s fifty, and even then there’s still hope for the ladies, as Mary Whitney used to say.

cleanshaven,

Clean-shaven

Now that he has spoken I think he must be an American.

I can’t say that I am afraid of him yet. It’s too early to tell; too early to tell what he wants. No one comes to see me here unless they want something.

He must think I am simple; or else it’s a trick of some sort; or else he is mad and that is why they locked the door—they’ve locked me into this room with a madman. But men who are dressed in clothes like his cannot be mad, especially the gold watch-chain—his relatives or else his keepers would have it off him in a trice if so.

I would like to help you, Grace, he says. That is how they get in through the door. Help is what they offer but gratitude is what they want, they roll around in it like cats in the catnip. He wishes to go home and say to himself, I stuck in my thumb and pulled out the plum, what a good boy am I. But I will not be anybody’s plum. I say nothing.

To Dr. Simon Jordan, M.D., Laburnum House, Loomisville,

Oh no letters drive me crazy lol I forgot how early they start here

It was a joy to see your dear handwriting again, even so little of it, and it is good of you to take an interest in your poor Mother’s failing constitution.

Laying on the guilt a bit thick ma

Of course you have always been an idealist, and filled with optimistic dreams; but reality must at some time obtrude, and you are now turned thirty.

I say these things, not from any wish to meddle or interfere, but out of a Mother’s anxious care for the future of her only and beloved Son.

JFC I'd forgotten how annoying his mom is

Mrs. Henry Cartwright, who has a good heart although not always a very polished manner, as is often the case with those whose fortunes have been of recent acquisition; but that will come in time. Accompanying her was her daughter Faith, whom you will recall as an awkward girl of thirteen, but who is now grown up and recently returned from Boston, where she was staying with her Aunt, to broaden her education.

They brought with them a basket of delicacies—I am thoroughly spoiled by dear Mrs. Cartwright—for which I expressed much gratitude, although I could barely taste anything, as I have no appetite at present.

shepherd,

Shepherd.

I have secured rooms in the residence of a Major C. D. Humphrey, which although not luxurious, will be commodious enough for my purposes. I fear however that my landlord is a dipsomaniac;

I predict that he will end as an inhabitant of the private Asylum I still dream of establishing; although I must curb my propensity to view each new acquaintance as a future paying inmate.

His father was a wealthy mill owner then, and fully expected Simon to take over the business in time; and Simon himself expected the same thing. First, however, he would rebel a little; he would slip the traces, travel, study, test himself in the world, and also in the world of science and medicine, which had always appealed to him.

He hadn’t expected the collapse of his father, and also of his father’s textile mills—which came first he’s never been sure.

In other words he has been thrown back on his own resources; which was what, during his adolescent arguments with his father, he claimed to most desire.