Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood

The mills were sold, and the imposing house of his childhood, with its large staff of domestics—the chambermaids, the kitchen maids, the parlour maids, that ever-changing chorus of smiling girls or women with names like Alice and Effie, who cosseted and also dominated his childhood and youth, and whom he thinks of as having somehow been sold along with the house.

As for his inheritance, it’s smaller than his mother thinks, and much of the income from it goes to her. She sees herself as living in reduced circumstances, which is true, considering what they have been reduced from. She believes she is making sacrifices for Simon, and he doesn’t want to disillusion her.

Thus the private asylum is far beyond his reach at present. In order to raise the money for it he would have to be able to offer something novel, some new discovery or cure, in a field that is already crowded and also very contentious.

he must be free, absolutely free, to follow his own methods, once he has decided exactly what they are to be.

He’ll draw the line at machinery and fads, however: no electrical devices, nothing with magnets.

He thinks of the prominent front teeth and duck-like neck of Miss Faith Cartwright, and shivers.

You know what? She can do better.

He has tried imagining her as a prostitute—he often plays this private mental game with various women he encounters—but

Gross, Simon.

Simon has been spoiled by European servants, who are born knowing their places; he has not yet reaccustomed himself to the resentful demonstrations of equality so frequently practised on this side of the ocean. Except in the South, of course; but he does not go there.

Perhaps a maniac is simply one for whom these associative tricks of the brain cross the line that separates the literal from the merely fanciful,

A hunk of bread, a mug of weak tea, meat at dinner but not much of it, because overfeeding on rich foods stimulates the criminal organs of the brain, or so say the doctors, and the guards and keepers then repeat it to us. In that case, why are their own criminal organs not more stimulated, as they eat meat and chickens and bacon and eggs and cheese, and as much as they can get.

They grin at each other and laugh, they have been showing off. They have been talking to each other all this time, and not to me. They are a low class of person.

She is not afraid of me, she doesn’t mind me or care what I may have done, even if I killed a gentleman; she only nods, as if to say, So that’s one less of them.

Miss Lydia and Miss Marianne between them dirty a lot of washing, although much of it is not what I would call dirty at all; I believe they try things on in the morning and change their minds, and then take the things off and drop them carelessly on the floor and step on them, and then into the wash they must go.

the beginning of each talk he asks me what I think about this thing he has brought, and I say something about it just to keep him happy, and he writes it down.

Miss Lydia and Miss Marianne pass by on the stairs and peep in, they want to have a look at the Doctor, they are as curious as birds.

They give him ravishing smiles, the word has gone around that he is unmarried and with money of his own, although I do not think either of them would settle for a Yankee doctor if they could get something better;

I believe I could sew in my sleep, I’ve been doing it since I was four years old, small stitches as if made by mice.

the girls who worked in it came from the country, and were kept very tidy and lived in boarding houses provided, with respectable and sober landladies and no drink allowed and sometimes a parlour piano, and only twelve hours of work per day and Sunday mornings off for church;

ONLY 12 HOURS

In the courtroom, every word that came out of my mouth was as if burnt into the paper they were writing it on, and once I said a thing I knew I could never get the words back; only they were the wrong words, because whatever I said would be twisted around, even if it was the plain truth in the first place.

I should alert you also to the possibility that, once having involved yourself in her case, you will be besieged by a crowd of well-meaning but feeble-minded persons of both sexes, as well as clergymen, who have busied themselves on her behalf.

I have had repeatedly to beat them away from my door, whilst informing them that Grace Marks has been incarcerated for a very good reason, namely the vicious acts which she has committed, and which were inspired by her degenerate character and morbid imagination.

There is no fool like an educated fool, and Simon will have to trot out his own European credentials, and flourish his erudition, and justify himself. It will be a trying interview, and Simon will be tempted to start drawling, and saying I reckon, and acting the British Colonial version of the wooden-nutmeg-peddling Yankee, just to annoy.

DO IT SIMON

He keeps forgetting he is no longer rich, and therefore no longer entirely his own man.

“Your egg this morning—was it satisfactory? This time I cooked it myself.” Simon lies. To do otherwise would be unpardonably rude. “Delicious, thank you,” he says. In reality the egg had the consistency of the excised tumour a fellow medical student once slipped into his pocket for a joke—both hard and spongy at the same time. It takes a perverse talent to maltreat an egg so completely.

She’d made it clear, although indirectly, that it was much against her will that she’d been forced to let lodgings. This was the first time she’d done so; it was due to an encumbrance which would surely prove temporary.

I'm not sure we can call an alcoholic husband "temporary."

Simon had seen the other lodgings on offer, which were either too expensive for him or much dirtier, so he’d agreed.

It was much the same attitude—the coyness about fiscal exchange, the pretence that it hadn’t really taken place, the underlying avidity—that characterized the better class of French whore, although the whores were less gauche about it.

Please stop comparing every woman to a prostitute, Simon.

To heal humanity one must know it, and one cannot know it from a distance; one must rub elbows with it, so to speak. He considers it the duty of those in his profession to probe life’s uttermost depths, and although he has not probed very many of them as yet, he has at least made a beginning. He’d taken, of course, all proper precautions against disease.

Right, and he reads Playboy for the articles.

There must be a certain freedom in not having a good name to lose. He nods, and lifts his hat. The Major looks affronted.

Simon is ushered into the library. It is so self-consciously the right sort of library that he has an urge to set fire to it.

Jesus Simon

“A report from you would be a considerable help to our Committee,” says Reverend Verringer, “should such a report favour the theory of innocence. We would attach it to our Petition; Government authorities are much more inclined nowadays to take expert opinion into consideration.

There is still a widespread feeling against Grace Marks; and this is a most partisan country. The Tories appear to have confused Grace with the Irish Question, although she is a Protestant; and to consider the murder of a single Tory gentleman—however worthy the gentleman, and however regrettable the murder—to be the same thing as the insurrection of an entire race.”

“I have had that honour,” says Simon politely. He has been intending to make his excuses. “I look forward to seeing you there,” says Reverend Verringer. “I myself arranged the invitation for you. The Governor’s excellent wife is an invaluable member of our Committee.”

HAHAHA

To be rendered unconscious; to lie exposed, without shame, at the mercy of others; to be touched, incised, plundered, remade—this is what they are thinking of when they look at him, with their widening eyes and slightly parted lips.

Or maybe they actually have reasonable concerns about their health, jackass.

or they emit voluminous automatic writings, dictated to them by Mozart or Shakespeare; in which case being dead, thinks Simon, has a remarkably debilitating effect on one’s prose style.

If these people were not so well-to-do, their behaviour would get them committed.

“I have begun,” says Simon, “with a method based on suggestion, and the association of ideas. I am attempting, gently and by degrees, to reestablish the chain of thought, which was broken, perhaps, by the shock of the violent events in which she was involved.”

“St. John,” says Mrs. Quennell. “ ‘That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’ ” “ ‘And that which is born of the flesh is flesh,’ ” says DuPont. The two of them peer at him with an air of gentle but unanswerable triumph, and Simon feels as if he is suffocating under a mattress.

They've lost me

Simon inwardly blesses his hostess, and says he has not had that pleasure. The prospect of murky engravings of the beauty spots of Europe, their borders decorated with paper fern fronds, is not usually alluring to him, but at the moment it beckons like an escape.

You sweet summer child.

“It has got all of the famous murders in it,” Miss Lydia explains. “My mother cuts them out and pastes them in, and the hangings, too.” “Does she indeed?” asks Simon. The woman must be a ghoul as well as a hypochondriac.

What a lovely surprise.

But Miss Lydia must be unconscious of the effect she is producing on him, being necessarily ignorant of the nature of such effects. He crosses his legs.

Time for a cold shower, Simon.

As one season’s crop of girls proceeds into engagement and marriage, younger ones keep sprouting up, like tulips in May. They are now so young in relation to Simon that he has trouble conversing with them; it’s like talking to a basketful of kittens.

But his mother has always confused youth with malleability. What she really wants is a daughter-in-law who can be moulded, not by Simon, but by herself;

to

No italics

At this point she always coughs a little, to signify that his was a difficult birth, which almost killed her, and fatally weakened her lungs—a medically implausible effect which, during his boyhood, used to reduce him to a jelly of guilt. If he would only produce a son, she continues—having, of course, married first—she would die happy.

He teases her by saying that in that case it would be sinful of him to marry at all, since to do so would amount to matricide;

He could choose one of her proffered young ladies, the richest one. His daily life would be orderly, his breakfasts would be edible, his children would be respectful.

Never underestimate an edible breakfast Simon

According to his theories, the right object ought to evoke a chain of disturbing associations in her; although so far she’s treated his offerings simply at their face value, and all he’s got out of her has been a series of cookery methods.

He smells of shaving soap, the English kind, and of ears;

EARS???

a fresh new potato is a joy with a little butter and salt,

I want a potato