Alias Grace: Misogynistic Themes in Margaret Atwood's Novel

As a woman working within a society laden with patriarchal authority, it was certainly no mistake that Grace Marks from Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace succumbed to male medical domination and was "othered" because of her gender. Grace is a woman put in prison and receiving psychological treatment because of her criminally and sexually deviant ways that give her a 'bad girl" status. Playing a large role in her fall from social grace was the time period, gender construction of identity, and the conflict of who she was expected to be by societal standards which caused a psychological break. Grace must be subdued by the patriarchy and male doctors through psychological treatment and by enforced gender role expectations that leads to her eventual unhappiness. Grace, however, is not a passive victim: she wields the personal information that only she is privy to as a weapon against Dr. Jordan by doling it out as a way of fighting back against the subordinating patriarchy. Ultimately, until the moment comes when she finds an opportunity to verbally fight back through "hypnotism"

Generations of women throughout history particularly those of the working class have been institutionalized due to misogynistic values. There has been a constant undercurrent of medicinal and scientific excuses for this behavior. The subordination and classification of women was based on biological theories of the reproductive organs upon working upon "docile" female brain matter. Some of these theories still prevail due to the classification of psychological illness by gender affecting the twentieth century female population. It has remained a constant that despite continuous changes of the definition of madness, women seem to enter the equation more frequently than their male counterparts.

This can be seen as early as 1810 when a study conducted by scientist William Black strove to make a survey of all the patients in Bedlam, England's leading asylum at the time (Appignanesi 47). Goals of the study were to establish which illnesses led to the majority of patients staying in the asylum and which social sicknesses were most prevalent. In the results, seventy four patients had been admitted for love, a hundred fifteen for family, and an overwhelming majority for childbed or childbirth at seventy nine patients (Appignanesi 47). This made up a larger percentage of people afflicted with childbirth than drink or alcoholism which served as the reigning medicinal disease of the time period (Appignanesi 47). Seen as the leading social cause of psychosis in that time, alcoholism rivaled most other psychotic cases as a determiner of foreign brain activity which leads to madness (Appignanesi 47). That patient numbers for alcohol abuse were less prevalent then strictly womanly "diseases" linked to reproductive constructs and social norms makes obvious the persecution through the objectification of women's psyches.

This subjugating oppression through medicine went unquestioned because of social norms and rules between male and female social interaction. The diagnosis of hysteria made any women emotionally upset or vocally defiant about the sadness of her life obsolete because it was now just cause for commitment to an asylum. Thus men were better able to establish their authoritative rule because women could not talk about them or their practices because if they did they were labeled "other". Women belonged inside the home and the doctors furthered this theory through their biased treatments, imposing authority based on gender

The founding fathers of medicine used their social status and the respect given to them for their healing capabilities against anything non-conformist. "...Extreme expressions of the cultures malaise, symptoms and disorders mirrored the time's order-its worries, limits, border problems, fears."(Showalter). In the late eighteenth century, the established social norm declared that all people with illnesses such as small pox and the plague should be locked away from the general public in common houses and sanitariums. This gave way to a shaky definition of what made patients fit for committing and mostly anyone bigoted or considered shameful such as the blind, the elderly, and the mentally incapacitated were put with the sick and dying. This made it easier for women to be institutionalized for their shameful or deviant nature because they didn't or wouldn't fit in with the norm.

As Appignansi points out: "The fear that our minds have grown alien to us, the shame that our acts, words or emotions can slip from our control, are often combined with a wish to disguise both states if at all possible, or to find a simple physical reason at their base."(Appignanesi 2). The social need to correct abnormal behavior in humans becomes a task where quick fixes are necessary for psychologists and complete cures aren't a pre-requisite.

Women were particularly vulnerable to this kind of social policing. Their rebellions were often classified as signs of an abnormal mind. Seen as "hysterical":

"These fits take place, for the most part, in young, nervous, unmarried women...The fits themselves are mostly preceded by great depression of spirits, shedding of tears, sickness, palpitation of the heart &c...The patient now generally becomes insensible, and faints; ...and fits of laughter, crying, and screaming take place. When the fit is going off, the patient mostly cries bitterly, sometimes knowing all, othertimes nothing, of what has taken place"(Atwood 139).

.Women of the working class were expected to be wives and mother's. Wanting more than bouncing babies, quick, painless missionary style sex, and knowledge was soon grounds for mental illness. Defying these narrowly confined roles were women who derived pleasure from sex, those who were strong willed and independent, and those who couldn't bear children right away. These women were classified as unhinged and no longer mentally sound, a pressing stigma that lead to misogyny through their treatments, isolation, and ignorance (Appignanesi). Diseases such as hysteria, nerves, and nymphomania began to have names and identifications brought on by the further need to typecast women who couldn't be typically forced into the "normal" gender mold.

This relationship did not stop outside the home once women were removed and put into treatment for their various maladies. Doctors of the early eighteenth and nineteenth century were nearly all male, leading to biased, falsified information and diagnosises working to further male power (Showalter). Various understood, well known "facts" were that women had smaller brains than men, making them unable to absorb a male education, and that: "The female body [was] weakened by ebbs and flows, in constant need of male protection"(Cooper 14). An idea related to the menstrual cycle, a biological function undergone only by females, describes the categorizing of women as weak and childlike.

"...their supposed irrationality when Reason was male, their weakness and liability occasioned by a biology which includes the coming of menses at puberty, then pregnancy and lactation, then menopause, together with notions about 'proper' feminine behavior-shaped the time's definitions and treatment of women's insanity"(Appignanesi 43-44).

Women were organically susceptible to madness because of the uncontrollable rhythms in their bodies. The biological happenings such as menstrual periods and giving birth could not be regulated by men nor studied and this lead men to classify female psychosis as linked to those weaknesses. When women were having psychological issues doctors fell back on this as evidence for their supposed psychosis noting that it was quicker to diagnosis them due to their female organs, which agreed with societies views of women, rather than actually examining them.

Psychiatric treatments, prescriptions, and diseases for women by male doctors were all based on a theory of the quicker the treatment, the better the doctor. "The emerging world view of the new age was, in fact, distinctly masculinist. It was by its nature external to women, capable of seeing them only as 'others' or aliens"(Ehrenreich 17). They continued to objectify their patients, leading to stricter social constraints on a women's behavior inside and outside the home and reclaimed control for the patriarchy. Rather than opening the doors for the study of women's psychological health, women were seen as strictly pathological and primitive in nature, no more in tune with their minds as the men themselves or by comparison, a lump of coal (Ehrenreich 19).

Respected "professional" physicians decided women were deficient and "heavily handicapped" based on studies of women's capability to reproduce and their cell metabolism compared to men(Showalter 122). Because the brain was connected to the sex organs, the mentalities of the sexes differed based on ovarian and phallic biology. Thus came to be known the most widely held male crusade of medicine: madness and the ovaries as enemy.

The functioning reproductive organs during a women's menstrual cycle become a system that men could use to classify women as wrong and dirty. Victorian psychological practices focused on the treatment of "nervousness" found in women in the ovaries which was the center for their personality and all traits thereof(Ehrenreich 121). Physicians even claimed that "...the greater tendency of mothers to transmit insanity to their female children was among the chief causes for the predomience of women among asylum patients"(Showalter 123). Their implications of madness being a gender class stigma passed on from woman to woman shows itself in the numbers; for every male mental patient, there were 2-3 female in the average institution(Showalter).

Grace is not only female and therefore deficient but she is "othered" further by being lower class and working in a male public sphere. Without a man to support her and with no time to find a husband because of her labor, single working class women like Grace were considered no better than idiots in terms of their life choices(Johnson 49). Instead of being independent laborers and seen as such, women who worked outside the home were deemed loose and improper where men would have been praised (Johnson 49). This is seen most strongly in a law passed in 1864 called the Contagious Diseases Acts stating any "suspicious" looking women on the streets of certain towns could be stopped and examined for venereal diseases (Johnson 49). This law was operating under the assumption that any women on the street alone working in certain towns like Grace, were no better than whores. Because they had stepped outside of the home their respect and control of their bodies becomes the public's to do with what they saw fit.

Grace struggles to define herself within the roles left to her, that of a docile, submissive servant assumed to be sexually available to the master or shameful woman; this leads to her to a psychological breakdown. She is viewed by male doctors as weak because of the unexpanded energy of her womb on her mind as well as the constant physical strain on her body which pushes to a category outside of "female" which is "madness" or "mentally ill female"(Appignanesi) If Grace can't be pushed into a construct by male enforced supplication through marriage, she will be pushed into the polar opposite categorization of whore, where her mental capacity will be brought to question and her body will be a male free-for-all.

However, Grace is not the only woman put in disgrace by this perilous position in society or the neighbors' eye. Before Grace makes her way from Mrs. Alderson Parker's house and to Mr. Kinnear's house, she is still at risk for scandal. Grace's best friend, Mary Whitney, who is also a lone female servant with a saucy tongue and loose, unbridled personality, sleeps with her employer's son and becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Instead of hightailing it out of the situation and trying to salvage her social image, Grace sticks by her friend, even going so far as to help pay for her botched abortion which eventually leads to Mary's death. This tarnishes Grace's image by association as the head housekeeper, Mrs. Honey, questions Grace when Mary's body is found and Grace is almost fired.

After Grace decides she no longer wants to be associated with the scandals and pressures of her old employment she takes on a new job despite the further warnings she receives from her fellow domestic servants. Grace is still naïve in her choices so when the neighbors cook tells her: "...she didn't know if it was a suitable position for a young girl like me; and when I asked her why not, she said Nancy had always been kind to her, and she didn't like to talk, and a person had to take her own chances, and least said soonest mended...I didn't have the least idea of what she was talking about"(Atwood 202) the sexual implications of the conversation fly over her head. By accepting a position in a far away household with a male bachelor as head of house, Grace becomes subject to scrutiny by the public eye. She also realizes far too late that the other female servant, Nancy Montgomery, is providing sexual services for her boss and that will imply that Grace is as well.

Nancy offers Grace a seemingly innocent temptation when she tells her of the open servant position in the household. She does not allude to her relationship with her employer but rather says: "Mr. Kinnear was...easygoing in his habits, and was not married; so there was less work, and no mistress of the household to carp and criticize...She claimed to be lonely for some female company...She said that Mr. Kinnear was a liberal master, and showed it when he was pleased"(Atwood 201). There are several blatant hints to Grace that life will be a bit abnormal than her previous job, including the big sign that there is no mistress to govern the servants or Mr. Kinnear.

Grace intrinsically trusts Nancy because she reminds Grace of Mary Whitney with her "independent" position at the household as well as when she says "you had to learn to stand up for yourself in this life"(Atwood 201) which reminds her of Mary's take charge attitude. Grace blindly trusts her even when she is already a servant in Mr. Kinnear's home, following Nancy around from room to room like a confused and devoted child. She even goes so far as to ignore the relationship going on between Nancy and her employer until McDermott tells her in his blunt and honest way that they are so obviously a couple and Grace has been lumped in as one of Mr. Kinnear's conquests as well. Grace comes to this realization quickly feeling very foolish and says that she wouldn't have made the choice to take the job if she would have known the situation going on before her every nose.

However, Grace is unaware that she will be dropping all social feminine norms such as propriety and chastity in favor of earning a decent wage for her starving family, which ironically, does not go to her family at all, but her father's rapidly growing drinking problem. This is because she doesn't recognize the unacceptable social boundaries she is about to cross compared to her previous employment experience despite the many warnings that have been given to her. If she had known, she probably would not only have been afraid, but she would have understood the sexual stigma that would be tacked onto her even though she was a virgin. As a virgin, she would not have dropped her chastity willingly because of the experience of loosing Mary Whitney and her distrust in men.

Not only does she not have the supervision of an older family member or chaperone within the household where she works, Grace is separated from the rest of the town in a closed off country manor. By selling her feminine services as hired help to Mr. Kinnear, Grace passes over the socially acceptable line that society draws into something sexual and unacceptable. That she is so closely connected to domestic services which a wife should be doing for Mr. Kinnear, however typical of the time period, it circulates rumors that that isn't all she's providing for him. If this were the case, there were very few other servants in the area or even in the house to police and restrict young Grace's behavior. The lack of chaperones and female adult role models to conform and mold Grace's sexuality lead to greater suspicion on behalf of the neighbors.

"Grace may have been well treated in comparison with the way other servants were housed, fed, and worked, but unlike most other servants, she was isolated at the formative age of fifteen, with no mistress to provide moral training"(Knelman 4).

This leaves Grace with the difficult task of remaining morally and physically pure, as a woman was expected to be, without shirking her often unconventional and unclean duties within the households where she works. Preconceptions of the relationship between Grace and her employer circulate because of her lack of social understanding and propriety within a household.

Grace's troubling relationships with men continue throughout her life with the introduction of Dr. Jordan after her involuntary commitment to the asylum. Grace is regularly socially policed by males and female wardens at the asylum for overtly sexual or isolated behavior she's rumored and assumed to exhibit and Dr. Jordan interviews her to further his own psychological career because she is an oddity. At this point, in time Grace is already working within the asylum warden's house with his wife and daughter as a maid so they can watch over her psychological progress more carefully.

The warden's wife and daughter view her as a sexual threat because of the misleading reports by other women in the newspaper. They pass on this information to Dr Jordan before he sees Grace for the first time and the gossip poisons his objectivity, which a professional doctor should have towards his patient. Dr Jordan also read the newspapers and the sensational accounts of women writers, who sought to create a neat binary division between refined ladies and deviant others: policing other women where:

"...one way in which the newspapers highlighted the notion of the 'lady' was to offer-indeed revel in-examples of 'unladylike' behavior: 'the troupe of 'ladies' in the colonial press of the 1850's was also heavily dependent on images of "deviant' femininity"(Siddall 87).

All authorities involved hope that returning to a "normal" life for Grace and having the calming influence of real ladies will make her more civilized and Christian.

"...although an object of fear, like a spider, and of charity as well, I am also one of the accomplishments. I come into the room and curtsey and move about, mouth straight, head bent, and I pick up the cups or set them down, depending; and they stare without appearing to, out from under their bonnets"(Atwood 22).

Grace becomes accustomed to structured movement and preapproved gestures with her body that conform to the patriarchal image of a maid of the house. She remembers her constraints from previous household jobs as well as the teachings of Mary Whitney and is able to police herself for good behavior and speech befitting a lower class maid. She understands she is on display for the house guests and still does what is expected of her even though she is an oddity to be viewed in the parlor for the entertainment of the patriarchy. The warden's wife and daughter do nothing to dissuade any of their guests from their view of Grace as dangerous and overtly sexual despite her controlled actions.

Grace becomes a sexual object to Dr. Jordan just as she has been to many of the authoritative men in her life before him. "The repressed corporeality of the lusting, wounded, carnal body haunts the text and its characters, threatening to undermine the boundaries and structures that govern the novel's Victorian-era society"(Defalco 771).This is shown quite clearly when Dr Jordon forms his first impressions of Grace before their interview, seeing her in a sexually available and promiscuous manner because of her previous societal connection to Kinnear and Mcdermott:

"... the arms hugged close to a thin body, the long wisps of auburn hair escaping from what appeared at first glance to be a chaplet of white flowers-and especially the eyes, enormous in the pale face and dilated with fear, or with mute pleading...I was indulging myself, he thinks. Imagination and fancy. I must stick to observation, I must proceed with caution"(Atwood 59-60).

Dr. Jordan has trouble separating his needs and wants, from the man who wants to possess her body versus his need to save Grace and be the cool, collected doctor he is supposed to be portraying. The fact that he has to warn himself to stick to observation only instead of flights of sexual fantasy prove him no better than the other male doctors who have, from her narrative's implications, taken sexual advantage of Grace. It proves difficult for Dr. Jordan to remain unattached and clinical throughout Grace's story because of this sexual first impression of her and this lends Grace a manipulative tool she can use when forming her story of madness.

In a society where madness in women carries a stigma of overt sexuality, Grace has lost her mind and therefore all sense of morals and dignity; it is no surprise that Grace is viewed as either intimately sexual or placating and docile depending on the whims of the doctor. As a man adhering to social norms, Jordan sees Grace as a woman refusing to subdue herself to male authority. She is deviant and thus less of a woman, which leads to little respect from others. This condescending viewpoint breaks off into a duality where she is also the object of his sexual lusts, looked after as the ideal patient even though she misleads him in her story telling and gives him nothing solid to work off of. "Perhaps I will tell you lies, I say. He says, Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will tell lies without meaning to, and perhaps you will tell the deliberately. Perhaps you are a liar. We will just have to take that chance, he says"(Atwood 41). Because he is captivated by Grace and hopes to launch his medical career off is success in understanding her, Dr Jordan is able to risk the possible lies she tells also knowing that as a male doctor, his methods ultimately decide her diagnosis and cure. The other doctors reading his study will believe anything Dr. Jordan formulates about Grace because she is a woman. Only he knows the psychological methods necessary to release or recommit Grace and use it to benefit himself, whether she lies or not, so he literally as well as socially holds authority over Grace.

Dr Jordan formulates his own methods to bring Grace outside herself through word associations, doubting her ability to speak freely as it isn't womanly. Meanwhile, he is submerged in a private sphere where he analyzes Grace's story all day long in a room with only themselves; this act breaches all societal decorum between a "normal" man and woman. Dr. Jordan is tempted by the unusual privacy and intimacy allowed by the medical context in their relationship. There is an idea that he could take advantage of her and it would be a secret, this excites him and he reduces her to sexual flesh in his mind.

"The unbidden conflation of multiple, gendered carnifications in his mind suggests Simon's own disavowed awareness of his participation in a discipline that is part of patriarchal, Victorian society which reduces female subjects to fleshy objects"(Defalco 773).

Simon accepts his sexual views of Grace and the duality that he has pushed on her through the sinner and saint motif. She is both a criminally accused promiscuous woman who's asking for sex and the wrongly accused virgin who he must save from damnation. He denies her any escape from her lack of authority by clinging to the condescending relationship of doctor and patient. By viewing her as a mental patient and already tainted by possible other men, his sexual lusts such as wanting to "open her up like an oyster"(Atwood 159) are okay because of her promiscuity. By "listening" to her story, he not only had the chance to absolve himself and start a business, but he feels he can absolve her past sins as well.

However, Grace herself has ultimate control over what is known to the doctor by just playing at her docile role, weaving her tale to suit Jordan's personal view of her selfhood through her "madness". She senses Dr. Jordan's inappropriate lusts and the sexual feelings of mental invasion: "a feeling like being torn open, not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach, and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord"(Atwood 83). Grace is not ignorant to the possessive ideas and wants of men because of her past male experiences and Mary Whitney's own sexual experiences. Grace has been taught to be wary of men when sexuality is involved, playing a game of cat and mouse with her virtue, rather than submitting to their needs.

Through Mary's teachings, Grace becomes more knowledgeable, and less acceptably pure, about sex and gender politics: "...men were liars by nature, and would say anything to get what they wanted of you, and then they would think better of it and be off on the next boat"(Atwood 164). This teaching forms the backbone of Grace's naive view of sexuality and agrees with what her only male role model, her father, has done countless times to her mother. Her parents have too many children to feed because of his lusts and it is because his lusts that Grace must work outside the home at such a young age to support her brothers and sisters.

This sexual understanding of men comes to a culmination when she gets her first menstrual period and Mary helps her saying that:

"Grace, you will be a beauty, soon you will turn the men's heads. The worst ones are the gentlemen, who think they are entitled to anything they want; and when you go out to the privy at night; they're drunk then, they lie in wait for you and then it is snatch and grab, there's no reasoning with them"(Atwood 165).

Men are described to Grace as unthinking, vicious animals in the face of their lusts and the observation agrees with Grace's previous experience with her abusive, alcoholic father who dominates the household with a tight rein of terror. Grace can only imagine the danger awaiting her from gentlemen when her idea of marriage is the corroding relationship between her mother and father. She sees this possibility for danger in the doctor as well and determines that she will have the power in their relationship based on what she will withhold for him. In the parts she gets to play for Jordan, she sees the opportunity for attention and control; she is "ripe and splitting open", ready for the next patriarchal part she must play for him.

Grace carries this misogynistic fear and anger into her distrustful meetings with Dr. Jordan, who she knows views her as nothing more than a key to his own asylum. Because of her previous associations with Mary and the cause of death of her best friend, as well as the murder implications, Grace's moral character is held to a lower standard. "Mary Whitney's refusal to conceal her body and her knowledge of other bodies leads to her absolute abjection as a corpse"(Defalco 771). As a consequence of Mary's companionship and the means of her death, Grace is left with a scarring confusion towards men as an "enemy" who are only after sex and power. Grace inherently understands that there are some things, both from her past and from her dreams, that she should not tell the impressionable doctor and so, as Mary Whitney has taught her through her death, she spins half truths.

By consciously manipulating Dr. Jordan, Grace echoes her own distrusts from Mary's warnings and experience with the males in her life, such as her abusive father and fellow male servants who lust after her. Dr Jordan is no different than the other men in Grace's past; he openly wants Grace and views her as not only "other", but as vulnerable because of her "othered" status and thus she is more easily taken advantage of. Grace's story about Mary Whitney makes him feel as if he's "just come from an abattoir; he is aware of an unsettling association between the transformed Mary Whitney and his own medical experiences of dissection, in which dead women as seen as specimens"(Defalco773). The tables are turned; Grace is able to manipulate the doctor into feeling vulnerable in her presence, opening up a pseudo-sexual link between them through their hushed and private confidences together. Grace convinces Dr. Jordan she is "opening up" to him, instead feeding him tidbits she knows he will enjoy. He falls for the sensationalism as Grace predicts every man should and Dr Jordan becomes infatuated with Grace sexually.

Part of playing the part to keep Jordan's affections involves the loose unraveling of her "life story" and the pretend idiocy towards the word associations he deems necessary.

"Grace has anachronistically, access to postmodernist conventions that allow her to construct her life story in a way that challenges essentialist notions of identity.[She refuses] to engage in a conventional life story with a stable narrative and the assertion of an authentic self...Grace may be a hapless celebrity, whose notoriety is built upon Victorian gender politics, but she is not helpless"(Siddall 85).

By being continually self aware and untrusting of men as she learned from Mary, Grace becomes a manipulative woman aware of the confining male patriarchy rather than the naive maid stumbling around Nancy Montgomery and Mr. Kinnear's sexual relationship without a clue. Instead Grace is able to play the part of a pitied and troubled girl in the re-working of her narrative to the doctor, playing with his emotions and occasionally throwing him a bone by trying to make him happy.

This is evident when she recalls a dream for him in one of their sessions, but she embellishes it to suit him better, hiding certain plot twists from him.

"As he was looking forlorn, and as it were at a loss, and as I suspected that not all was going well for him, I did not say that I could not remember. Instead I said that I had indeed had a dream. I told him I'd dreamt about flowers...I said that they were red flowers, and quite large, with glossy leaves like a peony. But I did not say that they were made of cloth, nor did I say when I had seen them last; nor did I say that they were not a dream"(Atwood 242).

It is symbolic that Grace will not share her dreams, a window into the individual's wants and desires first and foremost without society's input, to the doctor. Grace views any kind of "want" as bad: "If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything"(Atwood 40). This fear of vulnerability, which is especially consistent with men, leads Grace to hide her thoughts and feelings because her thoughts are the only piece of herself that society cannot touch or change. So instead of telling the whole truth to Dr. Jordan, she chooses to butcher her life story to fit the ideals of who Grace as "mad" would be based on the sensationalist accounts surrounding her in the asylums scrapbook. Grace's fictional ideas of "madness" take over her actual memories of the past because of the selective narrative choices she makes as author of her story. This leads to Grace's structured identity as "criminal", "deviant", and "other", molded from various role model expectations of those around her in the asylum.

By struggling to meet all these conventional expectations, Grace's mind has unconsciously split under the stress and pressure reverting to a state of "otherness" through multiple personality disorder. This second psychological personality has become the possible culprit of two murders. What Grace never quite comes to terms with is this disassociation happens because of the lack of a female role model to guide her safely through social norms and policies. This leads to a change from moral choices that are deemed acceptable by society to a false sense of independence where Grace believes she has a choice in her life. A lack of female role models to give defined ideas on expected social norms and her role as a woman working within the dominant patriarchy leads to her eventual dual personality and committal.

This is seen as especially significant when Grace tells Dr. Jordan about her friend and fellow maid, Mary Whitney, and how she helps Mary have an illegal abortion after sleeping with her employer's eldest son. Grace not only gives up her own wages to help Mary, when the women of the house find Mary dead from the abortion, Grace lies about it: "Oh Agnes, what shall I do? I did not know she was going to die, and now they will blame me, for not telling sooner that she was taken ill; but she made me promise not to. And I was sobbing, and wringing my hands"(Atwood 176). Grace only confirms that Mary was ill with disease and leaves both Agnes and Mrs. Alderson Parker to guess about the abortion by themselves.

Through the "successful" probing of Grace's psychological mind, Dr Jordan serves to alienate himself further from the "real" Grace as she pushes him away, while working with his preconceived notions about her as a patient in an asylum, as a murderess, and as a woman.

"His dreams and fantasies of transgressive physicality incite simultaneous excitement and dread, his desires to figuratively enter the psychological self transform into images of literal entry and violation that prioritize the physical body and its animalism"(Defalco 773).

Grace molds herself and her story to the doctors liking just as she has transformed and conformed to play many different parts to the other people in her life. Her manipulation of the Dr and the other authoritative people in the household in charge of her daily activities opens Grace to a life where she can never find her feminine authority because of her constant need to play a deviant "other" role to get what she needs in a patriarchal world.

She must play a certain part for Dr. Jordan as deviant or angelic woman, as the mood strikes her, because he holds the key to her freedom from the asylum. Without his bill of clean health claiming her no longer deviant and morally good, Grace will continue to be confined by others, both physically and mentally, as she is only allowed to show certain acceptable behaviors conforming to acceptable womanly behavior and the stereotypical deviance of a mad woman to her patriarchal audience. It seems as if Dr. Jordan, as all males at the time, holds the power to Grace's future by labeling her as "cured".

"...most people in a society share common values. They agree on what is damaging, threatening, or deviant and recognize violations. [They do this] by constructing limits and expelling what it defines as antisocial, that is, whatever calls into question the system it is based on"(Knelman 678).

Though Grace may have questions about the treatments she is receiving from the doctor as well as his ability her back from deviancy, she plays the game set for her. In her first few days with the doctor where she says nothing, Grace understands her only chance at escape or "salvation" from the murderess stigma forced on her is to work with the doctor and to give him the sensationalism he wants in the character he envisions.

"It was difficult to begin talking. I had not talked very much for the past fifteen years, not really talking the way I once talked with Mary Whitney...and in a way I had forgotten how. I told Dr. Jordan I did not know what he wanted me to say. He said it wasn't what he wanted me to say, but what I wanted to say myself, that was of interest to him. I said I had no wants of that kind, as it was not my place to want anything."(Atwood 67)

Grace recognizes her inability to speak and how her voice is the only authority and "saving grace" that is available to get her out of her current confinement. Her voice was not needed once she had left her first job after Mary Whitney's death and at Mr. Kinnear's house where she was relied on to keep silent and do her work. Mary Whitney served as her only confidant before her exile to Kinnear's telling Grace that men will not listen to her when she tells them to stop sexually attacking her, they will take what they want anyway. This makes Grace only wait for the doctor to instruct her on what to say rather than speaking for herself.

From previous experience, expressing her desires vocally has resulted in Grace's continual submission to societal rules enforced or caused by male domination. When Grace is sailing to her new home after her mother has died on that same voyage, she wishes her mother was no longer dead because all her mother's labor and responsibility fall on Grace now, as well as her father's rages. When Grace feels that she wants her mother back, she suffers for it by being beaten just like her mother: "Also his rages had returned, stronger then before my mother died. Already my arms are black and blue, and then one night he threw me against the wall, as he'd sometimes done with my mother, shouting that I was a slut and a whore"(Atwood 129). Grace is assaulted when put in the place of her mother because she needed to help with the children and because of the verbal and physical action of mothering which exerts authority she is wrongly categorized by her father as a slut and a whore and dominated physically. Grace knows it's useless to even ask her father " for the worst kind of soap"(Atwood 129) for the family washing, so she gives up her vocal authority and submits to her father's wishes, moving away from the household where her family needs her and settling her ten year old sister's fate to be the mother of the house in her stead.

This pattern of vocal submission despite Grace's wants continues with the prison guards who escort her to the Warden's house by way of a physical leading by the elbows. They sexually harass Grace on the journey over and back, assuming, as most have, that she's a sexual deviant and has slept with McDermott , so why not themselves as well. When Grace tries to voice herself saying "Shame on you" and "I'll thank you not to take liberties"(Atwood 241) her protests and attempts to protect herself are not only ignored, but the harassment grows worse between the dominate personalities of the two men. Grace's demands for basic respect only serve as a trigger to goad them on further into more coarse behavior. After this incident, Grace is vocally tamed despite Mary Whitney's voice in her head telling her what rude things to say back and she only ignores the men giving in to the emotional abuse a slut should receive rather than using the vocal authority given to her by the blackouts and dual personality behaviors.

Through Dr. Jordan, Grace is given a chance to regain her authority through the ability to vocalize her story without any preconceived social filters except those she invents for herself. Dr Jordan is judging her, but unlike at any previous point in her life, Grace is encouraged to be able to say whatever she wants without fear of consequence. Which she knows is a trick she can use to her advantage by acting reluctant to give up information and then letting it come out "unbidden" so the doctor will see the "trust" she has in him. The act of talk therapy is a form of self expression for others to interpret which could give Grace an independent, defined sense of who she is outside of the world and the social norms that work define her. Instead, in her efforts to "pass" the test and tell Dr Jordan the story he expects of a deviant and pitiful woman, Grace lies to herself by omitting and cutting her own story, adhering to society's and Dr. Jordan's accepted roles of women until she can cease her moment to fight back against them.

This is even true before her committal when she is reading her "confession" to court. Grace ignores the orders of her male lawyers and instead tells the truth, that she is innocent of the murders and remembers nothing. "...a confession can be expected to take on a fictive element as it weaves known facts into a plausible cause effect narrative. 'Turning a terrible action into a story is a way to distance oneself from it, at worst a form of self deception, at best a way to pardon the self"(Knelman 680). There is constant pulling between Grace as "Grace" the reformed pitiful woman and Grace as the character her unconscious has formed, a woman trying to come to terms with herself in a society where women were denied any vocal authority beyond what the patriarchy allowed.

Even Atwood, the author, notices this when through her research she finds a "wide variance of assessments of Grace's behavior as a prisoner over the years. The lack of explanation for this is but one of many blanks left to posterity. Within the silences of this case seems to lurk the meaning of her ordeal"(Knelman 681). Grace plays the role of reformed deviant and is rewarded for her ploys by Dr. Jordan and most everyone around her. They see her role-playing as a healthier and more productive form of self expression to ease her into becoming a member of "normal" female society. Once judged by the male patriarchy to be cured of all deviant and "wrong" behavior, Grace may be freed whether her actions are in denial of her real self or a manipulative ploy.

However, Grace is only a "reformed woman" to a point and this is where she seizes her opportunity to unleash the ending of her supposed placation to Dr. Jordan and society at large while she is under "hypnosis". From the beginning of her stay in isolation for committing murder, Grace has not stopped her deviant behavior because of the change in scenery. Her mind has always been her own and the readers of the narrative understand this perhaps better than even Grace herself because of their unbiased access to everything within her head and how it plays out with the doctor during their interviews.

"The readers of Grace's outpourings parallel Mary more closely than Jordan in their mixture of curiosity, interest, and sympathy. Grace's justification for concealing information from Jordan then has the appearance of reasonableness...

Because the readers have seen everything from Grace's own head including her trials and tribulations with Mary Whitney who was deceived by a man much like Jordan in class, they have no qualms with Grace withholding information from Dr. Jordan. The readers also are able to forgive her because of her frequent gaps in memory loss and blackouts, many of which are only relied from Grace's point of view. They accept her final act of deviancy in speaking her mind as both something acceptable and as an act a long time coming.

As a woman oppressed by men's rules, Grace still holds all the cards by her exclusion of information and her ability to change herself like a chameleon into what is expected. All these carefully laid expectations and psychological ploys that Grace has laid in the doctor's mind comes to a head when in her ultimate moment of defiant deviance she is judged as psychotic and her forthright actions are blamed on a double. This is only too perfect as the trauma and symptoms given to Dr. Jordan connect with the unraveling narrative Grace has played out for the doctor, who is the one ultimately in charge of her release and eventual "cure".

The warden and his wife have agreed to have Grace hypnotized in hopes she will remember the murders of Nancy and Mr. Kinnear as well as her participation in them. Dr. Jordan hires a hypnotist who unbeknownst to him is already in league with Grace and renowned for his acting abilities. The hypnotist is really Jeremiah the Peddler, a friend of Grace's from Mrs. Alderson Parker's when he would visit the house and sell his wares. Before the actual hypnotism, it is explained to the readers that everyone in attendance have been to a séance because it's become a fad of the elite. Grace knows all about sensationalism because of the scrapbook the wardens wife keeps and snippets of conversation that go on between visitors when she's in the room. The people who visit don't take Grace into account and the wardens wife has had more than her share of conversations about Grace while Grace is in the room. This knowledge makes Grace more self assured going into the hypnotism that she can feel free to divulge any piece of information she has to get even with the people in the room because they will believe anything she says without repercussions falling on her shoulders.

Grace is able to enlist the help of Jeremiah the peddler, now posing as a doctor of hypnotism, also taking on a crucial and needed role for the society obsessed with hidden personality quirks. Grace comes to an unknown deal with Jeremiah and they enter the hypnotism with Grace hidden by a silk cloth. Even if Grace dares to speak words that will implicate her as unchanged and back to her defiant ways, the physical separation between the audience and Grace will shield her as the buildup of lies she has fed the doctor in the sewing room comes to a head. Grace's eyes, which are half lidded, startle the other guests watching and the "doctor" covers her face as Dr. Jordan remarks that it's like the theatrical acts in a circus. Grace "becomes" Mary Whitney during the hypnotism and is able to vocally attack the actions of those who have attacked her from the very beginning:

"But why? Oh, Doctor, you are always asking why. Poking your nose in, and not only your nose. You are such a curious man! Curiosity killed the cat, you know, Doctor. You should watch out for that little mouse beside you; and her little furry mousehole too!"(Atwood 400).

Grace confronts the doctor's curiosity, including the probing need to sleep with her that isn't subtle to her at all. She even defensively hints at a threat on his life playing off of her murderess persona in saying that curiosity will eventually kill him. Not only does she confront and bare to the light her knowledge of his lusts, but she makes known his lusts for Lydia and hers for him which in acceptable society cannot be acknowledged. Grace implies that Dr. Jordan will hunt and trap Lydia as he has tried with Grace both sexually and psychologically in the gender hierarchy of male over female.

Lydia is also complacent and quiet, everything Grace is expected to be as an ideal woman, but she is not just a mouse because the doctor must watch out for her "mousehole". Grace lies bare the undercurrent of sexual power women hold over men in this moment, acknowledges that though men have all the power in the public and private sphere, when it comes the marital bed and snagging a man for marriage, women are no docile innocent fools. They all play the same game to kowtow to the men; it's just a matter of not getting caught that separates Grace from Lydia. Doctor Jordan operating as any a man wanted both women equally showing Mary's estimation of men needing only easy prey with no thoughts for their feelings.

Grace embraces Mary's persona and her own anger, unleashing it onto the unsuspecting society men and women in the room, renouncing her complacent nature and arguing for the natures of all women seen as falsely deviant: "...fiction tends to posit passivity rather than activism in the face of persecution or, at best, point to the possibility of storytelling as a means of recuperating a fragile or fragmented self"(Keane 2). Grace as a character doesn't stand for passiveness any longer and instead of being submissive in the face of persecution, she denounces the people who hold her back verbally and with a vengeance. Grace doesn't use her story or internal dialogue as a way to find herself; she uses it as a way to get her displaced and rightful anger out by using it to mislead and guide everyone into the moment when she could snap freely without repercussion.

All of Grace's supposed pandering to society has lead to this moment where she can blast the very hypocrisy of their society to their faces while claiming the insanity card and being absolved of all wrong doing. Not only can she be released with a clean bill of health to the outside world in terms of reforming herself in expectations, but she can move in the world as if the outburst had never happened by getting married and putting aside her "deviant" ways once and for all. Grace has the best of both worlds for women in that she can conform as a normal woman after having been cured but she can also work within the world as "Mary", letting herself go to the feelings and emotions inappropriate to her sex.

Dr. Jordan is not so lucky, Grace's bold comments throw away his shroud of authority and with several words she undermines everything he has been working towards.

"He's shaken, but must try not to show it. He was expecting a series of monosyllables, mere yes's and no's dragged out of her, out of lethargy and stupor; a series of compelled and somnolent responses to his own firm demands. Not such crude mockery"(Atwood 400).

Dr. Jordan is not expecting this change in Grace when the story she's telling is no longer under his own control and he can't follow its narrative with his psychological tricks. Grace is done with the psychological game she is playing and as a final act she defeats the doctor's perceptions of her as willing patient making him acknowledge his sick games with women. Not only does she call him out on his sexual obsessions with both herself and Lydia, she embarrasses him in front of a room of his colleagues and her betters. She destroys his patriarchal dream of control and ruins his exploitation of her by proving all his carefully planned theories are wrong. If Grace is conceivably psychotic and has another personality, as she displays, the no one can trust the doctor's observations because Grace could be a liar. Ironically, Grace shocks them all with the preconceived sexual notions they've had about her all along, talking in a perverted manner no respectable woman would ever consider.

Grace operates within the laws of conventional society only so she can deviate from it fully. If she is "mad", "sexual", and a "murderess" as the patriarch has labeled her then she will use it to her advantage by acting as such whenever she needs to voice her true feelings. Like the women before her Grace will not take her supplication lying down and will use the rules she is given to defy convention entirely while walking the line between male given opposites of virgin and whore.