A deviant device: Diary dissembling in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace

Abstract

Margaret Atwood takes a ‘fictional excursion’ into the ‘real Canadian past’ in her 1996 novel, Alias Grace, in order to expose contradictions in the story of an infamous nineteenth-century murderess, Grace Marks.¹ Demonstrating that ‘the past is made of paper’, but the historical record is confusing and contradictory, Atwood pieces a diary-style account into the patterned patchwork of voices that jostle discordantly side by side in search of narrative authority.² Within the fragmented polyphonic narrative, a secret diary-style voice denies resolution for enduring questions of guilt or innocence, and illustrates that ‘a murderess is not an everyday thing’.³ Claiming that Grace’s story ‘is a real study in how the perception of reality is shaped’, voice and the diverse roles of writer and critic are therefore key preoccupations for Atwood as she debates processes that effectively effaced Grace’s legibility.⁴ This chapter investigates how diary form shapes readers’ perceptions of Atwood’s fictional reconstruction of historical events, and considers whether a deviant diary-style permits Grace Marks to become primarily an alias through which Atwood can deliver authorial polemic that fosters ideas of deception and ambiguity.