Chimamanda Adichie by Belén Tizón

THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK-CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHE de Belen T

Begoña Rodríguez on "Alias Grace"

 “Duplicity versus duality” in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace

by Begoña Rodríguez

Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi

“I felt a Cleaving in  my Mind-

As if my Brain had split-

I tried to match it - Seam by Seam-

But could not make it fit” .       

                                                              Emily Dickinson, 1860        

“The true character of the historical Grace Marks remains an enigma,” said Margaret Atwood, and in the novel, as well. The title” Alias Grace” is chosen by the author on purpose. Grace is the name which appears in the newspapers, Penitentiary records, poems..  Even Reverend Verringer refers to her as “the woman known to us as Grace.”  It is the Grace whose identity or, rather, identities are created by “others.” However, the novel begins with the protagonist and narrator's description of the scene preceding Nancy's murder ,of which she has been convicted. She omits details which can incriminate herself, ”This is what I told Dr.Jordan, when we came to that part of the story.”  She is supposed to suffer amnesia. In addition, the narrator / protagonist uses the name and the persona of Mary Whitney, supposedly an old friend dead a long time ago, on several occasions. So, Who is Grace , has the protagonist a split personality , a dual nature? or is it duplicity? 

Clearly, its free indirect style and the variety of narrative techniques, that is to say, quotes from Primary sources, intertextuality, poems, but, above all, the dual narrative contribute to ambiguity. Thus, an unreliable first person narrator in total control of what she wants to tell and an omniscient narrator, when it comes to Simon Jordan, alternate to construct the story of the female protagonist, an Irish immigrant struggling to survive in a hostile world and eventually convicted of double murder and protected by Double Jeopardy. 

From the start, to the public eye is always Grace Marks. However, the name and persona of Mary Whitney ("white water" in Old English) appears several times during her narrative and comes to Grace's rescue twice, both in private circles: when Grace escapes with McDermott and checks in at the tavern as Mary Whitney and, more importantly , during the Neuro-Hypnotic session at the Governor's with her friend Jeremiah, alias Dr.Dupont, leading the show.  So, pretending to be Mary Whitney saves her life …or is she Mary Whitney?

According to Grace´s account, both women had met at Mr. Alderman Parkinson´s and influences her a great deal. Once Mary dies, so we are told, her spirit is not let out and stays “in” Grace, who shortly afterwards leaves the house. It is now that we see her taking decisions for the first time in her life… Who died there? a woman called Mary Whitney or is it a metaphor for the death of the old Grace.? In other words, is it possible to think that Mary Whitney” dies” at that house, presumably after having an abortion, and a new woman is born? Then, Mary Whitney would be Grace´s alter ego…

Obviously, there is an inner metamorphosis. Grace turns into a learned woman. When she is shown round Mr. Kinnear’s house, she sees two paintings hanging in his bedchamber, one of them has a naked woman wearing a peacock-feather fan, the other, of a naked woman taking a bath, depicts the story of the Apocrypha entitled “Susanna and the Elders.” Interestingly enough, both paintings anticipate what is going to happen to her. The eyes of the peacock feathers and the Elders symbolize the media scrutiny, the pressure, the lies about her private life and the false interpretations of different societal forces and patriarchal institutions. Grace goes through all this alone during the trial and after she is found guilty.”What cannot be cured or avoided must be endured,” she says and…she does. Afterwards, she will also have to put up with all kinds of hardships at the Women's Penitentiary and at the Asylum.

In the end, the Committee, whose members are clergymen and gentlemen of standing, files a petition for her acquittal. Also Dr. Jordan, in love with her, needs to believe in her innocence. Her amnesia and dedoublement could explain it all. But she eludes him, she is out of grasp. Indeed, Grace is a literate empowered strong-willed woman who perseveres in her goal . Her Pardon. After looking at herself in the mirror and mentioning all the things being said about her, “how can I be all of those different things at once?”, she has earned the right to give her own version and gain Absolution and she does everything within her power to be released …. it is a world ruled by men, though.

Against all odds, Grace is set free and appears sewing her quilt “The Tree of Paradise.” She decides to stitch in it and embroider around it three pieces of cloth from Mary's petticoat, Nancy's dress and the prison´s nightdress, which represent all the women of the Penitentiary. They are all part of the pattern of her life. Imperfect as it is, she is the one and only owner.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

PATCHWORK: SEWING THE FABRIC OF THE NARRATIVE

in 

Margaret Atwood's "Alias Grace" (1996)

“You are what you remember” (Dr Dupont in Alias Grace)

“You are what you forget “(Dr Simon Jordan in Alias Grace)

 

Source: here

Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace” published in 1996 is based on a real story of alleged murderess “Grace Marks” who “at age 15/16 was convicted of killing her employer and his mistress with a fellow member of “the help,”, James McDermott. Grace’s trial was highly publicized across Canada, the US, and Europe. Her story soon became sensationalized and romanticized, and the true story seemed to fall by the wayside as the years went on.” Source here

The Quilting process: not the End but the Stitching

Margaret Atwood's “Happy Endings”

Atwood works on a real story, and therein, the end of it is already known. It is the fabric of the findings and diggings in the process of telling that brings significance into the novel through the intersectional territories of science, psychology, history, and identity. Indeed, a poem in the form of a ballad about the “crimes of Thomas Kinnear, Esq. And of his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery at Richmond Hill and the trials of Grace Marks and James McDermott and the hanging of James McDermott at the New Gaol in Toronto November 21st, 1843 “ precludes the narrative.

Concerning this matter, it is interesting to bring to front Margaret Atwood’s experimental “Happy Endings”: Atwood plays around with the same end but unspins different stories. The aim is not the end but the process, she seems to be pinpointing. At a point in the novel, Grace also reflects on the act of "telling": 

“ When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion: a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood… It’s only afterward that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling to yourself or to someone else” (page 346 / chapter 33).

Science versus Charlatanism

A full story arch is presented, comprehending Grace Marks’ childhood and her sea travelling from Ireland, to the multiple houses in which she has served till reaching Mr. Kinnear’s. The story (a frame narrative)is told in a retrospective way  from the Penitentiary in which Grace Marks has been confined and is working for the “Governor’s” household.  Her case is further studied by the medical men and other reformists and conservatives to determine whether she might be finally acquitted or found guilty.  Her amnesia, her memory gaps about certain details of the crimes puts her at the beckon and call of inquisitive minds and eyes.

The story is offered in multiple perspectives mainly by Grace Marks herself and Simon Jordan, who shows interest in assembling the forgotten pieces of Kinnear’s and Nancy’s crime by using different psychological and scientific methods to prod Grace into remembering.  Actually, at the end of the narrative, Simon makes reference to Simon the apostle:

"Like my namesake apostle, I have cast my nets into deep waters; though unlike him, I may have drawn up a mermaid, neither fish nor flesh but both at once, and whose song is sweet but dangerous" (page 490 / Chapter 50)

Social contesting forces constitute the backdrop of the novel reformists and conservatives, Catholics and protestants, science and charlatanism. Atwood makes a comprehensive research of the science of the times: theories of mesmerism, neurological-hypnotism, seánces, asylums, institutional mistreatment, anatomy, surgical dissection...to name a few of the approaches presented in the narrative:“The Nineteenth century, he concluded, would be to the study of Mind what the Eighteenth had been to the study of Matter- an Age of Enlightenment” 

Indeed, the precarious conditions of asylums and the deficiencies in the treatment of patients, as well as the double standards contributed to muddled conceptions of psychological treatment.

Sewing the patchwork

Mary Whitney alias Grace versus Grace alias Mary

 Whitney / Dédoublement

The novel unfolds further in the shadows by resorting to rich metaphoric accoutrement such as the pervading patchwork and the quilts as well as oneiric imagery. Apart from an embodiment of sorority and domesticity, the quilts constitute a leitmotif, a metonymic way of putting the strewn pieces together. Grace, Penelope-like in her sewing and Scheherazade-like in her storytelling, engages Dr. Jordan’s attention while sewing as he attempts to unearth the forgotten fragments of her memory.

The novel is  entitled “Alias Grace” whereas Grace’s elopement and posters bear “Alias Mary Whitney”.  This duality plays a paramount role. Mary Whitney, Grace's alter ego, constitutes a lens through which the novel explores  themes of bipolarity, “double-consciousness,” or “dédoublement”. 

Mary Whitney is Grace’s best friend at the Alderman’s. Indeed, when Mary passes away due to a hemorrhage by an abortion malpractice, Grace seems to fall into a trance and believes herself to be Mary. During a séance/hypnotism session, this possession materializes and Mary seems to speak through Grace.  She exonerates her of the crimes committed by alleging her using her body as a shell to do so. Bipolarity? Shenanigans as the men of science seem to bespeak of? 

This duality is further played upon by Grace's secretive and frolic dual nature as to her responses to Dr Jordan.  Both are drawn together in the novel by a series of parallelisms that may trigger the twofold natures at stake in a different direction.

Both are brought together through dreams, and both suffer amnesia. Jordan loses his short term memory after a blast in the American Civil War. The story that rounds the circle of connection is Dr Jordan’s relationship with his landlady: Rachel Humphrey urges Simon Jordan kills her husband so they can be together bring back to mind the story of Mr Kinnear, Nancy Montgomery and Grace Marks

The Tree of Paradise

Grace Mark sews herself a quilt with a tree of paradise, snakes framing it, with all the bits and pieces of all the women that she is, she was, she could be…Mary Whitney, Nancy, Grace Marks...

“On my Tree of Paradise, I intend to put a border of snakes entwined; they will look like vines or just a cable pattern to others, as I will make the eyes very small, but they will be snakes to me; as without a snake or two, the main part of the story would be missing. Some who use this pattern make several trees, four or more in a square or circle, but I am making just one large tree, on a background of white. The Tree itself is of triangles, in two colours, dark for the leaves and a lighter colour for the fruits; I am using purple for the leaves and red for the fruits. They have many bright colours now, with the chemical dyes that have come in, and I think it will turn out very pretty.

But three of the triangles in my Tree will be different. One will be white, from the petticoat I still have that was Mary Whitney’s; one will be faded yellowish, from the prison nightdress I begged as a keepsake when I left there. And the third will be a pale cotton, a pink and white floral, cut from the dress of Nancy’s that she had on the first day I was at Mr. Kinnear’s, and that I wore on the ferry to Lewiston, when I was running away.” (Page 534 Chapter 53)

Language afterthoughts:

Please, find here a link to a corpus of interesting expressions we have gathered from 

the novel.

The Threads of Edith Wharton's Short Stories by Mónica Rodríguez

 On Edith Wharton's Short Stories

by Mónica Rodríguez

 Théobald Chartran (French, 1849 –1907), James Hazen Hyde (1876-1959), 1901. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical  Society, Gift of James Hazen Hyde, 1949.1

Source: https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/beautye28099s-legacy-gilded-age-portraits-america

Edith Wharton published Tales of Men and Ghosts in 1910, following the popular trend of ghost stories started by 19^th-century American writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving. Henry James, whom Edith greatly admired, also wrote ghost fiction, namely, The Turn of the Screw and the novella The Jolly Corner.

Wharton writes mostly about the society she was born into, that of "The Gilded Age" so masterly –and derisively- depicted by Mark Twain in his eponymous novel. This bourgeoning world was led by the New York "aristocracy", i.e., that of the powerful patron families, ruthless and driven by appearance and status. Wharton's stories include adept character studies of the individuals living in this society: the dismissive wealthy members of highest echelons, the upstarts longing to be accepted into the circles of "old money", the "has-beens", the dilettantes in endless pursuit of public acclaim…

The four stories selected for this study have a male protagonist whereas women play a noticeable peripheral role and are often described through the somewhat distorted lens of the men in the story. Wharton does not refrain from transcribing here what she has surely heard –or even said- about certain types of "dull" women, so characteristic in the despotic and harsh New York society she knew extremely well: "At eighteen she had been pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial, insignificant—she had missed her chance of life".

As mentioned earlier, all four stories belong to the literary tradition of "ghost stories" or "ghost fiction". It is worth noting that, although there aren't any ghosts or supernatural phenomena in them, all the protagonists are "haunted" by an obsession, by an unattainable desire that might well be their undoing.

Thus, in The Bolted Door, we are presented with an aspiring playwright who craves fame and recognition but attains neither. Faced with his inability to kill himself, he resorts to confessing a crime he had committed several years earlier in hopes of being sentenced to death and embarks on a desperate quest to be believed… but only to fail again.  In this tale, we find echoes of the "psychological terror" of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories as it is highly reminiscent of some of his tales, for instance, The Tell-Tale Heart or The Black Cat: "Granice was overcome by the futility of any farther attempt to inculpate himself. He was chained to life –a 'prisoner of consciousness'… in the glaring night-hours, when his brain seemed ablaze, he was visited by a sense of his fixed identity of his irreducible, inexpungable selfness, keener, more insidious, more unescapable, than any sensation he had ever known… the feeling that something material was clinging to him, was on his hands and face, and in his throat… it was the sense of his own loathed personality that stuck to his like some thick viscous substance."

Remarkably, the themes of double identity and feelings of psychological alienation, so present is this story ("he sometimes had the mysterious sense of a living metempsycosis, a furtive passage from one identity to another") are to be found as well in Henry James' celebrated ghost story The Jolly Corner, with multiple references to the main character's "alter-ego", "adversary", "his other self" or "presence". Another common trait in both stories is the fact that houses or rooms act as a sort of echo chamber of the protagonist's state of mind: "[Granice] looked slowly about the library, and every object in it stared back at his with a stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at that room! It was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied of." "The long thoroughfare stretched before him, dim and deserted, like an ancient avenue of tombs. But from Denver's house a friendly beam fell on the pavement."

In His Father's Son, the main character's obsession is shown in the sublimation of his yearning for elegance, refinement and social acceptance in his son, whose "ability to do well almost equalled his gift of looking well" although he was, in his father's words, "not a genius". In this way, the coarse protagonist "vibrated exquisitely in response to every imaginative appeal… moved in an enchanted inward world people with all the figures of romance… and to see his vision of himself suddenly projected on the outer world in the shape of a brilliant popular conquering son, seemed to give to that image a belated objective reality." Once more, the alter-ego leitmotif is aptly employed to dwell on the protagonist's elusive aspirations: "He recalled the vision now; and with it came, as usual, its ghostly double: the vision of his young self bending above such a white shoulder and such shining hair."

The abundant imagery of the dichotomy between external appearance and the inner self ("the souls of short-thick men… souls thus encased do not reveal themselves to the casual scrutiny as delicate emotional instruments") echoes back another masterpiece in the Victorian supernatural genre, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

The tale Daunt Diana introduces us to an art collector, a scholar compelled to lower himself in order to survive by "expounding 'the antiquities' to cultured travellers… how it must have seared his soul!" Even when he has entered the circle of the wealthy, he regards the visitors to his newly-acquired collection with supreme disdain: "the worst of all are the ones who know… and yet wouldn't know a Phidias if it stood where they hadn't expected it."

In line with the other stories, he is also a "haunted" man, hankering for the possession of perfect beauty: "he had made himself into this delicate register of perceptions and sensations… only to find that the beauty which alone could satisfy him was unattainable—that he was never to know the last deep identifications which only possession can give." He is not only obsessed with the ideal of finding perfect beauty in art but, crucially, with possessing it, with the prerogative of exclusive enjoyment. In this sense, the kernel of this story powerfully brings to mind another one of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, The Oval Portrait, in which a painter transfers his wife's youthful beauty to her portrait ("This is indeed Life itself"), causing her untimely death in the process. As a side note, this tale has also been connected to Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In the last short story, The Debt, we meet a maladroit student ("an awkward lout") whom a renowned professor has taken under his wing after perceiving "his gift of accurate observation" although it is also humorously remarked that "he had never known a lad... who gave such promise of uniting an aptitude for general ideas with the plodding patience of the accumulator of facts."

This character shares some striking features with the art collector in the previous story. Thus, the biology student is depicted as "a thinking machine, a highly specialized instrument of precision, the result of a long series of 'adaptations' […] he seemed to have shed his blundering, encumbering personality and come to life as a disembodied intelligence"; interestingly enough, the art collector had undergone a similar process of autodidacticism and adaptation: "during those early years, when he had time to brood over trifles and note imperceptible differences, he gradually sharpened his instinct, […] he had made himself into this delicate register of perceptions and sensations--as far above the ordinary human faculty of appreciation as some scientific registering instrument is beyond the rough human senses."

Naturally, this character is also "haunted" by a fixation, in his case, the relentless pursuit of the scientific truth, even if that means going against the ideas upheld by his beloved mentor. In his conversation with the late professor's son, he graciously acknowledges his tremendous debt towards his protector, but he states that he must "carry on the light", noting that "Men like him [the professor] are the masters, not the servants, of their theories. They respect an idea only as long as it's of use to them, when its usefulness ends they chuck it out".

To conclude, there is a defining feature that pervades all of Edith Wharton's work, her brilliant use of ironic reversal, a tradition firmly associated with Guy the Maupassant's short stories, which Edith Wharton had eagerly read following Henry James' advice.

Irony is then used to establish a divide between what characters wish and what they finally get. This device is masterly exemplified in Daunt Diana's protagonist's predicament: "It was, in short, the old tragedy of the discrepancy between a man's wants and his power to gratify them."

The Bolted Door, a superb comic reversal of the "detective story" genre, shows a man as "ineffectual" as the sister so ungraciously referred to inasmuch as he has failed in each and every one of his life's endeavours.

His father's son also resorts to irony and reversal in presenting a comic transposition of The picture of Dorian Gray. It is fascinating to note that the protagonist's son "embodies" all his father's aspirations of beauty and refinement in a sort of enhanced version of the original self. Irony is also felt in the final twist as this son ultimately disowns his parentage by foolishly assuming that the man on the portrait is his "real" father.

In Daunt Diana and The Debt, the protagonists' driving force lies in their unflinching pursuit of the ideals of perfect beauty and knowledge, respectively. In the case of the art collector, he eventually succeeds in acquiring the coveted Daunt collection… only to realize that possession is not worthwhile without the excitement of the chase. The biology student, in turn, has attained academic recognition after succeeding his mentor and published his masterwork "The Arrival of the Fittest" (note the ironic undertones in the choice of words) but he philosophically reflects that all his endeavours are pointless as he is just meant to "carry on the light", as his master had done before him, and that both of them had always been expected to "drop and hand them on."

Be careful what you wish for,

you might get it later in life.

James Joyce

Edith Wharton's "His Father's Son" by Belén Tizón

FATHER AND SON RAMBLING IN SOCIETY 

by Belén Tizón

Source for image here

"His Father’s Son" depicts Wharton’s detachment from social expectations about economic status and social constraints.

On one hand, we see a father who has no other aspiration than to increase the success of his company (“outwardly devoting his life to the manufacture and dissemination of Grew’s Secure Suspender Buckle” p. 2). On the other hand, Mr Grew exerts control over his child to prevent him from reproducing roles. His inner struggles make him dream of a son triumphing in society in all contexts.

Wharton is an author who constantly denounces the expected social status of people and how devastating it could be for a person. In this short story, Mr Grew despises his mediocrity, and social complex and remains hopeful in his heir (“Ronald in fact constituted his father’s one escape from the impenetrable element of mediocrity” p.2)

Her obstinate refusal to social constraints is also represented in the cities mentioned in the short story. While Wingfield seems to be a dull, not prosperous place (cf. description at the beginning of the novel), Brooklyn is a city close to New York, giving him the chance to have a livelier social life in theatres and also the kind of “society” the people living there constitute, a different standard (“had found their manners simpler, their voices more agreeable, their views more consonant with his own…”). 

In the relationship between father and son, we can see the conflict between tradition and change, the father urges his son’s change and celebrates any performance contrary to stagnation (“Mr G. always affirmed to himself that the boy was not a genius [..] he had managed to be several things at once-writing poetry in the college magazine, playing delightfully..”). Criticism of tradition and passivity is also transmitted through the figure of the mother, nonetheless, we can appreciate some kind of female irony judging the role of women in the American society of the time.