Past the Table of Contents

I think that the fact that I made it to the table of contents is saying a lot, let alone the fact that I've made it past them. To say that Margaret Atwood has truly won me over through Alias Grace would be like saying Stephenie Meyer has captivated my heart through the Harry Potter series.  By this, I'm referring to the pasted descriptions of Grace Marks written by other authors such as Susanna Moodie and Emily Bronte which almost made it look like movie reviews. Although I can appreciate these authors' inputs and descriptions of the main character, I still think that it would be nice to hear the opinion of the author whose novel I'm reading. While we're still on the topic of not Margaret Atwood, I came across a poem written by Emily Bronte at the time of Grace Mark's conviction. The poem was a pretty basic summary of the story, not to mention that every stanza rhymed (which I found the most impressive of all). Although the poem is merely an interpretation of the true events, it gives a bit more insight to the story itself because it made me question whether or not a young girl like Grace Marks is capable of murder and if she was in fact telling the truth about being innocent, or if she is the psychopathic "murderess" that the people convicted her of being.

Susanna Moodie and Emily Bronte may have gained my attention and kept me from slamming the book closed, but I will give credit to Margaret Atwood for one thing --writing something appealing.
I'm completely joking. Margaret Atwood is fully capable of tasteful writing... just not to me. But anyway.


While at the Governor's house with his wife, Grace is identified as being a "romantic figure" by some of the women there, however they also point out that she doesn't smile or laugh. Grace reminds herself that she hasn't had a reason to smile in such a long time, and if she were to laugh she feared she would not be able to stop, which would ruin her romantic image as "Romantic people are not supposed to laugh. I know that much from looking at pictures." (Atwood, 25) Honestly, I don't know why this line caught my attention. Maybe it just struck me as bizarre that a murderer can even be seen as a romantic figure or maybe it was the fact that I had always interpreted love in this certain era to be forced, as wives were seen as property and husbands were seen as assets. The other thing about that quote that made me wonder was if you were romantic, wouldn't that imply that you are either in love, or want to be in love? And if it does, then wouldn't that make you happy? If this is the supposed case, then why would smiling ruin such an image of being romantic? As far as I see it, if you're a romantic, you're in love and if you're in love, then you're happy and if there are no signs of being happy or in love then said person is not a romantic as Grace Marks was described as.

However, I still think that there's some hope for Grace Marks yet as being a romantic figure -- she was convicted for murdering Thomas Kinnear and his mistress, Nancy Montgomery. Some say she did it out of jealousy. Some say she did it because she was deranged. My prediction so far is that Grace Marks was in love with Thomas Kinnear and she knew that she could never be involved with him. That fact became proven when he started seeing Nancy Montgomery, and when the truth became too difficult, she murdered them both. So I guess you could say that in a jealous, deranged kind of way, Grace Marks acted romantically in the way of her crimes.

And I guess I'm alright with reading about that for the next three months.