God's Cage

Before the part Hearts and Gizzards in the novel, there is a part that is beyond ironic in context to the rest of the novel. In this part, Grace shows disgust and is very shaken by the idea of having to kill a chicken on herself. She says that she could never do it, as she has never done it before, and she "had an aversion to shedding the blood of any living thing" (Atwood 294). This is ironic because the whole novel is based off the case of Grace Marks -- the girl who helped murder Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, which is the same Grace Marks who cries over even the thought of killing a bird in order to put dinner on the table. Grace is also very opinionated on those who attend church, as she calls them hypocrites because they believed they only believed that they were good people when they were on their best behaviour, but disregarded all of the other times in their lives when they weren't at their best. By this, she's saying that the only reason that people come to church is to prove to themselves, others and, more importantly, God that they are good people who are clean of any sin. Margaret Atwood even brings up a light/dark imagery in the chapter by saying :
 
"These are cold and proud people, and not good neighbours. They are hypocrites, they think the church is a   cage to keep God in, so he will stay locked up there and not go wandering about the earth during the week, poking his nose into their business, and looking into the depths and darkness and doubleness of their hearts, and their lack of true charity; and they believe they need only be bothered about him on Sundays when they have their best clothes on and their faces straight, and their hands washed and their gloves on, and their stories all prepared. But God is everywhere, and cannot be caged in, as men can." (Atwood 300)  As someone who doesn't attend church, I could appreciate this quotation because it gave me a sense of reasoning to why people even go to church. In this quotation, Grace was saying that people who go to church have something to hide and they hide it by preparing their stories, cleaning up their act, wearing nice clothes and standing in front of God and saying that they have not sinned. This also shows hypocrisy because people were always punished for "sinning" when the people who are punishing them have probably sinned themselves. Nancy Montgomery is a prime example of a hypocrite because she attends church to say that she doesn't live in sin, yet she is carrying on a relationship with her housekeeper, who is obviously of higher status, and if the relationship were ever to be revealed, she would've been called a whore and been looked down upon. Instead, she was seen as the mistress of the house and was very respected in that sense. However, when Mary Whitney carried on a sexual relationship with the housekeeper's son and discovered that she was carrying his child, she was thrown away like garbage, and given only five dollars to support herself and the child, and was called a slut by the same man who swore that one day he would marry her.

While reading these chapters, a lot of prejudice and hypocrisy is seen in the society of the nineteenth century. The hypocrisy quote made me think a lot about the unfairness of punishment. To compare Nancy Montgomery and Mary Whitney in the same situation, we see this imbalance of punishment, and how the problem ended for each of them. Nancy Montgomery basically got a promotion by carrying on her relationship with Thomas Montgomery while Mary Whitney died trying to rid herself of the burden she was carrying inside of her because she carried on her relationship with the housekeeper's son. Why should it be that two people can commit the same act, yet only one person will be punished for it?