Margaret Atwood's "Alias Grace" – A Crime Novel?

Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION  3

  CRIME FICTION  4

  DETECTIVE IN THE CRIME  6

  BELIEVING GRACE  8

  THE POSTMODERN WAY  10

  CONCLUSION  14

  BIBLIOGRAPHY  15

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Introduction

With her recent novel Alias Grace Margaret Atwood has

turned to the field of historical writing. In her novel which is set in 19 th century Canada the female protagonist Grace Marks is a convicted murderess who is accused of having killed her master Thomas Kinnear and his mistress, another servant of the house, Nancy Montgomery. At the time Grace was sentenced to death and it was only her claimed madness that saved her from the gallows. When Simon Jordan decides he wants to study Grace’s case and cure her from her amnesia, Grace tells him her life story and also the event of the crime is again being brought up, though Grace cannot remember the crime scene itself or having committed the crime.

Even though a murder has been committed as one can expect in a crime novel and we can only but assume that Grace has had some part in it, the crime is not the focus of the novel, but rather Grace’s story and what we as readers make of it. The novel goes to explore Grace’s life, her story telling and therewith her personality. It is left to the reader to decide whether or not he believes Grace story and accepts her as being innocent.

In what way this quest for the truth goes with the notion of a crime novel, shall be investigated in this paper.

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Crime Fiction

The genre of crime fiction is still a fairly new literary genre. Though there are earlier works, such as the Gothic Novels that were popular in eighteenth century England, crime fiction as such came into being with Edgar Allan Poe in the mid-nineteenth century (cf. Dunker, p. 19). “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, which was published in

Graham’s Magazine in 1841, is the first in a series of

detective stories by Poe. Soon the detective novel developed into a popular genre, having its basis in Great Britain, the

USA and France. (Dunker, p. 19). In the beginnings many

critics argued that detective fiction could not be considered literature at all, because it was seen as trivial. Still many authors of detective fiction now belong to the canon of English literature. The probably most renowned writer in the field of detective fiction is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who created the world famous Sherlock Holmes.

It is hard to find a handy definition of what a detective novel actually is. The most prominent feature is certainly a mysterious murder. The author constructs a puzzle that is to mislead the reader who tries to solve the murder case and find the murderer. The main focus in the detective novel is on the mystery element: we as readers do not know the identity of the murderer and it is our task to find it out. Another characteristic is that of justice impersonated by the detective. He is the guiding figure through the story and will eventually arrest the criminal. Hilfer argues that by this means the reader is given an absolution, since the murderer is being convicted and thereby the crime clearly classified as unjust (Hilfer, p. 4). Here lies a major difference to the crime novel. The crime novel as a second category of crime fiction developed later and can be seen as a more post-modern form, as it deals much more with psychoanalysis and the

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personality of the criminal. In contrast to the detective story, we as readers know the murderer from the beginning, often even witness the crime. We follow the actions of the criminal and hence know his motivations and feelings:

“Während die klassische Detektiverzählung aufgrund

ihrer Funktionalität und ihres Rätselcharakters

auf psychologische Charakterzeichnung und die

Darstellung innenweltlicher Vorgänge bei den

Verdächtigen und beim Detektiv verzichten muß,

kann der moderne Kriminalroman das Verbrechen aus

der Perspektive des Täters schildern und dem

Leser auf diese Weise Einblick in die

psychologischen Vorgänge beim Mörder vor, während

und nach der Tat verschaffen.“

(Dunker, p. 49)

A detective figure is not found in crime novels or it

is only an ordinary person and of minor importance. This is obvious, since the mystery element is totally lacking in crime novels and is replaced by the investigation of the murderer’s character.

While in the detective novel the crime is displayed as against the law and the police arrests the murderer, this is not necessarily the case in the crime novel. Since the reader takes the perspective of the murderer, understands his reasoning, he or she cannot but sympathise. With this insight the reader is led to a “sense of questioning some aspect of law, justice, or the way society is run” (Hilfer, p. 2). By its complex character distinctions like good and bad are blurred in the crime novel, to an extent that a crime appears as a natural thing.

For instance in The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

the reader is likely to accept the successive murders as a simple necessity to escape the police.

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