The narration in "Alias Grace". Ambiguity of Grace Marks

Inhaltsangabe oder Einleitung

The ambiguity of Grace herself is especially interesting about this series. Therefore, my attempt is to first analyze the narrative style, especially concerning the different timelines as well as Grace’s unreliability and ambiguity as a character and narrator. Furthermore, I will connect this way of narrating to Grace’s quilting which is omnipresent in the series and can be read as another form of communication and narration especially for women at a time where they usually had to stay silent.
With a rather powerful voice-over begins the telling of Grace Marks, by that time a 33-year-old maid that was convicted of murdering her former employer Thomas Kinnear and his house keeper Nancy Montgomery together with the stable boy James McDermott. While he gets hanged, Grace is sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, 15 years after her conviction, psychologist Dr. Simon Jordan is hired to talk to Grace to find out if she really was guilty of the murders or not. These are true events that took once place in 1843 and then were adopted for a novel written by Margaret Atwood: Alias Grace. Based on this novel the canadian US-American Drama-mini-series Alias Grace, written by Margaret Atwood and Sarah Polley and directed by Mary Harron, was released in 2017. It is the story of Grace Marks, the question of her innocence and guilt, that is constantly being asked by Dr. Jordan as well as the audience.