Based on a True Story, Alias Grace is a novelization of the life of Grace Marks, written by Margaret Atwood. Grace, a nineteenth-century Irish immigrant to Canada, is accused and convicted of murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery; however, due to confusion about the facts of the case and Grace's own mental health, her sentence is commuted from death by hanging to life in prison. The novel takes place over a decade after the murders, in the Kingston Penitentiary, where Grace is being interviewed/interrogated by American psychologist Dr. Simon Jordan.
Adapted for CBC Television in 2017.
Provides examples of:
- Abusive Parent: Grace's father is a drunk who beats her and her siblings.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In-universe. Grace complains that nobody can seem to make up their mind about her. Some people insist she's a seductive murderess who was responsible for everything that happened, others that she was a terrified innocent trapped by a violent criminal. Still others say that she's mentally ill, or developmentally delayed. Grace just wishes they'd stop arguing and leave her alone.
- Arranged Marriage: Simon's mother is hinting heavily that he should marry the daughter of her rich friend, which he eventually does.
- Back-Alley Doctor: The doctor that Mary goes to for an abortion.
- Bedlam House: Grace briefly mentions her time in the mental hospital and says overall she prefers prison. Given the description of her life in jail, that's saying a lot about the condition of the mental hospital.
- Black Comedy Cannibalism: Attempted by Grace's father when he complains about her mother having another baby, saying it makes his mouth water to imagine it roasted up on a spit note . When the family's reaction is shocked silence, he responds with Why Are You Looking at Me Like That?.
- Civil War: The year being 1859, Dr. Jordan's mother's letters mention her concern that this will happen in the United States. Simon will eventually fight for the Union and be badly injured.
- Double Standard: Nancy is a social pariah in the neighbourhood because of her relationship with her employer; while Mr. Kinnear isn't popular with the respectable married women of the area, his social status hasn't suffered nearly as badly.
- Due to the Dead: When Grace's mother has to be buried at sea, Grace has two options for wrapping the body: the new linen sheet her mother bought just before they left Ireland, or the older, rattier one. Grace regrets the choice to use the older one, especially as her father just sells the new one when they get to Canada anyway, and wishes she'd shown her mother more respect.
- Fainting: Dr. Jordan's landlady faints from overexertion and hunger, and he was able to quickly restore her since he always carried the necessary remedies with him due to his being tasked with interviewing Grace, whose reputation as a frequent fainter precedes her.
- Faint in Shock: Grace faints frequently from shock, terror, and despair at situations such as being sentenced to death and being told that Dr. Jordan has left without saying goodbye, and goes extremely deeply unconscious for long periods of time whenever she does so, often accompanied by some Trauma-Induced Amnesia upon waking.
- When running for her life and hearing a gunshot from McDermott that she mistakenly believes has hit her, she faints instantly, and wakes up sprawled atop her bed and notices that her clothes are somewhat damp, causing her to realize that McDermott must have tried to wake her by dumping cold water on her to no avail, and then carried her inside and upstairs, thrown her onto her bed, and left her, while she remained utterly insensible throughout all of that and then some more hours, seeing as it is dark out and her clothes have already more than halfway dried.
- Grace's most significant faint, however, is when she faints from the grief and shock over the traumatic death of her dearest friend Mary: she stays completely out cold for ten hours, during which no one could wake her, before briefly waking up, evidently possessed by Mary's soul, and promptly passing out yet again, staying gone for almost as long.
- Full-Name Basis: "Mrs. Alderman Parkinson" is a mouthful, but Grace would never dream of referring to her as anything else.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Referenced by Nancy when she suggests that she and Grace should sleep in Mr. Kinnear's larger, more comfortable bed when he's away. She claims he wouldn't mind and would probably actually rather like the idea.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Subverted. Mary seeks an abortion and dies of it; whether Nancy would have gotten one is a moot point. By the standards of the time neither one would have been considered a "good girl", but modern readers are more likely to be sympathetic.
- Grand Theft Me: When Dr. DuPont hypnotizes Grace, she is or pretends to be possessed by the spirit of Mary Whitney. "Mary" claims that it was she who committed the murders, riding in Grace's body, and Grace is innocent - hence the title of the book.
- Heavy Sleeper: Grace is not a heavy sleeper, per se (she dreams vividly and sleepwalks on numerous occasions), but is notorious for being a heavy fainter. The frequency at which she faints is probably rivaled only by how unusually profoundly and unwakeably unconscious she goes whenever she does so. Many characters make notes of this trait of hers, including Grace herself, who, upon recounting a time she tried desperately not to let her emotions cause her to faint in a moment of peril, said that she knew that if she were to faint she'd undoubtedly be "as good as dead".
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The book is divided into sections, each of which is named for a quilt pattern.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: There are a lot of unwanted pregnancies in this book, and all of them are the source of some kind of drama. Thoroughly justified in that the book is set during a time when reliable contraception didn't exist, there was little by way of social services and many people went hungry, and pregnancy out of wedlock was extremely taboo.
- Maid: Grace works in service from the age of thirteen to sixteen.
- Missing Mom: Grace's mother dies on the trip from Ireland to Canada.
- My Secret Pregnancy: Mary and Nancy, though the truth about both of them eventually comes out.
- Real Name as an Alias: When Grace and McDermott are escaping Canada, Grace gives her name as Mary Whitney. If you believe later testimony, she is Mary Whitney, at least some of the time...
- Snake Oil Salesman: Jeremiah did medical hypnotism shows before becoming a peddler and later disguises himself as Dr. DuPont.
- Slut-Shaming: Everybody, Grace included, thinks less of Nancy when they find out she's sleeping with Mr. Kinnear.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: A major theme of the book.
- Grace has numerous episodes of fainting or being hypnotized, during which she claims she can't remember what happened even though other characters say she was walking and talking normally.
- In a letter from Dr. Jordan's mother to Mrs. Humphrey towards the end of the book, it's revealed that the wound Dr. Jordan sustained in the war caused him to lose his memory of the last few years, and he thinks his fiancee is Grace.
- Unreliable Narrator: Grace admits to being one even in text; there are things she states in her internal monologue that she omits or alters when talking to Dr. Jordan, either because she thinks it's none of his business or she's saying what she thinks he wants to hear.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Grace Marks was a real person who went to jail for the murders of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, for which her companion James McDermott was hanged. Marks also spent time in a lunatic asylum, where she was seen by Susannah Moodie; she was eventually pardoned and moved to the United States. Beyond that, it's impossible to know how much is true. Moodie's account of Marks's "lunacy" was a sensational one written for the popular press (the fictional Grace says it was common to act crazier than one actually was, to put on a show for the visitors), and primary sources other than Moodie's are sparse and contradictory. Marks herself wrote a confession that was published in several newspapers, but again, these are not consistent (journalistic standards of the time being looser) and was later recanted in any case.
- Most of the other characters were invented or significantly enhanced by Atwood. Notably, there's no record of Marks being visited by a Dr. Jordan.
