Women's history
Atwood has often used images of sewing and other domestic arts in her novels, illustrating women's creativity, constrained as it was, historically, to domestic objects. Names of quilt patterns are used as titles of the 15 book sections in Alias Grace, making parallels between Grace's interest in quilts and the meanings of their patterns[14] and Grace's storytelling, her creation of a domestic history, in which Dr. Jordan hopes to discern patterns. Grace tells her life story to the doctor as a chronology, but, as she does, she reflects on what she tells him like it was a patchwork of experiences. Each patch is destined to fill a particular place in the quilt, and they must all be created before the quilt can be assembled, much as historical research, and especially research on women in history, requires examination of many disparate sources in order to construct a chronological account.[15]
Identity
Modern readers may not be satisfied with the idea that Mary, alias Grace, was the murderer. Others might view the use of the term "alias" in the title as suggesting that in their search for the truth about Grace Marks, both readers and characters may be frustrated by duplicity. Grace resists being completely comprehended by these men of power, scientific or religious. She belongs instead to the marginal communities of immigrants, servants, and mad people, who are always vulnerable, and often lost—as Grace lost her mother, and Mary Whitney (her only friend).[16] The only simple truths for Grace are about things—quilts, sheets, carpets, petticoats, the laundry of her life; she gains confidence from a needle and thread. As Margaret Atwood says, "The true character of the historical Grace Marks remains an enigma."[4] It may be noted that the publication of this book corresponds in time with the height of psychiatric interest in "multiple personality disorder" as a legitimate category of illness. This idea goes back to the late 19th century and is associated with the practice of Mesmerism, which evolved into a technique called clinical hypnosis that was often relied upon as a source of "truth" in patients who were otherwise prone to telling the clinician what the clinician wanted to hear. This technique has been largely discredited by the accumulated evidence that trance causes in its subjects increased certainty of the truth of certain memories, whether or not they are in fact true, and that what we remember is often substantially distorted by our own desires. From a psychiatric perspective, Atwood's version of Grace's story is entirely consistent with a diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, including the perplexing fact that the clinician can rarely be certain of the actual events "remembered" by the patient.
