Alias Grace part 4 review: It’s an outrage!
Storm clouds gather, townsfolk are incensed, and Grace experiences dark dreams on part 4 of Alias Grace.
Instead of a flashback or strange, dreamlike vision, part four of Alias Grace opens on the everyday grimness of Grace’s life. She’s eating amongst a mass of silent women, all in their prison uniforms. They are all studiously ignoring the woman up front, who is being brutally whipped for taking an extra piece of bread at breakfast.
As Grace is being led away by loutish prison guards, we cut to Jordan. He’s falling asleep in his chair while waiting for Grace. He’s having the same apparent dream, where the two embrace in what appears to be the prison yard. Grace’s speech from the last episode, where she wishes to preserve a perfect moment before time destroys it, is repeated over the silent pair.
All of these dreams aren’t just poetic interludes. Atwood herself was fascinated by the idea of dreaming and the subconscious mind when she wrote Alias Grace. People in the 19th century likewise found dreams to be compelling insights into the human mind.
Though Sigmund Freud would have been only a few years old at the time of Grace’s meetings with Dr. Jordan, the burgeoning field of psychology and psychoanalysis was already known. Doctors were becoming more and more interested in what lay hidden beneath the trapdoor of someone’s mind.
Perhaps that’s why we have already seen multiple shots of the basement door in the Kinnear house. Is this some sort of metaphor for the depths of Grace’s mind and maybe even where her “true” self waits?
Or is that too neat? If we’ve learned anything, it’s that Atwood and the creators of Alias Grace are practically allergic to easy answers.
Nancy’s troubles
Back in Grace’s account of her time at the Kinnear house, she is in Nancy’s good graces. As she brushes Nancy’s hair, Grace tells her that “your hair reminds me of a friend’s hair”. Presumably, she means Mary Whitney, who now must be turning into more of a myth than a person in Grace’s memory.
Nancy mentions that Mr. Kinnear will be having friends over. When Grace asks if they should have another chicken for dinner so that the wives can have enough to eat, Nancy looks surprised. Of course, Mr. Kinnear — who is quickly showing himself to be the Hugh Hefner of 19th century eastern Canada — won’t be hosting women in his home. And Nancy certainly won’t be dining with those men. She has a reputation to protect, after all.
This hint of reputation is enough to turn her cold again. “Just do as I asked you,” she tells Grace. This means that Grace must find McDermott to kill a chicken for dinner. He’s out however, likely carousing according to Montgomery. Well, that just means Grace will have to cut off the chicken’s head.
“I can’t do it, I’ve never done it before,” protests a panicked-looked Grace. “I can’t bear the thought of it”. But Nancy doesn’t care. She shoves Grace and tells her, “don’t come back without a dead bird”.
Grace finally gets Jamie to kill the bird for her, which is mercifully brief, though clearly shown on screen.
It could be that young Grace really didn’t want to kill a chicken. But, then again, wouldn’t it be such a nice note in the story? How could Grace have murdered someone if she couldn’t bring herself to slaughter a common farm animal?
“God is everywhere”
Everything seems far more rosy at church, if only for a brief minute. You see, Kinnear, his housekeeper and the new maid are a bit of a spectacle. One woman (played by Margaret Atwood, credited as “Difficult Woman”) turns to her companion and says, “It’s an outrage! An outrage”. Nancy asks Kinnear to leave, saying “I can’t stand being stared at”.
Grace, for all of her averted glances and quiet attitude, judges the townspeople harshly. “I thought, these are cold and proud people, and not good neighbors. They are hypocrites. They think church is a cage to keep God in so he will stay locked up there,” and not go into their lives and dark hearts during the week. “They believe they may only be bothered by him on Sundays” when they can present themselves at their best. But, says Grace, “God is everywhere”.
This mention of God is especially interesting, and about as beautiful and un-illuminating as everything else in this show. If Grace thinks that people can go about their own business thanks to predestination, would she have felt any remorse over the thought of murder? But, then again, if God truly is everywhere, then maybe Grace has the kind of faith that would have prevented her from taking another life.
Reputations
Later, at the Kinnear home, Nancy finally tells McDermott that he will leave at the end of the month. “I’m just as glad. I do not like being ordered about by a woman,” says McDermott to Grace. “Much worse, considering what type of woman she is”.
McDermott finally reveals to Grace that Nancy Montgomery has a very poor reputation indeed. Kinnear only hired her, he says, because he knew that he could take advantage of the “ruined” Nancy Montgomery. In fact, Nancy had a baby at another place, but “the baby died, thanks to midwife’s mercy”.
Later on, we’re presented with an abundance of evidence that Nancy is pregnant again. She complains that her old dresses no longer fit. She looks increasingly ill and at one point vomits on the floor (and then orders Grace to clean it up). She meets with a doctor. Yet, somehow, Kinnear does not know.
Grace doesn’t want Nancy to be harmed, “but all the same, it would not be fair for her to end up a respectable married lady with a ring on her finger”. Why should Mary Whitney have paid for the same situation with her life, while Nancy is rewarded?
Loneliness
Jordan again quotes McDermott’s confession and its unflattering portrayal of a vengeful, murderous Grace. He says that Grace asked for help poisoning Kinnear and Montgomery. But if she had wanted to poison them, Grace tells Jordan, why wouldn’t she have done it herself? She wouldn’t have needed his help, and could have poisoned him, besides.
So, asks Dr. Jordan, why did he name you in his confession? Perhaps, wonders Grace, he wanted company towards the end. “The road to death is a lonely highway,” she says. “Nor do I blame poor James McDermott. Not for such a wish. I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely”.
“Have you often felt lonely, Grace?” asks Jordan. She flashes back onto her punishments at the prison and asylum. “In the asylum, the doctors and the orderlies themselves often took liberties”.
“Is it true that you were in a delicate condition when you left the asylum?” Jordan asks.
After a pause, she nods, very slightly. “That is what they told me, sir”. And then she abruptly asks to change the subject.
That’s all, but it’s enough to get to the cold, dark heart of what has happened to Grace. Whether or not you believe she is a murderer, it is clear that she is the victim of some truly gut-wrenching crimes.
The return of Jeremiah the peddler
Grace also recalls her birthday at the Kinnear household, where she felt the full force of her loneliness. She takes a walk alone in the fields and realizes that she has no family, no prospects, and no bright future. Even Jamie, the kind-hearted local boy who has grown sweet on her, can’t quite cheer her up.
Jeremiah the peddler also makes his return on that day. He claims that the Kinnear home is facing something terrible, and that Grace should run away with him while she can. He describes a life where they will work as hypnotists and fun-loving charlatans. She will have a new name — a French one would be impressive — and a new life in America. Grace’s face lights up at the thought.
Jeremiah is too thoroughly modern to marry Grace, however, and she hesitates. He promises to return soon for her answer.
The episode ends with a thoroughly disturbing dream sequence. Grace dreams that she walks out of the house. She’s embraced by McDermott, then runs and is taken hold of by George, then Kinnear, then her father. She runs away from all of them, but doesn’t seem to pull away from some of them like she does the others.
Next: Alias Grace part 3 review: Who is telling the story?
Grace then walks towards the house, where she sees “headless angels in bloody robes. They were sitting in silent judgment upon Mr. Kinnear’s house and all within it”.
She wakes and finds that her feet are dirty. There are clothes that have blown into the trees. “The nightdresses and shirts did indeed look like angels without heads”. Yet, the discovery of the windblown laundry doesn’t dispel Grace’s sense of impending doom, nor ours. The storm clouds have only just begun to build over the home.