Alias Grace part 6 review: And so we will all be together

Netflix series Alias Grace ends with a haunting finale that will stay with viewers for a long while to come.

Though it seems inevitable that we will never get the classic, wrapped-up-with-a-bow ending for Alias Grace, the final episode is here. And, though it does not deliver what anyone might call a “traditional” finale, it’s oddly satisfying and deeply compelling.

It begins with two men talking about Grace. Namely, Dr. Jordan and Grace Marks’ trial lawyer. The lawyer represented both Grace and her fellow accused, James McDermott. He admits “that was wrong in retrospect, as their interests were in conflict,” but seemingly laughs it off.

Grace’s lawyer also laughs at Jordan. “Our fascinating Grace has been leading you on a merry chase,” he says. Dr. Jordan admits that his interviews with Grace have been anything but merry and that he is no longer sure whether or not she is lying.

Well, that’s an easy answer for the lawyer. He compares Grace to Scheherazade, who told a sultan 1,001 tales in order to keep her own head. In her own way, Grace is leading Jordan on because she’s lonely and attracted to the young, single doctor. Certainly, says the lawyer, “she spun out her yarn to me to as great a length as it would go”.

We then see Grace in her cell again, wondering if Jordan has found information about her. If he’s been searching by speaking to others, well, “you wouldn’t find it out that way. You don’t understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you have done, but from the things others have done to you”.

Lydia, the prison governor’s daughter, has left out her sentimental keepsake book (essentially, a scrapbook). Jordan asks Grace what she might put into her own keepsake book. She thinks that she would have a piece of cotton from her penitentiary nightdress, along with “a square of bloodstained petticoat” and “a strip of kerchief, white with blue flowers”.

At the hypnotism, Grace appears dressed in all black, with a plain black cap. The wide dress and austere colors make her look pale, even fragile. Whose idea was this? Did Jeremiah the peddler/Dr. DuPont choose the outfit, or did Grace? Moreover, is she truly afraid? Or is this the kind of show she and Jeremiah might have put on, in another life?

“Now, this is a completely scientific procedure”, Jeremiah/DuPont says. He tut-tuts at any mention of spiritualism, though one audience member is a vocal proponent of the practice.

Spirits and hauntings

By the late 1850s, Spiritualism had become a known practice throughout much of the English-speaking world. In fact, Kate Fox, one of the sisters credited with founding spiritualism, met with author Susanna Moodie. Moodie had already written about Grace Marks in her 1853 book, Life in the Clearing. Moodie’s work formed the basis for Margaret Atwood’s initial interest in Marks.

After assuring Grace and the audience that this is all very practical and scientific, he drapes Grace in a transparent black veil. The soundtrack plays subtly funereal music while DuPont talks to Grace of growing heaviness in her body, of becoming drowsy, of sinking down as if into water.

DuPont asks for someone from the audience to bend her arm — it’s a note of the sideshow, especially when no one volunteers and there’s an awkward, too-long beat. He has to try to bend her arm himself and does a good enough job of pretending that he can’t.

Jordan tells DuPont to ask her about the Kinnear house, then asks if she ever had “relations” with McDermott.

Here, Grace’s Irish accent falls away and her voice moves back into her throat. She stares out from beneath the long veil like a specter of her own. “Really, Doctor, you’re such a hypocrite. You want to know if I kissed him if I slept with him, if I was his paramour, is that it?”

“Yes,” says Jordan, too entranced to be worried about propriety.

She says yes, that she would meet McDermott in the yard — there’s a shot of them kissing amongst the hanging laundry. “I had him on a string,” she says, perhaps taking some joy in playing a thorough villain, for once. She says that Kinnear, too, was under her command.

What about Nancy Montgomery? “The kerchief killed her. Hands held it. She had to die. The wages of sin is death”. There’s a shot of Grace and McDermott in the cellar. They each have one hand on the edges of the kerchief, strangling Nancy together.

While the watchers express shock, “Grace” is scornful. “You’ve deceived yourselves. I am not Grace”. Then, we see another version of Nancy’s death. Here, McDermott is strangling Nancy alone, while Grace stands back, scared, pleading with him to stop. There’s no indication that one or the other scenario is the “true” one.

Who is speaking, then? “Not Nancy, you stupid fool. Nancy can’t say a word, not with her neck like that … Come, doctor, you like riddles.”

Mary Whitney never left

It’s Mary, of course, who has taken up residence in her old friend’s body. Grace doesn’t know, naturally, and she must never know. At first, “Mary” says, she even liked it in the asylum, for she could talk freely there. But then it became clear that no one listened to her, as no one is now at the hypnotism. “You won’t hear,” she says despairingly, and disappears. Grace soon awakens.

Jordan leans moodily against some furniture and says that he can’t include the hypnotism session in his report. Then there’s an abrupt cut to Jordan engaging in some very unromantic, animalistic sex with the landlady on the floor, complete with plenty of grunting and very little eye contact. Afterward, he tells her that “I always wanted to do that with someone else. Not you”.

She cries, he bangs his head against the wall and walks away — yes, he is rotten, as much used to taking and using women in his own way as any of the other men depicted in the series. Alias Grace seems convinced that men, or at least men of this era, were primed to be betrayers.

In a letter to the Reverend, Jordans says, “I wonder if [these seances and hypnotism sessions] provide an opportunity for women to say what they think and to express their true thoughts and feelings more boldly and in more vulgar terms than they could otherwise feel permission to”.

He seems unaware of the irony and double lives that men lead. Who are they in front of a “lady”? Is it different when they’re with a presumably desperate landlady? What about Kinnear, who at first seemed so refined and then revealed himself as a careless womanizer? Their two-facedness seems built into their society. It’s practically expected.

A woman engaging in that kind of obvious shifting of personality is shocking, however. Grace is not allowed to be vulgar and survive; thankfully, she’s got Mary for that purpose. Whether it’s playacting, mental illness, or possession, Mary can be awfully useful.

Jordan retreats

Jordan leaves town entirely and abandons his project. We later see him on the lawn of his fine family home, staring off into the distance. He reads a letter in voiceover, telling the Reverend that he has suffered a kind of nervous breakdown. He then leaves home in a Union uniform, speaking of purpose and duty.

Did Grace harm him? Did he deserve it, somehow? Like all other men? Because practically all the men here have committed some terrible sin against women, whether they know it or not. Whether they choose to acknowledge it or not. Some are simply more subtle than others.

Eleven years later, Grace is abruptly pardoned. “Is it not a cruel joke?” she says, before beginning to cry. She walks out of the penitentiary in strange, new-to-us clothes. The governor’s wife says that there is a surprise waiting for her. A gentleman waits for her — “he is an old friend of yours”.

It’s Jamie Walsh. “I’ve been overcome with guilt for the part I played in your conviction,” he says.

She forgives him. “It’s the sort of thing that could happen to anyone,” she says. It’s as if she’s dismissing a bad grade and not 30 wasted years. Still, what other choice does she have? If Grace rebuffed Jamie and his marriage proposal, where would she go? If she was cruel, would anyone help her? This may, in fact, be her only chance to be happy.

And she is, or close enough. Yes, Jamie seems obsessed with her traumatic past. He continually asks for her forgiveness. Grace is “aware that in doing so, I am telling a lie. Though I suppose it isn’t the first lie I have told”.

The end of it all

We see Jordan, grievously wounded in the Civil War. He’s still alive, but a shell of a human being. He can only lie there, speechless and staring. When his mother reads a letter from Grace, the ruined Jordan can only whisper her name.

Grace is last seen working on her quilt. “I am finally making one for myself,” she says. It’s to be a tree of paradise pattern, but with changes to suit her own tastes. There is a border of snakes, as in all lives. She also includes fabric from three dresses — Mary Whitney’s petticoat, her prison nightdress, and a pink triangle from Nancy’s dress.

“And so we will all be together,” she says. Wherever Mary and Nancy have gone, they have always been with Grace. They always will be. She hangs up her finished quilt, steps back, stares at it, and then into our eyes. Credits roll.

I’m not here to tell you whether or not “Mary” is real, or if Grace did or did not commit the murders. It’s not so much that these issues are up for debate, as they must remain unclear for the soul of the narrative to work.

We are profoundly unsettled by Grace and her story, not to mention of all those around her and, by extension, practically any other human. We are profoundly complicated and oftentimes dark creatures. The inability to know only complicates our picture of ourselves. Maybe that’s why this fictional Grace made so many people angry or frightened. She was a kind of mirror or contradiction.

Next: Alias Grace part 5 review: All that time is dark to me

So, there’s no answer. There’s only what you see in Grace Marks and her story, and the realization that real life stories and the people in them are just as confusing.

Speaking of real life, the historic Grace Marks was pardoned in 1872. She moved to New York and then disappeared from us. There are no more records of her — no marriage licenses, no lines on a census, no burial records.

It’s hard not to hope that, for any sin of hers, she had the opportunity to lead a quiet, contented life somewhere. At least, with the haunting, haunted finale of Alias Grace, we can imagine her unsettled peace.