Introduction Margaret Atwood’s historical fiction novel tells the story of Grace Marks, a true-life criminal within the Canadian justice system in the 1800s. At the end of the novel, Atwood reveals what facts were available to her prior to writing the book. These included the newspaper reports that discussed the facts of the case and the less direct information regarding the interests of the scientific community at the time, particularly as it concerned individual behavior and its causes. In both the real case and the case presented in Atwood’s fictional novel, Grace Marks was accused of assisting in the murder of her bachelor employer and his pregnant housekeeper mistress and then running away with the stable-hand to the United States. Atwood’s story opens with Grace already having been in prison for the past 7 or 8 years. Her basic routine is sketchily outlined as sleeping at the prison and working as a maid within the governor’s mansion. Yet the routine is about to change slightly with the introduction of Dr. Simon Jordan, a young psychiatrist intending to open his own insane asylum who is interested in finding out more about the amnesia Grace claims to have regarding the hours in which the murders took place. As Grace tells him her story, it becomes clear that the events of Grace’s life, her hardships as well as her successes, are often shaped by her appearance rather than her actions. Grace’s actions Throughout her life, Grace demonstrates through her actions that she intends to someday attain the status of a proper lady someday, even when that thought seems furthest out of reach. As a small child, she was brought face to face with the facts of life as she witnessed her mother’s misery with her father brought about as a result of her inability to remain chaste while courting him and received the lectures of her aunt regarding her mother’s failures. She demonstrates her opinion of herself in the quality of her work as she helps her mother and attempts to take care of her brothers and sisters by keeping them as clean and well-dressed as she can within her limited means as a small child herself. As a serving maid, she is able to take pride in her ability to support herself and becomes even more familiar with the necessity of a young girl to guard her chastity if she is to have any hope of salvation in the form of a proper marriage while her intelligence is demonstrated as she works with Dr. Jordan. Grace’s early life is characterized as being a life of responsibility and maturity. She is told by her Aunt Pauline, at some point before age 9 presumably, that her mother was forced to marry her father because she’d gotten pregnant. Her sense of responsibility even at this very young age is demonstrated in her decisions regarding the smaller children. While still in Scotland, she had already learned to go against her mother’s wishes by taking the younger children with her to the docks as a means of securing the family’s supper. “We were forbidden by our mother to beg, and we would not, or not in so many words; but five ragged little children with hungry eyes is a hard sight to resist, or it was in our village then. And so we would get our fish more often than not, and go off home with it as proud as if we had caught it our