Alias Grace: Chapter 43 Summary & Analysis

Grace reports that Dr. Jordan has left Kingston for Toronto. She misses his company and worries that “when he goes away, as he is bound to do sooner or later, there will be a sad emptiness in [her] heart.” She wonders what she will tell him when he returns; “I could say this,” she thinks, and continues with her story, which is not in quotation marks but is now addressed in the second person directly to Dr. Jordan.

Grace is arrested first, followed by McDermott. As the two are transported back across Lake Ontario to Canada, McDermott insists that Mr. Kinnear was most likely killed by a “suspicious-looking man” (Jeremiah) who had been “hanging around” the house, which angers Grace. Grace and McDermott are imprisoned in Toronto. Grace asks for her box of clothes and notes that the newspapers “sneered at [her] for referring to it as [hers]”—but, she insists, “although it was true this box and the clothes in it had once been Nancy’s, they were hers no longer, as the dead have no use for such things.” Grace adds, “I don’t think I could have scratched myself or wiped my nose without it being written up in the newspapers, and malicious comment made on it in high-sounding phrases.”

An inquest is scheduled to be held soon after Grace’s arrest, and Grace begins to worry because she can “see that feeling [is] running very much against me.” The Toronto prison guards tease Grace about being hanged, and one of them tries to sexually assault her; a fellow prisoner defends Grace, telling the guard to “keep away”—“which he did mostly,” Grace says.

Grace thinks, “I will tell Dr. Jordan about this, as he likes to hear about such things, and always writes them down.”

The Inquest takes place in City Hall, in front of a large audience. Though Grace truly feels as if she had not been “present at [the murders] at all,” she knows that if she says this she will be “laughed to scorn,” especially since the butcher has testified to seeing and conversing with her the day of the murders. Grace tells a made-up account of the day, but feels justified in saying that she really heard the gunshot, as “indeed they found the ball from the gun, in the wood of the summer kitchen door frame, which showed I was not lying.”

Grace is held for three months in the Toronto prison until her trial in November. She is assigned a lawyer, Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie, in October, and he advises her to “say what must have happened, according to plausibility, rather than what [she herself] could actually recall,” which Grace resolves to do. Grace spends most of the three months in solitary confinement; she talks to Mary Whitney and on one occasion hears her laughing. She also sees her dream/hallucination of the red flowers for the first time.

Grace recalls that the last time she met with Dr. Jordan he asked if she remembered Susanna Moodie’s visits to the Kingston Penitentiary and the Toronto asylum. Grace said she did remember, but when Dr. Jordan said that Mrs. Moodie’s account states that Grace was held in the violent ward of the asylum, Grace replied, “I do not recall behaving in a violent manner towards others, unless they did so first to me.” Grace also insisted that Mrs. Moodie’s account of Grace seeing red eyes following her around was inaccurate. She said she had told Mr. MacKenzie she had been seeing red spots, and when he pressed her she clarified that they were red peonies. “I suppose it’s the more usual thing,” Grace told Dr. Jordan, “to have eyes following you around. It is more what is required, under the circumstances.”

Grace thinks that the next thing Dr. Jordan will want to hear about when she sees him is her trial, which began on November 3rd. She recalls searching the crowd for Jeremiah, who was not present. Jamie Walsh testified against her, which pained her because she “valued his good opinion of [her], and it was a grief to lose it.” Jamie also pointed out at trial that Grace was wearing Nancy’s dress, which, Grace says, caused a stir akin to “the uprush of voices at the Judgment Day,” and she “knew [she] was doomed.”

Grace says that when she had to testify, she tried her best to “remember the right answers,” and that Mr. MacKenzie did his best to argue she was “very soft and pliable, and easily imposed upon.” However, the jury found Grace guilty, and the judge sentenced her to death, at which Grace fainted and “fell on the railing made of pointed spikes that was all around the dock,” sustaining an injury right next to her heart. “I could show him the scar,” Grace thinks.