Previous
Jeremiah the peddler (aka Dr. Jerome DuPont)
In addition to Grace, Grace’s mother has eight living children, has given birth to three stillborn infants, and has had one miscarriage. Grace remembers her mother as having “long auburn hair” and “round blue eyes like a doll.” Grace’s mother is a gentle and vulnerable woman, “a timid creature, hesitating and weak and delicate.” Grace says, “I wanted her to be stronger, so I would not have to be so strong myself.” Grace’s mother dies of an undiagnosed stomach problem (likely a tumor) on the family’s sea passage to Canada. Grace is devastated by her mother’s death, and blames herself for not properly caring for her body afterwards (she is unable to open a window for her mother’s soul to fly out of, because her mother dies in the ship’s steerage). Even as an adult woman, Grace is haunted by dreams of her mother.
Grace’s Mother Quotes in Alias Grace
The Alias Grace quotes below are all either spoken by Grace’s Mother or refer to Grace’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 13
Quotes
When I was quite young, six or seven, I put my hand on my mother’s belly, which was all round and tight, and I said What is in there, another mouth to feed, and my mother smiled sadly and said Yes I fear so, and I had a picture of an enormous mouth, on a head like the flying angel heads on the gravestones, but with teeth and all, eating away at my mother from the inside, and I began to cry because I thought it would kill her.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51
Quotes
The room was so large it was almost frightening to me, and I pulled the sheet up over my head to make it darker; and then I felt as if my face was dissolving and turning into someone else’s face, and I recalled my poor mother in her shroud, as they were sliding her into the sea, and how I thought that she had already changed inside the sheet, and was a different woman, and now the same thing was happening to me. Of course I wasn’t dying, but it was in a way similar.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Alias Grace LitChart as a printable PDF.
Grace’s Mother Quotes in Alias Grace
The Alias Grace quotes below are all either spoken by Grace’s Mother or refer to Grace’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 13
Quotes
When I was quite young, six or seven, I put my hand on my mother’s belly, which was all round and tight, and I said What is in there, another mouth to feed, and my mother smiled sadly and said Yes I fear so, and I had a picture of an enormous mouth, on a head like the flying angel heads on the gravestones, but with teeth and all, eating away at my mother from the inside, and I began to cry because I thought it would kill her.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51
Quotes
The room was so large it was almost frightening to me, and I pulled the sheet up over my head to make it darker; and then I felt as if my face was dissolving and turning into someone else’s face, and I recalled my poor mother in her shroud, as they were sliding her into the sea, and how I thought that she had already changed inside the sheet, and was a different woman, and now the same thing was happening to me. Of course I wasn’t dying, but it was in a way similar.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
