Storytelling and Power Theme Analysis

Through Grace’s experiences as a prisoner, Atwood explores how societal forces manipulate and control women’s abilities to tell their own stories, often through preventing them from speaking. This implicitly points to the power of storytelling—if women were allowed to tell their own stories, then their experiences, ideas, and ambitions would define them, rather than the diminished personhood given to them by men. Grace’s experiences show not only that storytelling is a vital way to communicate truth and fight back against violence and falsehood, but also that storytelling is a fundamental mechanism by which human beings process and understand their own experiences. Through telling her story, Grace learns to understand and bear the burdens of what has happened to her, even if she can’t fully convince others of the truth as she understands it.

Everything about Grace’s life as a prisoner is controlled, including the way she uses spoken language. In the asylum, Grace says, the matrons “would provoke us, especially right before the visitors were to come” in order “to show how dangerous we were.” Tired of having her own speech turned against her and used as evidence of her mental instability, Grace stops speaking altogether, not breaking her silence even when the doctor overseeing her case, Dr. Bannerling, sexually abuses her. In the prison, Grace and the other inmates are not allowed to speak when they are taking meals, but Grace says that the women “sit chewing their bread with their mouths open and slurping their tea in order to make a noise of some sort even if not speech.” This detail shows how vital spoken language is to the human experience. Indeed, speech becomes a kind of survival tactic for Grace, who is so often left alone and in silence that she even speaks to her daydreams, asking them to talk to her. Clearly, Grace experiences deep pain as a result of having her speech manipulated and even prohibited by the institution of the prison.

Given that Grace is not allowed to fully exercise her right to spoken language, it is even more vital that she be allowed to tell her story in writing. Grace is acutely aware of the power of the written word, as public opinion about her was shaped by the facts of her case that were published in the newspaper. In her interviews with Simon Jordan, Grace often takes care to point out details that the papers have gotten wrong about her story, such as when she says, “We went to the nearest tavern, which was not a hotel at all, as was said in the broadsheet poem about me, but only a cheap inn by the wharf.” Grace’s meticulousness about details that might otherwise seem unimportant or even irrelevant shows how important it is to her to have a feeling of control over her story, which has always been narrated by others.

Details matter, Atwood argues, for once a person loses the power to decide which details are important, their story is at risk of being manipulated. An example of this is Grace’s description of the regiment in which James McDermott used to serve, “which,” she says, “had got such a bad reputation among the farmers, as I knew from Mary Whitney, having burnt a good many farmhouses during the Rebellion, and turned women and children out into the snow, and done worse to them besides, that was never printed in the papers.” The fact that this regiment was responsible for raping women and girls is a vital detail, yet it goes unstated, making the regiment seem like a band of arsonists, rather than arsonists and rapists. Atwood suggests that, in general, society—particularly men—tend to view details as trivial, even going so far as to code them as feminine. This is hinted at when Grace describes how her lawyer, Kenneth MacKenzie (who also sexually harassed her), was frustrated by the way Grace narrated her story, calling it wandering and incoherent. Dr. Jordan is also mystified by Grace’s ability to recall and recount details. As a result of this misogynistic prejudice against details in storytelling, details—and their female authors—are often ignored or rewritten by men. This accounts for Grace’s description of herself at her own trial: “I was there in the box of the dock but I might as well have been made of cloth, and stuffed, with a china head; and I was shut up inside that doll of myself, and my true voice could not get out.”

Even Dr. Jordan does not correctly interpret Grace’s story, though she is narrating it in full directly to him. Grace expresses her misgivings, saying, “I never see what he writes down; and sometimes I imagine that whatever he is writing down, it cannot possibly be anything that has come out of my mouth, as he does not understand much of what I say, although I try to put things as clearly as I can.” This suggests that the only chance women have at articulating their own stories—without their language being appropriated or distorted—is if they are able to physically write down their own stories. Even if the person transcribing a woman’s story has good intentions, there is, Atwood suggests, an inevitable loss in the transcription process. Grace gestures at this when she says, “The way I understand things, the Bible may have been thought out by God, but it was written down by men. And like everything men write down, such as the newspapers, they got the main story right but some of the details wrong.” As women are already socially disempowered and their words are more easily discounted than men’s, women are more vulnerable to such distortions.

Atwood also shows that the act of telling a story is vital, not just because of a story’s ability to communicate a person’s experience to others, but also because storytelling is fundamental to understanding and processing one’s own experience. Grace points this out when she says, “When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness […] It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.” Atwood thus suggests that when women are barred from telling their stories—either out loud, or, even more importantly, in writing—their very ability to make sense of their lives and experiences is at stake.