Strange Scrapbooking

When I think of 19^th century Canada, I don’t exactly conjure images of exciting arts and crafts.  However, the Governor’s wife’s scrapbook was one of the symbols that I saw in “Alias Grace”.  Rather than pressed flowers or family photographs, “what it has instead is all the famous criminals in it, the ones that have been hanged…”  This twisted book of mementos represents the way society views the actions of criminals and dehumanizes them.  Grace is also a criminal and pieces of her trial were published in newspapers for the community to interpret and piece together.  The media presented a version of Grace that she had no control over, one that made her out to me a murderess.  Although the readers of the novel know that the accusations of her being an “inhuman female demon” or “little better than an idiot” are untrue, the readers of the newspaper article during that time are left to make up their own opinions.  Atwood leaves the readers of “Alias Grace” to make up their own minds about Grace’s innocence or guilt, complied in a novel rather than a scrapbook.