alias grace meta: dr jordan & grace’s dynamic
I McFreaking love what they did with the dynamic between these two characters because it’s subversive on so many levels.
on the one hand we get a traditional historical fiction “romance” set-up–both attractive, young, single, conducting intimate and long conversations in a sitting room with equal parts civility and a simmering something underneath.
but then you have layers of power dynamics along different dichotomies: man/woman, doctor/patient, prisoner/free man, object/subject. Not to mention class. Doctor Jordan is a member of the bourgeoisie, well-educated, and has been afforded every privilege in life. Meanwhile, Grace is a working-class immigrant who grew up in poverty. (On a side note, I greatly enjoyed Grace’s sly aside regarding Jordan’s inquiry into throwing away people’s shit in the privy.)
The power dynamics are fragile, though. And I would argue, they flip, or are in flux.
The thing is, where Dr. Jordan finds Grace fascinating, Grace finds Dr. Jordan relatively transparent. She manipulates him easily because of this. He wants “forbidden knowledge” of her–both in a spiritual, mental, and physical sense. Grace is a great mystery to him. But he’s just a another man to her. Sure, he’s a doctor and has theories and ideas. But he also wants to fuck her, just like so many other men she’s encountered in life. Grace knows this. She speaks to this fact during her hypnosis session through the dark veil (”through a mirror, darkly.”) Grace reveals him, humiliates him, and shows the extent to which she has him figured out. She says it later too, in her letter to him eleven years on, how his morbid fascination and sexual desire tangled together, just like with her husband Jamie, just like with the “doctors” who raped her in the asylum.
On another note, throughout the show we see Dr. Jordan slowly slipping, losing control. Grace, on the other hand, stays in control of her narrative. The slippage within it, the multiple identities, one could argue that it, too, is part of her theater and performance of her own story.
As Grace transforms further into metaphor, obscurity, multiplicities–the forbidden fruit, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Dr. Jordan becomes more and more humanized. Adam. Falling from grace. Note the scene where we see Jordan rutting the landlady into the carpet, putting his dick away, and saying “I wish that was someone else.” This scene shows an aspect of the Doctor that Grace observed early-on, namely, that he’s just another angry, horny man who treats women like shit.
(Also, note how Jordan treats other women in the narrative that he’s not attracted to!!)
The subject/object dichotomy is the most in flux between them. Indeed, Grace is his subject and it is her subjectivities that fill his notebooks. She is also an object though–her beauty and her body are coded as highly feminine and beautiful by many of the male characters in the narrative (see: Kinnear’s description of her “Grecian profile” and “blush.”) Jordan is also patronizing toward her in his dreams (him, wrapping his coat around her) and in reality (Grace, fainting, Jordan rushing to her aid.) But Dr. Jordan also functions as her subject. Just as he’s studying her, she’s studying him. She gauges he wants to hear, how he reacts, and adjusts accordingly. She wants to understand the truth he’s seeking from her (perhaps subconsciously) and then delivers it to him.
How does Dr. Jordan function for Grace then? I would argue he becomes someone for her to pass the time–an amusement. Someone she can craft stories for. Indeed, Grace is the Scheherazade of this story, and Dr. Jordan is the bewitched and enthralled Sasanian king. And Grace herself is an allegory for storytelling and narratives, holding multiple identities and truths within her, needing to be told and witnessed/heard. (This is stated at some point in the show–her need and desire to be witnessed and heard.) This is one way I would concede Dr. Jordan differs from other men in her life. He wants to hear her story, and not from papers or other people, but from her own mouth. (Unfortunately he doesn’t realize he’s getting played to some extent.)
And the power dynamics do flip in the end. Dr. Jordan becomes a literal prisoner to his own mind and body, first after his depressive spiral after parting with Grace and then from his subsequent injury in the war. Grace, on the other hand, gains her freedom.
I might write more on this just because I have SO MANY THOUGHTS but do you guys agree? disagree? have things to add?
Also: I’m very curious about the moment when Grace offers to show Jordan the scar on her chest from when she fainted while in court. Was she testing him? Was she offering something to him?

























