previously clarafarleybarrow

  “And most of all, she loved the way books could transport her from her otherwise mundane and stifling life and offer the experiences of a hundred other lives.”  

[petergrantkavinsky]

i’m so late, just as i’m always late for good things, but i devoured all six episodes of alias grace on netflix in less than a day (a record for me!!!) two weeks ago, and IT WAS PHENOMENAL. (brief background: alias grace is based on the novel of the same title by margaret atwood, which is based on a true story about grace marks, a celebrated murderess in 19th century canada.) i love that we have a very flawed and very complex main character in the form of grace marks. for one, she’s an unreliable narrator who remains an enigma until the very last scene. (THAT final frame gave me chills.) we’ll never truly and completely know the answer as to whether grace is indeed guilty of murder or not, and i believe the mystery of it all is largely what makes the story beautiful. did she or did she not? i love that we’ll never get answers, and we’re free to decide which conclusion we’d take given all the theories, which are all plausible enough. i also love how the show addresses insanity as one of the theories points to the possibility of grace having dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder), which is also realistic enough with all the physical, emotional, and psychological trauma she faced as a child, and her insanity may have driven her to murder. however, personally, i’m more inclined to believe in the theory that grace did commit murder, with or without a mental illness, and she’s just a great storyteller who has dr. simon jordan (her psychiatrist to whom she’s narrating the whole story) in the palm of her hand, and an excellent liar who omits truths that are unfavorable to her and fabricates parts that are helpful to her case. after all, at one point she did say, “i may have changed some of the details of my stories to suit what i thought you wanted to hear.” it’s been days since i finished watching the miniseries, yet i find myself still thinking about it. i’m planning to read the novel too soon. my curiosity about the real grace marks has been piqued that i have begun reading about her, but there’s not much historic accounts can tell that i don’t already know from the show.

oh, and by the way, sarah gadon was insanely good as grace marks. she deserved an emmy for her performance. the rest of the actors were equally fantastic. overall, alias grace is amazing, which isn’t surprising since this one’s a collaborative work of women. my words don’t do this show justice.    

alias grace and anne with an e are my top 2 favorite netflix shows, and coincidentally, both are originally from CBC. i, therefore, conclude canadian tv is sooooo good. i highly recommend both shows to anyone who’s a lover of the historical genre like myself or just to anyone who finds themselves in a netflix slump. 

[petergrantkavinsky]

omg hi! you're back! i just got the news about the rq adaptation and i'm currently in an omgthisisactuallyhappening state and a pleasedomybabiesjustice state

hi, margo! i hope you are well and safe. i'm so sorry (and embarrassed) that my response is ridiculously late. i just checked my inbox today and saw your ask. med school (online classes, in particular, due to the pandemic) has been outrageously taxing i'm not sure when i will be active again.

about the red queen adaptation, to be honest, i'm not very excited about it, at least not at the moment. 2016 me would have been highly enthusiastic about it, but at present, i'm just... indifferent to it? i guess it's because the book was such a special part of my life at one point that i'm afraid the adaptation won't be able to do the book justice. i'm afraid they will whitewash mare and evangeline, or the actors as mare and cal won't have the chemistry they have in the book, or a very beautiful/popular actor will play maven and fans, especially new fans, will overlook the things he's done and still ship him and mare no matter how toxic it is just because he's "hot" (as what we've seen happen too many times), or no actor will ever be good enough to play diana farley (gosh, i miss her so much). and i'm too tired to defend our man, cal, against new fans who may perceive him as "boring" just because he's not creepy, manipulative, and killing people left and right. i'm just old now, i guess. lol. of course, i know i'm getting ahead of myself since all we know now is an adaptation is really happening, nothing more. but yeah, those are some of the things i'm worried about.

i know majority of the time, if not all the time, the book is better than the movie/series adaption, but i'm still hoping this one will get things right and hopefully be able to remind us why we fell in love with the world of red queen all those years ago. :)

[beckysgomez]

ALIAS GRACE ( 2017 )

[perioddramasource]

Sarah Gadon as Grace Marks in ALIAS GRACE.

[christophernolan]

It is knowledge of me you crave, Doctor. Forbidden knowledge. Knowledge with a lurid glare to it. Knowledge gained through a descent into the pit. You want to go where I can never go. See what I can never see inside me. You want to open up my body and peer inside. In your hand, you want to hold my beating female heart.

ALIAS GRACE 2017 | Dir: Mary Harron

[brittany]

Alias Grace  |  1x02

[ceremonial]

Alias Grace (2017)

[ceremonial]

Alias Grace  |  1x05

[chlosevignys]

Edward Holcroft as Dr Simon Jordan in Alias Grace (2017) 

[actuallynormal]

You want to go where I can never go, see what I can never see inside me. You want to open up my body and peer inside. In your hand, you want to hold my beating female heart.

-Alias Grace (2017)

[mikaeled]

Sarah Gadon on the set of NOW’s Alias Grace cover shoot

[willwriteforruns]

[fuckscooter]

He likes to picture the sufferings I have endured. He listens to all of it like a child listening to a fairy tale. I must confess that it reminds me of you, Dr. Jordan. You were as eager as Mr. Walsh to hear about my sufferings in life. Your cheeks would flush, and if you’d had ears like a dog, they would have been pricked forward with your eyes shining and your tongue hanging out, as if you’d found a grouse in a bush. And as with Mr. Walsh, I may have changed some of the details of my stories to suit what I thought you wanted to hear.

Alias Grace (2017)

[theroughfacegirl]

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? 

[cannibalshow-blog]

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

There’s something depressing to the spirits about a birthday, especially when alone. I had no idea in my mind of where I should go and it struck me at once how very solitary I was. I had no friends and if you looked at things in the cold light of day, I was indeed alone in the world. I reflected that the very bird were strangers to me, for I did not even know their names. And for some reason, that seemed to me the saddest of all. 

[thewowsignal2026]

Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word. Musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself. Murderess. Murderess. It rustles like a taffeta skirt across the floor.