Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews March 31, 2023 March 24, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Margaret Atwood is one of Canada’s most decorated and beloved authors. Despite having published several books of poetry and critical essays, Atwood remains best known for her many novels, two of which have received one of fiction's most prestigious honors: the Booker Prize. Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and she spent much of her childhood in the heavily forested areas of northern Quebec. An insatiable reader from childhood, Atwood felt inclined to a writing career from an early age. She pursued literary studies at the University of Toronto, where she received a bachelor’s degree in 1961, and then later at Harvard University, where she completed a master’s degree in 1962. Although Atwood began work on a doctoral degree, her dissertation, which she never finished, took a backseat to her burgeoning career as a writer. She published her first book of poetry, Double Persephone, in 1961, and her first novel, The Edible Woman, eight years later. Atwood has since published a number of significant novels, including The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Cat’s Eye (1988), Alias Grace (1996), The Blind Assassin (2000), The Testaments (2019), and a trio of dystopian novels known collectively as the MaddAddam Trilogy (2003–2013).
Throughout her long and prolific career, Atwood has depicted a diverse range of female characters, often portraying their struggles to survive the harsh and constricting conditions of a patriarchal society. In The Edible Woman, for instance, Atwood’s protagonist Marian comes to suspect that men have little real respect for her and would simply prefer to “consume” her before moving on to the next woman. Atwood takes her critique of patriarchal attitudes further in The Handmaid’s Tale. In that novel, Atwood explores the possibility of a near-future dystopia in which a totalitarian state replaces the United States government and institutes a repressive regime that strips women of all their rights. Many of Atwood’s subsequent novels continue to explore the lives of a variety of women. For example, Cat’s Eye concerns a mid-twentieth-century painter named Elaine and her difficult relationships with other women. The Blind Assassin weaves a mystery out of the lives of two sisters. The Penelopiad (2005) offers a feminist revision of Greek mythology told from the perspective of Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, who looks back on her life from the land of the dead.
Atwood’s 1996 novel Alias Grace echoes her other work with its focus on the life and point of view of a fascinating woman. However, this novel is markedly different from the others in that it is a fictionalized account of a true story. Atwood based the novel on the real-life sensational murders of a wealthy landowner named Thomas Kinnear and his pregnant housekeeper and mistress Nancy Montgomery, which took place in a village near Toronto in 1843. Two of Kinnear’s servants, James McDermott and Grace Marks, were convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. McDermott was executed, but a judge commuted Marks’s sentence to life in prison, where she remained for thirty years until she received a pardon. The case drew a lot of public attention at the time, and the fact that Marks was a woman had a polarizing effect. Whereas some demonized Marks as an evil temptress, others presumed her to be an innocent victim who must have been coerced. In an interview for CBC News, Atwood noticed a similarly polarized perception of another Canadian female killer, Karla Homolka, who stood trial for multiple murders at the same time Atwood was writing Alias Grace.
Atwood first learned about Grace Marks in the 1960s. As a student at Harvard she came across a work titled Life in the Clearings (1853), written by the English-born Canadian author Susanna Moodie. Moodie’s book appeared a decade after the Kinnear–Montgomery murders, and it included a third-hand account of the events. Moodie claimed that Marks instigated the murders, motivated by her infatuation with Kinnear and her jealousy of Nancy. Marks allegedly manipulated McDermott into helping her by promising him sex. As Atwood reflects in her afterword to Alias Grace, Moodie’s account of the murders is suspiciously sensational and clearly influenced by melodramatic literary conventions. Although Atwood claims not to have changed any known facts about Marks’s life and the Kinnear–Montgomery murders in her retelling, Alias Grace is undoubtedly a work of fiction. In addition to providing fictionalized accounts of the historical characters and events involved, Atwood also introduces a cast of completely fictional characters, most notably Dr. Simon Jordan and Mary Whitney. Even so, the ambiguities of Atwood’s novel reflect the ambiguities of the history that the novel recounts. As Atwood herself concludes: “The true character of the historical Grace Marks remains an enigma.”
Please wait while we process your payment