The Awakening Of Silence

"Alias Grace" was one of the representative works of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was a historical novel about Canada in nineteenth Century. The heroine Grace reviewed her life by talking to a doctor whose name was Simon. However, the lost memory of Grace’s murder was still a secret. All kinds of people in this works dug the secret of Grace. But their concerns were not the secret itself. They benefited themselves by acquiring Grace’s secret. Eventually whether Grace was a really murderer or not remained to be a secret. Obviously the truth was not the purpose of the works. The more important meaning which the works wanted to express was the process of exploring the truth.The study mainly based on textual research and it mainly divided into three chapters.The first chapter of the study analyzed the conditions of Grace’s three major spaces in which she survived. The three major spaces included the prisoner on the sea, the prisoner on land and the "mad woman" in prison. Every time Grace was full of hope about life. But finally she lost hope of life. Grace’s living space narrowed gradually.The good wishes and the hope of life were no longer existent. Facing the strong disciplinary strength, Grace could only choose to put her hope into her inner space. The inner space was actually her hidden secret, which was the part of the discipline she didn’t want to keep. So she became a disobedient person in the obedient society. This was the secret of why Grace was apparent obedient.In the second chapter, the secrets of the female murderer attracted all kinds of people. They started many analyses of Grace, such as the truth of murder, whether Grace was really crazy and lost memories of murder or in order to survive by pretending crazy. In order to find the truth, they analyzed even from the three things of Western civilization:legal, religious and moral. These people obviously didn’t want to discover the truth of the matter. They really thought for their self-interests. So the story of the murder had no truth. The lost memory was not the memory itself, but it was the way different people exploring their memories through different wishes and purposes.The last part of the study analyzed the important image of "Alias Grace" and explored the secrets in the heart of Grace. The secrets included the broken dishes (teapot), the scattered petals, the patchwork quilts and the tree of heaven. The broken plate (teapot) was the way that Grace fled from the young poor life and the traditional marriage life. By that analysis the study explored rich content from the lost secrets. The scattered petals refereed to the sufferings of Grace, Mari and Nancy when they were young. The patchwork quilts were the media by which women achieved their happinesses in marriages. Also the patchwork quilts implied that female marriage needed to be publicly recognized and could not be crossed. The drawing of "the tree of heaven" refereed to the awakening of the female group consciousness.