Muddying the Waters:
The Indeterminable Culpability of Karla Homolka and Grace Marks
Between 1990 and 1992, Karla Homolka assisted her lover, then husband, Paul Bernardo, in raping and murdering at least three young women, the first of which was Karla’s own young sister, Tammy, aged fifteen. Videotapes taken of these incidents also revealed a fourth attack on another minor, known to the public only as Jane Doe, who survived. In 1993, in exchange for her testimony against Bernardo, Homolka received two concurrent twelve year sentences for her part in the crimes. Bernardo, on the other hand, was found guilty in 1995 of all the charges laid against him, including two counts of first-degree murder (McGillivray 257). While Homolka was released from prison on July 4th, 2005, Bernardo will almost certainly never see the outside world again. Both Homolka and Bernardo remain two of the most notorious killers in Canadian history.
In 1996, only three years after Homolka’s conviction, world-famous Canadian author Margaret Atwood released her newest novel, Alias Grace. The book details the story of Grace Marks, a real-life Canadian maid, who was convicted in 1843 of murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear. Once the death sentence was returned it was deemed unnecessary to proceed with the trial charging Marks with the murder of Nancy Montgomery, Kinnear’s housekeeper, whom Marks was also suspected of killing. After thirty years of incarceration, Grace Marks was pardoned and released from prison.
Although conclusions as to whether or not Margaret Atwood intended for there to be echoes of Karla Homolka in Alias Grace are purely guesswork, as Atwood has never, to the best of my knowledge, acknowledged that comparison, the fascinating number of parallels between Homolka and Atwood’s fictional treatment of Grace Marks warrants some speculation. To be clear, this essay will be comparing Homolka to the character of Grace in Alias Grace, not the historical Grace Marks. As Atwood has openly stated, there are numerous “outright gaps…in the records” of Marks’ life, and therefore, much of the novel is invention, rather than historical fact (Atwood 558). Atwood’s Grace Marks and the historical Grace Marks are two distinctly separate individuals.
Guy Vanderhaeghe, in his lecture at the University of New Brunswick, entitled “Apprehending the Past: History Versus the Historical Novel”, argues that history, and more specifically historical fiction such as Alias Grace, is important because it speaks to the present (92-93). By examining history, either in the quantifiable terms of a professional historian or through the lens of the historical novelist, readers are offered reflections of their time. In a similar essay, called “History and Fiction”, Vanderhaeghe states that “the seriously historical novel does not avoid contemporary issues and problems” (430) Rather historical novels “employ the past as a way to point to the present, or draw parallels with it” (430). In light of this, what is Alias Grace saying about Canada in the mid-1990s? Given the temporal proximity of Homolka’s trial and the novel’s publication, and the factual similarities between them, it is easy to draw the conclusion that Atwood, consciously or not, is commenting on the case of Karla Homolka.
In order to dispel whatever skepticism one might hold regarding the similarities between Homolka and the Grace Marks of Alias Grace, I will outline the various parallels: the sexual intrigue surrounding both trials, the media frenzy, the defendants’ narrative strategies, memory gaps, appropriation of texts, and more. Once that connection has been established, I will show how Atwood’s treatment of Grace forces readers to reexamine how they view the guilt and innocence of Karla Homolka. Alias Grace, being a text wrought with competing and contradictory discourses, muddies the waters of the titular character’s culpability in the crimes she is accused of. This pushes readers, who may be initially inclined to cast an absolute guilty or not-guilty judgment upon Grace, to step back and consider the complexities. Likewise, once the parallels between Grace and Homolka are established, it becomes necessary to look at Homolka’s trial with the same degree of skepticism.
The basic facts provide the skeleton of comparison between Grace Marks and Karla Homolka. Female killers are, generally speaking, far less common than male killers; even less common are those murderesses who act with a male partner (Thompson and Ricard 261-2). That fact alone places Marks and Homolka in unique company with one another. Both women, although convicted, received more lenient sentences than their male counterparts; while James McDermott was hung for murdering Thomas Kinnear, Grace Marks’ sentence was reduced to life imprisonment, thanks to the skillful pleading of her attorney (Atwood 454). Similarly, in return for her testimony against Paul Bernardo, Karla Homolka’s sentence was reduced to two concurrent twelve-year terms, allowing her to be released in 2005, while her ex-husband was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Grace Marks, at the end of the novel, is also released from prison. Although Alias Grace was published almost ten years before Homolka’s return to the streets of Canada, her sentence was only twelve years long, so her eventual release was predictable, save the possibility of her death or additional charges being laid. It is not a stretch to assume that Atwood realized Homolka would someday be free.
One of the most interesting characteristics of both cases is the media frenzy each one caused. Although a Canadian publication ban was placed on Bernardo and Homolka’s trials, it did not prevent thousands of Canadians from crossing the border to read reports of the case in American newspapers (“Ban” NY Times). Anne McGillivray notes that media speculation and sensationalism regarding the case ran rampant, although the focus was always on Homolka rather than Bernardo: “Print and website sources imaged demonic duos, vampirism, Barbie and Ken perfect-couple perfect-murderers, sexy ‘Killer Karla’, the comic ‘Karla's Web’ featuring Homolka's psy confessions. The gaze centres, always, on Homolka” (McGillivray 256-7). Kilty and Frigon, in their article “Karla Homolka – From a Woman In Danger to a Dangerous Woman – Chronicling the Shifts”, agree. They say that “[w]hile the image of Paul Bernardo has faded from the limelight, the media has consistently maintained its gaze on Homolka” (39). The focus on Karla clearly stemmed from a bizarre form of sexual appeal; if not appeal, at least sexual intrigue. Not only were the crimes inherently sexually sadistic in nature, but Homalka was notably attractive. For example, in a chance meeting with her, Charlie Gillis says that Edmonton police detective Wil Tonowski “was struck by [Homolka]’s appearance: slender and well turned out, she might have been an advertisement for the success of the country's prison system” (Gillis 34). Similarly, Newsweek, in an article called “The Barbie-Ken Murders”, describes Bernardo and Homolka as “a handsome young middle-class couple”. Even the “Barbie and Ken” moniker implies an unusual attractiveness, not normally associated with serial killers and rapists.
Likewise, Grace Marks is repeatedly described as a good-looking young woman. Dr. Simon Jordan, in observing a portrait of her, states that she “could easily pass for the heroine of a sentimental novel” (Atwood 65). Her youth and good looks undoubtedly attracted media attention. In her review of the novel in The New York Times, Francine Prose states that “our vengeful passions or pious sympathies are never so aroused as when the depraved criminal or unjustly slandered innocent happens to be touchingly young and attractive” (“Death and the Maid”). In his book, Speculative Fictions, Herb Wyile says that “Grace Marks, as Alias Grace makes clear, was a cause célèbre, an object of fascination, titillation, and moral condemnation (or defence) for proto-criminologists, humanitarians, religious zealots, and other, less specialized members of the curious public” (Wyile 73-74). Wyile’s explanation for the infamy that Grace garnered does not solely rest on her feminine attractiveness, but also on her mysterious nature, “the uncertainty about her participation in the crime and the consequent swirl of speculation” (73). In the same way, Kilty and Frigon mention that Karla Homolka “is often constructed as an enigma”, creating a comparable air of mystery around her (39).
While these factors provide similar structures for a comparison of Karla Homolka and Grace Marks, the colour and texture of their similarities comes from their respective defensive strategies. For Homolka, this is exemplified during her testimonies to the police and at her own trial, and even more so, during her testimony at Paul Bernardo’s trial. On the other hand, the bulk of Grace Marks’ defense is not presented during her courtroom trial, but in her narrative to Dr. Simon Jordan and the reader. As Marie-Thèrése Blanc says in her article “Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace and the Construction of a Trial Narrative”, the novel, and in particular, Grace’s autobiographical first-person portions, “provides a trial-like narrative atmosphere” (103). Since the actual courtroom drama has long since passed by the time the novel takes place, Blanc likens Jordan and the reader to appellate judges, for “[a]ppelate judges re-examine past trial transcripts and also consider new arguments related to these trials…This appellate process of revision is close to that which takes place within the careful readers of Atwood’s novel” (108). A comparison of Grace’s defense to Jordan and the reader with Karla’s courtroom defense will reveal some fascinating congruencies.
According to Blanc, one of Grace Marks’ primary defense strategies is revealed in her appropriation of heroic discourse, specifically that of the romantic heroine. Blanc identifies the various phases of “Northrop Frye’s study of myth-seeped romance” in Grace’s narrative (118). Frye states that the first phase involves the infant hero cast to the sea. While Grace was no longer an infant when she made her perilous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, she was still pre-pubescent and very vulnerable. Since her mother dies during the crossing, Grace arrives in Canada as “a practice orphan. Her alcoholic and abusive father is unable to protect or nuture her, and it is she who looks after him for a while” (Blanc 118). In the midst of a consistently fatalistic and depressing narrative, the second phase of Grace’s life is relatively happy until the death of Mary Whitney. This correlates with Frye’s notion that “the second phase of the romantic hero’s development is that of youthful innocence” (118). After Mary Whitney’s death due to a messy abortion, however, Grace begins her journey toward the third phase: the quest. The quest is marked by a transition from simplicity to difficulty. It is full of conflict and typically results in the death of both the hero and the monster. There is, of course, an abundance of conflict once Grace is employed at the Kinnear residence. It seems each of the four characters present are constantly in conflict with each other, bordering on the melodramatic at times. Grace’s quest is intensified after the murders of Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear, as she is forced to escape with McDermott. This results in their capture by the authorities. Blanc asserts that while the other three characters all meet a physically violent end, it is “Grace’s dream of a better life” which is killed, thus fulfilling her role as the romantic heroine (118). This is not the only narrative Grace appropriates, for as Blanc indicates, she is also acquainted “with the pitiful madwomen of nineteenth-century texts, and with the darkness into which both Biblical and lay heroes are plunged before they are saved, reborn, or redeemed” (118). The purpose of aligning herself with such character types is clearly to garner sympathy from her appellate judges. Her tactic works on Dr. Jordan. Wyile notes that “[t]he scientific detachment on which Simon first prides himself erodes” as Grace’s narrative develops (81). Her sympathetic self-construction sucks him in. During her recounting of the day of the murders, the doctor “feels a tender pity for her. He has an impulse to take her in his arms, to soothe her, to stroke her hair” (Atwood 383). Blanc uses the word “pitiful” to describe the Victorian madwomen with which Grace associates herself; I believe this is a highly appropriate adjective, as the abuse and sexual exploitation which permeates Grace’s autobiography, and which helps connect her to these literary archetypes, assuredly elicits pity.
Karla Homolka also utilizes a “pitiful” narrative, although not one so steeped in literary tradition. McGillivray notes a transition in Homolka’s self-construction during the trial, beginning with one “of normality—pretty teen, party girl, beautiful bride, dutiful daughter, supportive wife—and then of the controlled and battered woman with symptoms culled from the Lenore Walker classic on her gaol cell bookshelf” (McGillivray 257). The Battered Woman Syndrome, which is detailed in Walker’s book and presumably studied by Homolka, “was first successfully raised in the courts in Canada during the fall of 1990” (Kilty and Frigon 43). This syndrome, as the name suggests, occurs when a woman commits a violent crime due to the abuse she has suffered. According to McGillivray, a defense based on the Battered Woman Syndrome “requires a controller whose identity can absorb the excess blame” (258). In other words, the culpability of the crime needs to be transferred from the female defendant to her abuser; in this case, that person was Paul Bernardo. The history of abuse in Homolka and Bernardo’s relationship was long and sordid. Kilty and Frigon note that “Bernardo began to physically, emotionally, and sexually abuse Homolka” within six months of their relationship’s initiation (38). In 1993, not long before Homolka went to the police, Bernardo beat her quite badly with a flashlight, as documented by medical reports and photographs taken at the St. Catherine’s General Hospital: several large bruises covered her face, neck, arms, and legs; she had a stab wound from a screwdriver; and her eyes were heavily bruised, giving her the appearance of a “raccoon” (Kilty and Frigon 46). Both Karla’s mother and sister testified in court to the abuse she suffered at the hands of Bernardo, which culminated in the aforementioned beating and effectively ending their relationship (Jenish “Two Faces” 51). Kilty and Frigon quote Mr. Justice Galligan, who “recognized the abuse that Karla endured as real and influential upon her criminality” (49). Galligan sums up the abuse she suffered by saying:
Karla was subjected to repeated sadistic sexual attacks. She was humiliated, beaten, tied up, and raped over a period of years. She was manipulated into being a participant in what eventuated in the death of a much-loved sister. She was advised on her wedding night that her new husband was a rapist. She was told that if she ever tried to leave her husband he would track her down and kill her. Or else, he would kill her remaining sister and her parents. She was living with a sexual sadist and she was convinced that from this bewildering fate there was no escape. (Kilty and Frigon 49)
Homolka used this evidence to explain her participation in the abduction, rape, torture, and murder of fourteen year-old Leslie Mahaffy and fifteen year-old Kristen French. McGillivray states that Homolka’s “thousands of hours of confessions and the professional discourses flowing from them shaped her remaking from accused sex killer to a battered woman seduced into perversion, beaten into murder” (256). Essentially, Homolka claimed that her participation in the crimes stemmed directly from her fear of Bernardo. Assisting him in the crimes was “a battery prevention technique, whereby keeping her abuser happy was an attempt to ward of an attack” (Kilty and Frigon 44). If she did not cooperate, she risked receiving a physical beating. Beyond that, “fear of what Bernardo would do to her family if she did not cooperate” motivated her actions (52).
If this line of defense sounds familiar to readers of Alias Grace, that is because Grace Marks presents a nearly identical one to Dr. Jordan. While relating the events surrounding the murders of Nancy and Kinnear, she recounts how she was fearful of James McDermott, her alleged accomplice. In fact, she claims she was even too afraid to criticize his excessive cursing, as she had before, never mind his violence (Atwood 381-2). After the murders have taken place and Grace is in bed, she recalls being in a “cold sweat” because McDermott was in her room, presumably “to strangle [Grace in her] sleep, having killed the others” (396). Fortunately or not, his intention is not murder but sex; Grace manages to elude his advances, even though he threatens her with violence (396-7). It is obvious that she is trying to set up a defense not unlike that of Karla Homolka. Herb Wyile recognizes this, observing that “[i]n Grace’s narrative in Alias Grace…she is at most an unwilling accomplice, coerced to go along with McDermott’s plan to murder Nancy and Kinnear to avoid being killed herself” (81). It is important to note that Wiyle specifically states that this is part of Grace’s narrative, and not necessarily fact.
One of the most interesting parallels between the defense of Grace Marks and that of Karla Homolka is the use of memory gaps. Both women use selective amnesia to reduce their perceived culpability. Grace weaves instances of memory loss in throughout her narrative, although their truthfulness is never fully verified. After Mary Whitney dies, she faints and remains unconscious for ten hours, then appears to be suffering from some sort of hysterical delusion before falling asleep once more. Grace claims that she “had no memory of anything [she] said or did during the time [she] was awake, between the two long sleeps” (Atwood 209). Likewise, after McDermott had committed the murders of Nancy and Kinnear, according to Grace’s narrative, she faints and there is another large gap in her memory before she wakes again. This time, she is not reported to be hysterical during the gap, but calm, cooking dinner and acting in “good spirits” (383). This is a convenient bout of amnesia, as Jamie Walsh testified in court to visiting the Kinnear house at that time and seeing the lightheartedness of Grace. This is particularly damning, considering there were two recently deceased bodies not too far away. If she has no memory of the events, however, then perhaps Grace’s appellate judges will not hold her accountable for carefree demeanor during that period of time.
Karla Homolka also claimed to be afflicted with an amnesiac gap, although she regained her memory later on. In addition to the murders of Leslie Mahaffy, Kristen French, and Karla’s younger sister, Tammy Homolka, there was also an attack on an unidentified woman who survived, known to the public only as Jane Doe. Even though Karla confessed and testified to her involvement in the three murders, she entirely neglected to mention the Jane Doe attack until after she was sentenced. This is highly significant because it meant that Homolka was no longer the only living witness to the crimes. If Jane Doe could be found and made to testify, Homolka’s bargain with the Crown would become very weak, as they could use Jane Doe’s testimony is place of hers. Also, it is very possibly that Jane Doe’s testimony could be very damaging to Homolka’s defense. Fortunately for her, since the bargain was already made and Homolka was already sentenced by the time the attack on Jane Doe was revealed, she was safe from Doe’s testimony. However, McGillivray notes that if it could “be proved that Homolka willfully withheld knowledge of the Doe assaults”, the Crown could nullify the plea bargain agreement, making her vulnerable to additional sentencing (265). Homolka maintained that her memories of the attacks “surfaced in a post-sentence dream. She recalled administering drugs, Doe's breath stopping, calling 911, canceling the ambulance, sitting up with her all night, Bernardo sodomising her, the videotaping” (265). Fortunately for Homolka, her story of amnesia could not be proven false, and so the Crown was bound to its agreement with her.
It ought to be clear by now that Atwood’s Grace Marks reflects a great deal of Karla Homolka. Their high degree of similarity is undeniable, and there are more parallels I have yet to highlight. So then what is Atwood saying? I think it ultimately boils down to an issue of innocence and guilt. Or, as the case may be, the lack thereof.
Margaret Atwood’s novel is wrought with competing and contradictory discourses. Magali Cornier Michael says that “Alias Grace presents an intricate patchwork of texts as an ‘other’ means of representing historical events and persons that rejects the mono-vision of traditional histories and highlights the processes of framing and arranging pieces in particular juxtapositions” (421). In other words, Atwood utilizes a variety of discourses and texts to examine a particular history, that of Grace Marks.
Within the text, there is a barrage of discourses that the reader must face. For example, there is the consensus of the public, which demonized Grace Marks. MacKenzie, Grace’s attorney, who admits that he believes she is “guilty as sin”, states that if she had been tried for the murder of Nancy, that he “couldn’t have got her off. Public opinion would have been too strong…She would have been hanged” (Atwood 454). In opposition to the public discourse, there is the religious discourse of Reverend Verringer, who believes that Grace is fully rehabilitated, if not innocent in the first place. This discourse is prevalent throughout the novel and is a part of the debate regarding the nature of Grace’s hypnosis session. The reverend argues that she is possessed by the spirit of Mary Whitney (Atwood 485). The scientific discourse opposes Verringer, as Jordan grapples for a medical explanation, concluding that it must be something similar to what is now called multiple personalities (Atwood 486). Stephanie Lovelady points out that a third discourse in the debate also exists, primarily in the mind of the reader. The third possibility is that Grace is faking the whole thing, which would imply that she is lying about her involvement in the murders as well. With regards to this final possibility, Lovelady says that “[t]his option is open but improbable since even in her own interior monologue she never admits to the murders or even hints that she has any memory of them” (57). While Lovelady’s analysis is technically true, she neglects to mention that while most of Grace’s biography is told from a first-person point of view, her narration of the murders is told in the third-person. Hence, the reader is not privy to her interior monologue during the crucial scene. This brings us, of course, to Grace’s discourse. However, there does not appear to be a singular discourse assigned to her. Near the beginning of the novel, Dr. Jordan observes that “Grace appears to have told one story at the inquest, another one at the trial, and, after her death sentence had been commuted, yet a third. In all three, however, she denied ever having laid a finger on Nancy Montgomery” (Atwood 88). These discourses, mostly distinct from her autobiographical discourse given to Dr. Jordan and the reader, are also in conflict with the discourse of Susanna Moodie, who wrote about Grace Marks. Moodie’s narrative asserts that Grace did commit Nancy’s murder, which is congruent with the final testament of James McDermott (Atwood 88-89). So not only do Grace’s discourses compete with those of McDermott, Susanna Moodie, and others, they also compete with one another.
There are also metafictional discourses, primarily displayed in the tension between the narrator, being Grace, and the implied author. It seems as though the implied author is attempting to undermine the very carefully constructed narrative that Grace has presented to her appellate judges. Tom LeClair argues that the implied author works at subverting the reliability of Grace’s narrative, suggesting that the incorporations of Mary Whitney and Jeremiah the peddler into her story deconstruct the “outer, happier fiction” by casting doubt upon its believability (26). Notably, both Mary Whitney and Jeremiah the peddler can only be verified to exist through Grace’s testimony. Grace, however, strikes back from time to time. For example, while musing about all the things other people claimed she had spoken, she says, “there are always those that will supply you with speeches of their own, and put them right into your mouth for you too; and that sort are like the magicians who can throw their voice, at fairs and shows, and you are just their wooden doll” (Atwood 351). This idea is echoed later when MacKenzie is talking to Dr. Jordan about Susanna Moodie, who wrote her aforementioned “non-fiction” account of the murders. The attorney tells Simon that Moodie “put some fine speeches into the mouths of her subjects, which it is highly unlikely they ever made” (451). In a way, Susanna Moodie represents the implied author within the novel; she is a distant, authorial voice, fictionalizing the history of Grace Marks, and putting words in the mouths of others. The fact remains, however, that the very words Grace utters criticizing the implied author, come from the author. Thus, the line between the discourse of the narrator and the discourse of the implied author is extremely blurry. Barbara Hill Rigney agrees, noting “Atwood’s refusal to distinguish, let alone choose, between author and narrator” (Rigney 160). Blanc, in analyzing Rigney’s paper, asks, “[H]ow does the reader reconcile the notion that Grace acts as the novel’s willful central narrator and that of an implied author who clearly lays out the novel’s additional material for her readers behind the scenes?” (110). While this is a legitimate question, I am not convinced there is need for absolute reconciliation, as I will soon show.
In addition to the metafictional discourses, there is the battle is the historical discourse and the fictional discourse. The tension between these two discourses is most aptly exemplified in the epigraphs which precede each of the novel’s fifteen sections. Each epigraph displays a small version of a quilting pattern, and then one or more excerpts from historical documents juxtaposed with selections of poetry. The tension created by placing these types of texts next to one another echoes the tensions present within the rest of the novel. More specifically, each epigraph explicitly highlights the tensions at work within the subsequent section. For example, the epigraph preceding the section entitled “Pandora’s Box” contains a letter written by Susanna Moodie, a poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson, and a poem by Emily Dickinson. The letter details Moodie’s encounters with something similar to a Ouija board, in which she experiences a form of spiritual possession (471). In the excerpt from Lord Tennyson’s Maud the narrator laments the impossibility of speaking to the souls of people in the afterlife (471), while Dickinson’s poem exhibits a fracturing in the narrator’s mind (472). The subsequent chapter contains the scene of Grace’s hypnosis, when she speaks with the alleged voice of Mary Whitney’s spirit, which is then followed by the aforementioned debate between the religious, scientific, and skeptical discourses. Appropriately, each of the epigraph’s excerpts parallels one of these discourses. However, not only do they echo the tension within the fictional discourse, they also highlight the tension between it and the historical discourse. By juxtaposing alleged non-fiction documents, such as Susanna Moodie’s letter, against poetry, the tone is set. Atwood briefly and subtly addresses this tension in the afterword to Alias Grace. She says:
I have of course fictionalized historical events (as did many commentators on this case who claimed to be writing history). I have not changed any known facts, although the written accounts are so contradictory that few facts emerge as unequivocally “known.”…When I doubt, I have tried to choose the most likely possibility, while accommodating all possibilities wherever feasible. Where mere hints and outright gaps exist in the records, I have felt free to invent. (Atwood 557-8)
Therefore, it is unclear what elements are hard facts, which are speculative guesswork, and which are completely fictional.
Thus, Atwood complicates the matter of objective truth. In the context of Grace’s culpability, this means that an absolute judgment ought not to be reached, regardless of the inclination readers may have to cast a guilty or not-guilty verdict. In referring to critics who act upon that inclination, Blanc says that despite the novel’s “skeptical stance toward truth, the matter of whether the character of Grace Marks is guilty or innocent, a temptress or a victim, a liar or paragon of integrity is one which these critics are unwilling to abandon” (102). She goes on to argue that the novel is “not primarily concerned with Grace’s culpability” (123). Instead, it works at banishing the concept of black-and-white judgment, forcing readers to approach Grace’s guilt with an understanding of the complexities surrounding the story.
It does not take much to apply this lesson to the case of Karla Homolka. Not unlike Alias Grace, Homolka’s case is flooded with an array of discourses. Two of the most prominent are the demonization discourse and the victimization discourse. Just as with Grace, the public consensus demonized Homolka, who “in the popular view, should have taken her seat beside [Paul Bernardo] in the prisoner’s box and seat of ultimate evil” (McGillivray 257). The New York Times said that “Homolka became the symbol of evil in Canada in 1993, when she was convicted of manslaughter and given 12 years for her role in the rapes and murders of Ontario teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy” (“Notorious”). Bernardo’s defense lawyer, John Rosen, worked hard to damage Homolka’s credibility during her cross-examination at Bernardo’s trial. This excerpt from the cross-examination shows how he attempted to minimize the victimization discourse, based on the Battered Woman Syndrome, which Homolka had constructed:
Rosen: Yeah. You had professionals to deal with, you had parents to rely on, you had all your support system that was with you in St. Catharines, right?
Homolka: Yes.
Rosen: Okay. And the person who you say was being abusive and pushing you around was the one who lived in Toronto, an hour and a half away, right?
Homolka: Yes.
Rosen: He’s the one who had no connection to St. Catharines, did he?
Homolka: Yes.
Rosen: He’s the stranger in that group? It isn’t like he lifted you out of your support system and isolated you in a strange city, among strange people, and no support system? He didn’t do that, did he?
Homolka: You don’t have to be physically isolated to feel emotionally isolated. (Kilty and Frigon 48)
While Homolka’s final response is strong, it was not enough to sway public opinion. Bernardo and Homolka’s homemade videotapes only served to bolster the demonization discourse. A number of tapes were shown to the court during Bernardo’s trial. Some were of the attacks themselves, and some were of consensual sex between Bernardo and Homolka. Jenish observes that in a tape of the latter type, Homolka “seems a willing--even enthusiastic--participant in her future husband's fantasies. She declares that she ‘loved’ it when he had sex with Tammy, dons her dead sister's clothes for Bernardo's amusement--and suggests that they abduct other young virgins for the man she calls ‘the king’” (50).
Kilty and Frigon explain that only two women in the history of the Canadian legal system have ever been declared dangerous offenders, and although “Homolka did not receive this designation, the social, legal, and media constructions of her dangerousness are undisputable” (56). They show that the identity of a woman suffering from Battered Woman Syndrome she had built with the legal system and the public was effectively nullified by the videotapes she and Bernardo made of the assaults (51). Even though the videotapes offered nothing new in terms of evidence, through these graphic and disturbing images of her involvement “Homolka’s construction as a battered woman was transgressed and even erased by her definitive dangerousness” (51). Like Reverend Verringer, however, there are those who aim to prove Homolka’s innocence by promoting the victimization discourse. Of course, unlike Grace, the issue is not whether or not she was involved, as there is videotape evidence that unequivocally proves that she was; rather, the issue is why she did it. What motivated her? Was it some twisted sexual fantasy or desire? Or was it her fear of Bernardo? As shown above, the large majority of people do not grant Homolka any sympathy. Thompson and Ricard, on the other hand, imply that her actions were caused by the pressures of a patriarchal society, intensified by her abuse at the hands of Bernardo. They argue that she “acted in manner reflective of femininity within the patriarchal ideology…she was the lesser partner and it was her duty, as a woman, to please her mate” (Thompson and Ricard 272). Pleasing Bernardo, of course, came at the cost of other young women’s lives. They go on to assert that because Homolka had so deeply internalized the norms of our patriarchal society, she would do anything to maintain her relationship with Bernardo. Not only did this involve pleasing him by assisting in the attacks, but it also caused her to view her sister, Mahaffy, and French as threats to her romance. Thompson and Ricard state that:
Homolka’s social constitution as a subject in a patriarchal society suggests she would be susceptible to the internalization of patriarchal ideas…that a woman is not a defined self without the absolute other- a man. It is this constitution in patriarchy which led to Homolka’s participation in the sexual assault and murder of three teenage girls. (272)
By this assertion, Thompson and Ricard are ultimately shifting the blame completely off Homolka and onto Bernardo, as well as society as a whole. They epitomize the victimization discourse by saying that since she was abused, Homolka cannot be held accountable for her actions. The competition between the victimization discourse and the demonization discourse can be summed up in the reactions of some of the jurors of Bernardo’s trial. One female juror, for example, “wrote to her parents, ‘I personally believe [Homolka] was manipulated, controlled and battered’”, while “[a]nother juror, quoted in press accounts, said he did not believe a word of it” (McGillivray 265-6). It appears as though one extreme believes she is a victim, an opposing extreme who believes she is a demon, and no room for middle ground.
Kilty and Frigon refuse to believe that the issue is that simple. They state that while they acknowledge that Bernardo’s abuse “impacted [Homolka’s] criminality…it does not excuse it” (43). They believe “that women who have committed violent crimes have historically been constructed…as either in danger or dangerous,” but that these concepts need to be examined as “interrelated rather than accepting them as mutually exclusive” (40). To put it in context, the “in danger” construction is the victimization discourse, while the “dangerous” construction equates to the demonization discourse. Essentially, Kilty and Frigon are echoing what Blanc says about critics who are looking for the dichotomy of victim or villain; such people are misguided, searching for an absolute judgment, when the reality is far more nuanced than that.
Both Karla Homolka and Grace Marks are caught in between the victimization discourse and the demonization discourse. Both claim they were victims of their male accomplices and abusers, participating in violent crimes solely out of fear. Karla and Grace both had support groups which unequivocally supported and promoted this discourse of victimization. However, both women also faced a society more willing to align itself with the demonization discourse, landing them both in jail. In Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood complicates the matter of Grace Mark’s culpability by muddying the waters with a wide array of competing and contradictory discourses and narratives. Atwood justifies this by claiming in her afterword that the most responsible way to represent a historical event is to portray all possible discourses (557-8). As a result, these competing discourses in Alias Grace, including those found in the epigraphs and in the tension between the narrator and the implied author, serve to destabilize the concept of an objective truth. The reader is continually forced to question the reality of what the text is saying, the reliability of the narrator, and the truth of the historical documents. Alias Grace, therefore, does not concern itself with revealing either the innocence or guilt of Grace Marks, but with revealing the innate complexities of her situation. She is not simply a victim or villain, lying seductress or virginal maid, guilty or innocent, but some indeterminable combination thereof. Hilde Staels notes that there is no way to obtain a full, flawless picture of who Grace Marks is, since “both the historical and the fictive Grace are products of discourse. We know her only from texts, from fictionalized history, past and present” (Staels 430).
Readers of Alias Grace who make the connection between the titular character and real-life murderess, Karla Homolka, will therefore be forced to recognize a similar set of complexities in Homolka’s case. At the end of his article, written in 1995 during Bernardo’s trial and before Homolka had taken the stand, D’Arcy Jenish speculates that someday soon “the larger riddle of Karla Homolka--cunning or coerced?--will finally be answered” (51). But the mutually exclusive dichotomy of cunning or coerced is a fallacy. A huge variety of identities have been presented as the “real” Karla Homolka: “pretty teen, party girl, beautiful bride, dutiful daughter, supportive wife…controlled and battered woman” (McGillivray 257); “symbol of evil” (NY Times); “a woman who has internalized…patriarchal norms” (Thompson and Ricard 272); “a deceitful and manipulative woman” (Kilty and Frigon 44); and many more. But the fact remains that she is not singularly any of these, but some intricate and undefined amalgamation of all of them, just like Grace Marks. Thus, by using the past to inform a contemporary issue, Margaret Atwood is asking her readers to step back from their black-and-white mode of judgment and acknowledge the inherent complexities of reality.
END
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