peddling house to house in Toronto. When he called at the Kinnear house, he told her he feared she might be in danger there and told her a glimpse into her future. Setting Grace Marks, born in 1826, lived in or near Toronto from age 12 until 16, when the famous murders took place. She had resided in the Kingston Penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario for 15 years in 1859, when the novel begins. Among Toronto and Kingston society, Atwood portrays the highly moralistic, straitlaced language and behaviour of the Victorian era. By contrast, it is evident that Mary Whitney's crude comments would have been shocking even among servants of that time. The study of mental health, called "alienism", was a new development at the time. It was first taught in European universities, and advocated that inmates be treated as patients rather than prisoners. Although the Victorian era was a time of some scientific progress, many Victorians were very much interested in the paranormal, supernatural and occult, hence the use of mesmerism, hypnotism, or spiritualism were viewed as legitimate methods of inquiry. Atwood chose Richmond Hill, Ontario as the location of the Kinnear farm within Upper Canada. In September 2009, 13 years after the release of the book, Richmond Hill introduced "Alias Grace Park" named after the book. Politics The Rebellion of 1837 had taken place six years before the Kinnear and Montgomery murders in 1843, but it still affected public sentiment. The Rebellion terrorized the upper classes even though the rebels were quickly defeated. Government reforms made soon after the Rebellion reduced corruption and restricted the power of the ruling oligarchies, which also worried the upper classes. The idea that the lower classes could rise above their station by hard work or cleverness (rather than by ancestry and inheritance) was finding acceptance in the United States, so the Canadian aristocracy, basing their identity on their English heritage, felt threatened. Style The novel is written in the Southern Ontario Gothic style, highlighting the social ills of the time, while exhibiting the corruption and moral hypocrisy of the upper class. Supernatural phenomena, like the ghost of Mary Whitney, fit the Gothic style, as well as the Victorian spiritualist sensibility, justifying the ghost of Mary Whitney's gleefully evil confession. Returning from the dead is a recurring theme in Atwood's novels. The main narrator is Grace, whose thoughts and speech are in the first