AMBIGUIDADES E POSICIONAMENTOS FEMININOS EM ALIAS GRACE: AS PERFORMANCES DE GRACE MARKS

Abstract

The present work seeks to discuss the concepts of identity in performance and representation from the ambivalence of the character Grace Marks, protagonist of the miniseries Alias Grace, adaptation for the Netflix platform of the work Vulgo Grace, by Margaret Atwood. Sentenced to life in prison for complicity in two murders. The character, object of this study, claimed not to remember the events that occurred on the day of the crime, which made her move for 15 years between prisons and asylums in a silence that places her as a victim of the patriarchal society of the 19th century. Within this narrative context, the different representations constructed about the young woman were observed – in the clinical discourse, with the objective of analyzing the feminine identity positions constructed from this. The theoretical problematization focuses on the concepts of representation, identity and performance, reflecting on how social groups project social places to women. The analysis took place through discussions of performance by Butler (2003) and Silva (2000), on representation, with Hall (2016) and Chartier (1990), and on aspects of female history and madness in the 19th century, according to Fraisse and Perrot (1994) and Foucault (2006). The filmic analysis of the serial narrative resulted in the understanding of the religious, moral and medical influence that delineated Grace Marks as crazy, celebrity, criminal and hostage to the constituent aspects of Victorian Era society. The construction of different facets of identity based on representations breaks with the idea of a fixed and palpable identity, as the protagonist performs according to the social space she occupies and with different purposes.