Chapter 29: Birthday Walks and Broken Trust
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
Grace Marks narrates the erosion of her respect for Nancy Montgomery after catching Nancy flirting with Mr. Kinnear. She admits to answering back and receiving slaps. Mr. Kinnear grows kinder to her, once placing his hand on hers while carrying a bath bucket—a moment Nancy witnesses, worsening tensions. McDermott becomes brooding, vowing revenge against Nancy and Kinnear, threatening to knock them on the head. Grace dismisses this as drunken boasting, like her father’s empty threats.
In a session with Dr. Jordan, he reveals McDermott’s confession claimed Grace planned to poison the couple’s porridge and urged him to help. Grace scoffs: she could have done it alone. She theorizes McDermott wanted company on the “lonely highway” to death.
On her sixteenth birthday, Nancy gives Grace a bouquet and the afternoon off. Grace walks alone, feeling isolated, and sits crying in the orchard. Jamie Walsh finds her, offers friendship, proposes marriage, and plays his fife. They make daisy chains. Mr. Kinnear spies them through his telescope and questions Grace; Nancy mocks the wilted daisy in her hair. McDermott sneers about “rolling in the grass.” Grace feels her private moment was violated by all.
Key Events
- Grace loses respect for Nancy and admits to quarrels and slaps.
- Mr. Kinnear’s physical closeness (hand on Grace’s on the bucket) is witnessed by Nancy, deepening the household tension.
- McDermott threatens murder while drinking; Grace dismisses it as bluster.
- Dr. Jordan confronts Grace with McDermott’s confession; Grace defends herself logically and compassionately.
- Nancy gives Grace a birthday bouquet and a free afternoon; Grace goes walking.
- Jamie Walsh proposes marriage; Grace gently declines but accepts the daisy chains.
- Mr. Kinnear watches from the verandah with a telescope; Nancy and McDermott both interrogate Grace afterward.
- Grace feels her afternoon was “spied upon” by everyone, stripping it of innocence.
Character Development
Grace Marks – Shows growing emotional complexity: she can be defiant (answering back), pragmatic (feigning cheerfulness), and vulnerable (crying alone). Her response to McDermott’s confession reveals sharp intelligence and sympathy for even her accuser.
Nancy Montgomery – Once respected by Grace, now becomes petty and jealous. Her gift of the bouquet and afternoon is undercut by her suspicion of Grace’s closeness to Mr. Kinnear.
Mr. Kinnear – His kindness to Grace appears genuine but also sexually charged (hand on hand). He spies on her with a telescope, revealing a controlling streak beneath the gentlemanly exterior.
James McDermott – Deepens into a violent drunkard who projects his murderous fantasies onto Grace. His claim that she instigated the murders is the chapter’s most direct (yet contested) accusation.
Jamie Walsh – A boy playing at manhood; his sincere proposal contrasts with the predatory or jealous attentions of the older men. He offers Grace genuine, childlike companionship.
Dr. Simon Jordan – Continues his forensic probing, testing Grace’s story. His “bark of a laugh” shows his skepticism, but Grace holds her ground.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
Class and the Invisible Servant – Grace notes the lack of a separate servants’ staircase forces everyone “too close together.” The physical architecture mirrors the inescapable power dynamics of the household.
Surveillance and Ownership – Mr. Kinnear watches the orchard with a telescope; McDermott and Nancy each watch Grace’s movements. The chapter shows how servants are never truly private, their actions interpreted through the master’s lens.
Memory, Truth, and Narrative – The duel between Grace’s account and McDermott’s written confession highlights the unreliability of any single version. Grace’s line “just because a thing has been written down… does not mean it is God’s truth” is the chapter’s thematic core.
Innocence and Its Loss – The daisy chains and Jamie’s fife recall childhood play, but Mr. Kinnear’s interrogation and McDermott’s sneers “took some of the innocence out of the day.”
Violence as a Distant Threat – McDermott’s murder talk is framed as drunken bluster, yet it presages the real murders. Grace’s analogy of the road to death and her familiarity with the scaffold foreshadow the novel’s central crisis.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 29 is pivotal for several reasons:
- It provides Grace’s direct rebuttal of McDermott’s confession, a key piece of the historical record that the novel interrogates.
- It deepens the triangle of jealousy among Nancy, Mr. Kinnear, and Grace, offering a motive for why events might have turned violent.
- It introduces Jamie Walsh as a witness and potential ally or threat; his later testimony in the trial becomes critical.
- It captures Grace’s profound isolation on her sixteenth birthday, humanizing her beyond the murder suspect label.
- The chapter shows Atwood weaving together multiple forms of evidence (conversation, confession, memory) to question how truth is constructed.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does Grace reject McDermott’s claim that she plotted the murders? What does her response reveal about her character?
Grace dismisses the poison-porridge story as “one of the silliest things I have ever heard,” pointing out that she could have poisoned the porridge alone without any help. Her cool logic and even her compassion for McDermott (“I would never blame a human creature for feeling lonely”) show intelligence and a refusal to be cast as a helpless or diabolical figure. It also reinforces her control over her own narrative in the sessions with Dr. Jordan.
2. Explain the symbolic importance of the daisy chain in this chapter.
The daisy chain made by Grace and Jamie Walsh represents a fleeting moment of childlike innocence and genuine friendship. However, it becomes a site of conflict: Mr. Kinnear suspects immoral activity, Nancy mocks the wilted flower, and McDermott sneers about “rolling in the grass.” The chain thus symbolizes how even the purest pleasure is corrupted by the gossip, jealousy, and surveillance that pervade the Kinnear household.
3. What role does the architecture of the house play in the tensions of this chapter?
Grace explicitly laments the lack of a separate servants’ staircase, noting that “we were all obliged to live too close together.” The open floor plan means every cough or laugh is heard, and no action goes unseen. This physical closeness breeds conflict: Nancy witnesses the bucket incident, Mr. Kinnear spies the orchard meeting, and McDermott hears everything Grace says. Architecture becomes a metaphor for the impossible intimacy of master-servant relations where privacy is denied.