What does Alias Grace reveal about early Canadian society?

One of the fascinating elements about this novel is the way that Atwood reveals a picture of Canada based at the time of the novel. The questioning of Grace Marks allows her to reveal a story common to many immigrants who voyaged over the sea from Europe in hope of brighter prospects in Canada. In Chapter 15, after a terrible voyage where Grace lost her mother, Grace narrates her first impressions of Canada when she arrives there:

The people appeared to be very mixed as to the kinds of them, with many Scots and some Irish, and of course the English, and many Americans, and a few French; and Red Indians, although they had no feathers; and some Germans; with skins of all hues, which was very new to me; and you never could tell what sort of speech you were going to hear. There were many taverns, and much drunkenness around the harbour, because of the sailors, and altogether it was just like the Tower of Babel.

Note what this quote reveals about early Canadian society: the overwhelming impression is one of different languages and cultures all thrown together in one setting. Grace's reference to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, where God confused the tongues of man, gives a real impression of the collision of cultures and the kind of chaos and confusion that captured so much of early Canadian life. Atwood therefore points very strongly towards the hybrid nature of Canadian society and the way in which new immigrants, such as Grace's family, came with such high hopes but actually found it very hard to begin with to establish themselves.

Does Alias Grace reveal more about early Canadian social history than the murders?

One of the reasons this novel is so compelling is that it not only investigates an infamous murder of which historical records remain, but that it also offers the reader a snapshot of early Canadian society at a time when many immigrants such as Grace and her family were travelling from locations in Europe to seek their fortune in Canada and to hopefully escape the poverty they endured back in their home countries. What is clear from Grace's account of her family's voyage across the Atlantic and also their early days in Canada together is how poor conditions were for these new immigrants and how much they had to endure. The account of the crossing alone, with its reference to illness and potential starvation, gives ample testament to the harshness of the conditions facing immigrants. But even when Grace and her family safely arrived in Canada, they were still forced to cope with terrible living conditions. Note how Grace describes their first lodgings:

There was no cellar under it, and I was glad it wasn't winter, as the wind would have blown right through it. The floors were of wide boards, set too close to the ground, and beetles and other small cratures would make their way up through the cracks between them, worse after a rain, and one morning I found a live worm.

The novel therefore helps to explore the living conditions of immigrants  in early Canadian history and also to show the kind of hardships that they faced at that time. Although Canada was viewed as a place of opportunity, unfortunately often the reality was exchanging one kind of squalor and poverty for another, and Grace was actually very fortunate to find employment in a good home.