What is point of view?

Alias Grace is told through a variety of points of view. These points of view alternate, giving the reader, for example, a more personal testimony as related by Grace Marks throughout most of the novel and then switching to a more distant observation offered by the third-person account of Dr. Simon Jordan's circumstances. It should be pointed out that Grace's first-person point of view is often unreliable. Although Grace sometimes admits that she is not being fully honest with Dr. Jordan, there are other times when it is not clear if she is even being honest with herself. Other points of view include replications of newspaper accounts of the murders of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery and the subsequent trials of Grace and McDermott. There are also lyrics of popular ballads concerning the murders, accounts quoted from Susanna Moodie's journals, and from letters to and from Dr. Jordan and other correspondents. By providing this collection of points of view, Atwood lays out different interpretations of the events, demonstrating the confusion that surrounded the real court case and the inability of either proving or disproving Grace Marks's innocence or guilt.