For those who’ve read the 1996 book, it might not seem like a perfect fit. Alias Grace is a story set in Canada in the middle of the 19th century, based on the real life of a convicted murderess, Grace Marks, and it rests on the ambiguity of whether she’s innocent or guilty, lying or telling the truth. But the veracity of Grace’s stories, Atwood seems to argue, is less significant than comprehending the fault lines of her life, and of the lives of women like her. Grace is tyrannized by an abusive father, works countless hours as a maid for a pittance, and is constantly forced to negotiate her own safety with little to trade. Even her first-person accounts—the most powerful form of currency she has—are undermined by the fact that she has to tailor them to best fit the preconceptions and predilections of her listeners.

The new miniseries is written and created by Sarah Polley, the Canadian director, actress, and activist who followed up a career as a child star (Road to Avonlea, Ramona) with the assured directorial debut Away From Her in 2006. In October, Polley contributed a first-person essay to The New York Times about her experiences as an actress, which included being propositioned by Harvey Weinstein. “On sets,” she wrote, “I saw women constantly pressured to exploit their sexuality and then chastised as sluts for doing so.” She recalls getting together with a group of performers to discuss an idea in which they turned their worst professional experiences into a comedy project. But when they detailed those experiences, the nature of them changed. “They were stories of assault,” Polley wrote. “When they were spoken out loud, it was impossible to reframe them any other way.”

This understanding that stories can not only shape but also redefine reality is the crinoline core to Alias Grace. In 1843, at the age of 16, Grace was convicted of the murder of Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross), her employer, and Nancy Montgomery (Anna Paquin), his housekeeper and mistress. Like The Handmaid’s Tale, the story starts in the middle of Grace’s imprisonment, after she’s been incarcerated for more than a decade in Kingston Penitentiary. During the day she’s transported to the governor’s mansion, where she works as a maid, and where the mistress of the house has grown so fond of Grace’s meek and dutiful ways that she’s working to prove her innocence. As part of that effort, an American psychologist, Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft), is hired to interview Grace, and to establish the truth of her story.

In the first scene Grace stares at her reflection in the mirror, considering all the things that have been written about her and trying to match her expression to the various personas that have been foisted on her: demon, innocent, temptress, idiot. “I wonder,” she thinks, “how can I be all these different things at once?” The tension of the next six episodes comes from determining which of them, if any, apply, since the authentic Grace, even in her personal narration to the viewer, remains elusive.