The Grace Year

The book’s titular event symbolizes multiple concepts, but the most prominent is female puberty. It is seen as shameful, something that “no one speaks of” (1), which mirrors even modern-day attitudes around puberty and menstruation. The grace year girls are blatantly sexualized by the men in the county, and the poachers who come for the girls represent real-life predators of young women. The pettiness, jealousy, and violence seen amongst the girls of the grace year are borne out of internalized misogyny and misinformation, much of which are used to uphold a culture that demands wifely purity. Even the idea that the girls must purge themselves of “magic” coincides with the widespread opinion that menstruation is something dirty and impure.

The grace year carries an intense air of secrecy. No one is allowed to talk about it, and there is no warning from the older generations. Garner County is divided into two groups of women: those who know about the Grace Year because they have lived it and those who are unaware of what lies ahead for them. Although Tierney stands for rebellion, this is one tradition she does not break: Even after everything she’s been through, Tierney never tells Michael about what happened during the grace year because it “doesn’t belong to him” (397).