Alice Monroe

Alice Monroe, young, small, blond, green eyed, and sporting a large Alice in Wonderland body-art mural that spans from the back of one thigh, up her back, over the shoulder, and down the top of an arm.

A San Bernadino to Wisconsin transplant, Alice Monroe was raised by her generationally distant aunt and uncle after the accident that iled her immediate family. Alice grew up helping her uncle work on cars which led to an interest in automata. Tech savvy, she prefers to sculpt digital files and print them for the sake of weight when making her creations, though she also likes to use lightweight air-dry clay. She enjoys puzzle solving, video games, particularly Diablo, and Alice in Wonderland was her favorite book as a child.

Before coming being hired on as the live-in caretaker/ maintenance woman at the Strande Estate, Alice had most recently been employed at a non-profit Milwaukee n music academy. Her interest in mechanics, automata, and music made her the perfect person for trying to maintain the horrifyingly bad idea that were Julian's unorthodox Calliopes. Having recently lost her job at the music academy, she was grateful, and a little desperate, when she took on the position, moving with a car load of personal belongings and her cat, Loki, into the carriage house on the Strande Property.

Alice is known for her shyness, kindness, intelligence, and work ethic.

Shyness

Alice gets flustered the first few times she has to stand on stage. She admits at one point that she isn't used to receiving attention, and Charles speculates that she has no idea how beautiful she is.

Kindness

Alice tries, repeatedly, to treat the advances and attention-seeking behavior of her young coworker, Billy, with kindness, even when it's hard, annoying, and creating more stress for her. For instance, she tries to build his ego and encourage him to keep practicing when his attempt at a magic trick is an utter failure, and then when he repeatedly tries to ask her out, she not only lets him down as gently as possible, but encourages him to keep putting himself out there looking for the right one.

Intelligence

From the start of her interview at the Strande Estate, her intelligence takes center stage, and this trait continues to remain a focal feature even after she's become emotionally involved. Immediately, Charles asks her to try to figure out the trick of the ceiling that seems to be hundreds of feet high, and she runs through the various methods of creating an optical illusion of that nature, then one by one illuminates them based on what she doesn't see, until she arrives at the correct conclusion. Whenever Alice comes across a problem, she puzzles it out with logic, from trying to determine how Charles does the tricks in his Impossible Julian Strande magic show, to how the ghost of Julian Strande might be a trick Charles is playing on her. Then, when she sets out to solve the riddle of Julian's Journal, her problem solving skills and intellect become one of the key features of the story.

Work Ethic

After working at the Strande Estate for less than a week, her boss makes it clear that he'd like to see her. She immediately raises the nepotism issue. Although she does start seeing Charles, she maintains a strict no-kanoodling on the clock policy. Similarly, she always finishes her nightly maintenance and security walk-throughs of the mansion, even when she's been actively terrorized by the ghost. Rather than running out of the building and leaving her work undone, she puts her job ahead of her fear.

Alice's Self Esteem Issues

Alice has low self-esteem. It shows itself not only in her shyness and the fact that she isn't good at taking compliments, or that she had trouble believing Charles was really interested in her as a person rather than her as a conquest. Her low self-value are obvious when she talks about and prepares for interacting with her Aunt and Uncle. Her Aunt's needling and Uncle's disapproval highlight some of where her low self-esteem might come from, as well. The night after she and Charles have their first date, she mentally expresses a little bit of wonder or disbelief during his show that she had slept with the handsome man on the stage. Even when she solves the overarching mystery of the Estate, she doesn't feel fully proud of herself because she was given the pieces of the puzzle necessary to unlock the code. Arguably, her low self image makes her an easier target for the predatory advances of Julian Strande. She even calls him out on viewing her as prey at one point, but she lets it go.

Alice as an abuse victim

Julian is an emotionally abusive partner during their first year together, whether it is intentional or not. He gaslights Alice in the extreme. He physically harms people who try to get close to her. Although he does not try to cut her off from her family, he absolutely does control and reduce who she can interact with. He terrorizes her, sneaks into her bed while she's sleeping, and on at least one occasion takes some physical liberties without express permission, regardless of what she might have been saying in her sleep.

The original publication and the box set vary slightly in the description of they ways he physically abused her. In the original publication, during the climax of Illusions of Grandeur, Julian slaps Alice when she calls him a brat. In the box set, the slap was replaced with nearly slapping her. Arguably, whether or not he slapped her once in anger, the sum total of his other abusive acts, including throwing her headfirst into his corpse pit, is irrelevant to determining whether or not the relationship was healthy.

Suicide

Ultimately, after nearly dying trying to save herself and nearly being stabbed to death by her fiancé, Julian realizes he can't kill her and tells her to go. Unable to imagine life without him, Alice chooses to return to the tower where Julian was prepared to ritually kill her in order to have her join him as a nearly immortal ghost, if the spell worked correctly. Unprompted, she drinks the poison in the "drink me" bottle and dies.

Resting place

Alice's body was laid to rest in the center of the house, beside Julian's in a nearly matching stained glass casket that he made for her, engraved with the letters AS in green in the same style as the JS monogram he used throughout the house.

The Amazing Alice Strande

Alice first becomes an assistant for Julian, excelling at escape artistry. Over time headlines her own act, having overcome her stage fright and shyness.

Fan Art