A Wilderness Station

Published in "Open Secrets". A brief excerpt here.

This is actually not one of my favorite stories, which is probably why I feel able to start the blog with it. I don't have as many intense feelings as I have for some of my favorites.

I'm not fond of stories about dreary houses in the wilderness, maybe because I like to imagine myself in the stories, and I'm a very comfort-loving person. In addition, the characters in the early parts of the story seem hard and resigned to a life with nothing but work. No girls who love to write, no poets with a secret longing for beauty, like in many of Munro's stories. I don't mind the ghoulish subject matter - half her stories are about murder, attempted murder, suicide, and abuse. (And I'm not complaining; she writes about taboos and the human condition, as I see it, and part of that is violence and hate.) But it needs some warmth of love or friendship or at least the hope for something better to temper it. Annie has nothing. She's driven half mad by fear, and the only thing she can think of is to lie about a crime and go to jail. Her husband and his brother seem harsh, and this is realistic, given that all both they and Annie are poor and had no parents growing up. So it might be a statement about the lives such people led, and the conditions of women in particular, in those days. But it's still a dreary read.


Also, it's probably the only Munro story that is composed entirely of letters. That's worth noting. I love how she does the different voices, and it's notable how the letters are written between men who decide about a woman's fate, only one letter being written by Annie herself. It's as if her life is in the hands of men - her husband, his brother, the minister and the police. But coming to think of it, the letters are probably one reason why this isn't among my favorite stories - with the formality of letters and the uneducated nature of some of the voices, you lose the rich narrative stuff and metaphors Munro uses in her other stories.

Still, they provide some dry humor:

"Your letter to Mr McBain sent back to you, he died here at the inn February 25. There is some books here, nobody wants them."  

What I love about this story is the long, rambly letter in the end, written by the old lady. She's so proud of having owned a Stanley Steamer (I had to check Wikipedia, they really did exist). The clever thing about this part of the story is how it brings up Old Annie as if in a side note, while she's been the protagonist all along. Here is also where the comfort-loving part of me finds refuge, in the lady's memories of a rich, sheltered childhood. Old Annie is just a colorful character, no longer a menace or a victim of abuse.

"By the time I bought the Steamer, I was the only one of my sisters living at home, and the sewing-woman was the only one of these old servants who remained. The sewing-woman was called Old Annie and never objected to that name. She used it herself and would write notes to the cook that said, 'Tea was not hot, did you warm the pot? Old Annie.' The whole third floor was Old Annie's domain and one of my sisters - Dolly - said that whenever she dreamed of home, that is, of Tarquair, she dreamed of Old Annie up at the top of the third-floor stairs brandishing her measuring stick and wearing a black dress with long fuzzy black arms like a spider.
She had one eye that slid off to the side and gave her the air of taking in more information than the ordinary person." 

The lady is, of course, not writing to the imaginary researcher about Old Annie, but about Treece Herron, a politician who happens to be related to Annie's brother-in-law. The mentioning of Annie seems perfectly natural in this context, in the midst of a very rambly account of the old lady's only encounter with Herron (which I can't see being helpful for the research). The rambling is very believable, and it provides the warmth that the story otherwise lacks.

But is it a happy ending? Is Old Annie meeting her brother-in-law at last a revenge of sorts? Or is she simply saying she forgives him? The narrator has no idea what has gone on between them, and thus doesn't observe them too closely. She's too focused on her Stanley Steamer. It feels good to know though, that after the wilderness station, Annie found a warm rich home to live and work in. It's a happy ending of sorts. Or is it? She has to spend her life in an inferior position, being someone's servant. But she's also in a good home that treats her well, and she gains some power within it. She has no children of her own, but she has children in her life. She never finds love, or does she? We actually know very little about her.

Why is it so often hard to tell if Munro's endings are happy or sad?