Labor Day Dinner

I find this story a little un-Munroish, or at least unlike her later style. It's so very wordy and full of dialogue, so many things are spelled out for the reader. The first sentence is so full of names too, it confused me - George and Roberta and Eva and Angela. (I started reading Munro with "The Love of a Good Woman", so I got her best work first. I'm spoiled that way.)

But later on, when the characters emerged, I loved the story. I love how awful George is and how everyone walks on tiptoes around him, and how he despises Roberta and the way she mopes. He thinks that she started out self-ironic and calmly telling him her flaws, and now she's needy and sad. It reminds me of David in "Lichen" and his description of Rosemary: "A sweet dark name, though finally a shrill trite woman."

A lot of things about George and Roberta are disturbing. It's disturbing that Valerie likes him better than he liked Roberta's ex. It's disturbing that people want to please him, and make him laugh. Is he really that charismatic? It's disturbing that Roberta has slid into depression with him - although it might not be fully his fault.

It seems like Angela is the only one who sees George for what he truly is, a selfish jerk who makes Roberta depressed. He has no tact - he tells Roberta, "Your arms are flabby" when she wants to wear a sleeveless dress - and he can't stand to see weakness.

I have seen her change, Angela has written in her journal, from a person I deeply respected into a person on the verge of being a nervous wreck. If this is love I want no part of it. He wants to enslave her and us all and she walks a tightrope trying to keep him from getting mad. She doesn't enjoy anything and if you gave her the choice she would like best to lie down in a dark room with a cloth over her eyes and not see anybody or do anything. This is an intelligent woman who used to believe in freedom. 

George also reminds me of Clark in "Runaway": Carla has to fear his anger, even if he doesn't physically abuse her. He abuses her with his silences and despising of her. She almost runs away and then turns back, unable to live without him. (Like Roberta who's too depressed to do something about her situation?) But Clark and Carla had no children.

We get no real description of Angela and Eva's father, but he must be a much kinder man, or the girls would be more timid and scared of George. The girls only spend their summer with Roberta and George, but Roberta is still horrified George won't be able to take them and will hurt them:

Instead, Eva says: "You know, I understand George. I don't mind about him the way Angela does. I know how to be jokey. I understand him."
Roberta and Valerie look at each other, and Roberta smiles, shakes her head, and shivers. She has been afraid, sometimes, that George would hurt her children, not physically but by some turnabout, some revelation of dislike, that htey could never forget. It seems to her she has instructed them, by example, that he is to be accommodated, his silences respected, his joking responded to. What if he should turn, within this safety, and deal them a memorable blow? If it happened, it would be she who would have betrayed them into it. And she can feel a danger. [...]
But Roberta thinks now that the real danger is not to Angela, who would find a way to welcome insult, would be ready to reap some advantage. (Roberta has read parts of the journal.) It is Eva, with her claims of understanding, her hopes of all-around conciliation, who could be smashed and stranded.

Half the time in Munro's stories, I want to tell the female protagonist: run for the hills, this man is a jerk, he will ruin your life. It's a bit disconcerting to think how many couples might be like this. They look happy on the outside, but there's all this settling, all this walking on thin ice, to please an angry spouse. It's easy to say I'd never settle like that, but if I'd lived the life they had, maybe I would.

Also, stop reading your daughter's journal, Roberta.

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?

In this blog, I intend to write thoughts and feelings upon reading Alice Munro.

I don't want to make any rules for this blog, because I just want to enjoy writing it. It's not really a review blog so much as a "personal feelings and reactions" thing. It could be anything from brief notes and quotes to long personal rambles. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, if you want to share in the comments.

I've studied English literature, but I'm not really very academic, and I'm a very emotional reader. So the point is not to try and wow anyone with my intellectual interpretations. Munro's stories tend to get under my skin and the characters stay in my mind, and more often than not, I can relate to something in the stories. This is what I hope to share with this blog.

Why Munro? Short answer: Because her stories have everything.

My favorite stories at the moment, in no particular order:
The Love of a Good Woman
Eskimo
Open Secrets
Soon
Accident
Powers
Trespasses
White Dump
Rich as Stink
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
The Bear Came over the Mountain
Dance of the Happy Shades
The Time of Death
Some Women
Child's Play
Basically all of the stories about Rose.