"Lives of Girls and Women" helped me come to terms with my own coming-of-age. I identified strongly with Del, with her pride, ambition, and restlessness. Reading about how she was embarassed of her mother, I felt a sigh of relief because I had always felt terribly guilty about being embarassed of my own parents as a child. I had always seen it as a personal failure, not necessarily as a right of passage. Similarly, Munro's dead-on descriptions of the absurd longings of adolescent girls for gawky pubescent boys also brought painful but ultimately cathartic bursts of recognition.
Because the novel resonated so well with me, it made me reconsider some of my ideas about literature. I tend to be rather elitist when it comes to art, preferring the "classic" (read: at least a few hundred years old) over the "popular". The novel was a humbling reminder that homely themes such as growing up in a rural area can reveal just as much about human nature as heavier themes such as existential crises.
My appreciation of Canada has also deepened through reading "Lives". I used to think of Canada as rather bland, without much history, but this window into rural Canada a few decades ago has made me appreciate the humdrum of what I see as Canadian life - without hunger or terror but nonetheless "deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum". I had not read much Canadian literature before, but reading this book has inspired me to explore other Canadian novels.
To be honest, I did not become a more critical reader through this ISU. I loved the story so much that I raced through the book, indulging in the story without pausing to consider the significance or purpsoe of each passage. However, I do feel that I've become a more honest writer by subconsciously absorbing Munro's style. In addition, I sincerely wanted to pinpoint what makes Munro's writing so good. My writing style is still not completely myself, but it is closer to my voice than much of what I've written before.
In sum, I've gained much through exploring this novel. I've made peace with some of my own experiences, become more open-minded about literature and Canada, and become more honest in my writing. I'm so glad to have met "Lives"; it's a book that I will be sure to pass on to my daughters and granddaughters.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Works Cited
"Alice Munro." Wikipedia, 1 June 2009. Web. 22 November 2009.
Holcombe, Garan. "Critical Pespective." Contemporarywriters.com, 2008. Web. 22 November 2009.
Martin, Walter Rintoul. Alice Munro: Paradox and Parallel. Googlebooks, n.d. Web. 22 November 2009.
McGill, Robert. "Alice Munro: Lives of Girls and Women (1971)". The Literary Encyclopedia, 30 June 2002. Web. 22 Novemebr 2009.
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2001. Print.
Holcombe, Garan. "Critical Pespective." Contemporarywriters.com, 2008. Web. 22 November 2009.
Martin, Walter Rintoul. Alice Munro: Paradox and Parallel. Googlebooks, n.d. Web. 22 November 2009.
McGill, Robert. "Alice Munro: Lives of Girls and Women (1971)". The Literary Encyclopedia, 30 June 2002. Web. 22 Novemebr 2009.
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2001. Print.
Explication of "All Sacrificed for Passion" in Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
Del's relationship with Garnet French exemplifies Munro's method of character development. Exchanging one attitude for another, Del gains a clearer view of herself, of her needs and ambitions. Yet, her epiphany preceding their breakup is only one in a long succession of phases that is still incomplete at the end of the story. The absence of a complete resolution is fitting for Munro's realistic style.
Munro sets up Del's climatic first love affair with Garnet by prefacing it with her hilariously awkward relationship with Jerry. This relationship, although real enough on an intellectual plane, is a parody of sexual intimacy. When Del undresses at Jerry's request to see a "real live naked woman" (Munro 203), her "need for love [goes] underground" (Munro 208). In some ways, Del's intoxication with Garnet is an over-reaction against Jerry's manner. She is excited at the discovery of the "surrender- not of the woman's to the man but the person's to the body (Munro 218). Nonetheless, it's not "only [the] sex" (Munro 221) that draws her to him- she is taken with Garnet's mysterious simplicity: "Being with Garnet [is] the very opposite of going out with Jerry, and seeing the world dense and complicated but appallingly unsecretive; the world she sees] with Garnet was something no far from what [she] thought animals must see, the world without names" (Munro 221). Thus, in neglecting her academic future, she is in effect rejecting her spiritually unfulfilling identity with Jerry for the intoxicatingly uncomplicated person she feels like when she is with Garnet.
It's ironic that Del is aware of how she quietly tucks her true self away in her relationship with Garnet. She consciously swallows her prejudice against the seedy condition of Garnet's home. And she tries to ignore the "sinking of the heart" (Munro 217) when she sees Garnet's uncouth friends in the Baptist congregation. She realizes that they are essentially different. She realizes that "he [hates] people using big words, talking about things outside their own lives. He [hates] people trying to tie things together" (Munro 183). She wonders "why [does he not] hate me?", because "these are great pastimes of mine. Perhaps I successfully hid from him what I was like" (Munro 183). She consciously chooses to ignore parts of him and parts of herself.
At the crisis of "Baptizing", she finally confronts their incompatibility. When Garnet asks "would you like to have a baby?" and Del says "yes," he replies "you have to join the church first" (Munro 236-7). Del realizes that because Garnet has never been aware of her complexities, being with him "[requires her] to be buried alive" (Munro 239). Although she feels guilty for "somehow meeting his good offerings with [her] deceitful offerings... matching [her] complexity and play-acting with his true intent" (Munro 198), she realizes that she cannot bury "her differences, [her] reservations, [her] life" (Munro 198). After breaking up with Garnet, she is not devastated, but liberated. She feels "old devious, ironic isolated self- beginning to breathe again and stretch and settle, though all around it my body clung and cracked" (Munro 199).
This epiphany that she cannot escape her pride and restlessness comes at the cost of Garnet's pride and her mother's hopes. When she loses her scholarship, her mother is "faced with the possibility that Owen and [Del] would do nothing and become nothing after all, that [they] were mediocre" (Munro 199). Her mother says to her bitterly, "you will have to do what you want now," (Munro 205) but Del still doesn't know what she wants. She only knows that she does not want the domestic married life that Naomi has and that she no longer has the option of pursuing post-secondary education right away. Thus, we leave her at a another cross-roads: "now at last without fantasies or self-deception, cut off from the mistakes and confusion of the past, grave and simple, carrying a small suitcase, getting on a bus, like girls in moves leaving home, convents, lovers [getting on with her life]" (Munro 210).
This untidy resolution to a subtly complex changing of attitudes captures the messiness of life. It shows how growing up is a continual process of self-discovery. This bittersweet conclusion is a wonderfully fitting ending to Munro's true-to-life chronicle of one girl's memorable coming-of-age.
Munro sets up Del's climatic first love affair with Garnet by prefacing it with her hilariously awkward relationship with Jerry. This relationship, although real enough on an intellectual plane, is a parody of sexual intimacy. When Del undresses at Jerry's request to see a "real live naked woman" (Munro 203), her "need for love [goes] underground" (Munro 208). In some ways, Del's intoxication with Garnet is an over-reaction against Jerry's manner. She is excited at the discovery of the "surrender- not of the woman's to the man but the person's to the body (Munro 218). Nonetheless, it's not "only [the] sex" (Munro 221) that draws her to him- she is taken with Garnet's mysterious simplicity: "Being with Garnet [is] the very opposite of going out with Jerry, and seeing the world dense and complicated but appallingly unsecretive; the world she sees] with Garnet was something no far from what [she] thought animals must see, the world without names" (Munro 221). Thus, in neglecting her academic future, she is in effect rejecting her spiritually unfulfilling identity with Jerry for the intoxicatingly uncomplicated person she feels like when she is with Garnet.
It's ironic that Del is aware of how she quietly tucks her true self away in her relationship with Garnet. She consciously swallows her prejudice against the seedy condition of Garnet's home. And she tries to ignore the "sinking of the heart" (Munro 217) when she sees Garnet's uncouth friends in the Baptist congregation. She realizes that they are essentially different. She realizes that "he [hates] people using big words, talking about things outside their own lives. He [hates] people trying to tie things together" (Munro 183). She wonders "why [does he not] hate me?", because "these are great pastimes of mine. Perhaps I successfully hid from him what I was like" (Munro 183). She consciously chooses to ignore parts of him and parts of herself.
At the crisis of "Baptizing", she finally confronts their incompatibility. When Garnet asks "would you like to have a baby?" and Del says "yes," he replies "you have to join the church first" (Munro 236-7). Del realizes that because Garnet has never been aware of her complexities, being with him "[requires her] to be buried alive" (Munro 239). Although she feels guilty for "somehow meeting his good offerings with [her] deceitful offerings... matching [her] complexity and play-acting with his true intent" (Munro 198), she realizes that she cannot bury "her differences, [her] reservations, [her] life" (Munro 198). After breaking up with Garnet, she is not devastated, but liberated. She feels "old devious, ironic isolated self- beginning to breathe again and stretch and settle, though all around it my body clung and cracked" (Munro 199).
This epiphany that she cannot escape her pride and restlessness comes at the cost of Garnet's pride and her mother's hopes. When she loses her scholarship, her mother is "faced with the possibility that Owen and [Del] would do nothing and become nothing after all, that [they] were mediocre" (Munro 199). Her mother says to her bitterly, "you will have to do what you want now," (Munro 205) but Del still doesn't know what she wants. She only knows that she does not want the domestic married life that Naomi has and that she no longer has the option of pursuing post-secondary education right away. Thus, we leave her at a another cross-roads: "now at last without fantasies or self-deception, cut off from the mistakes and confusion of the past, grave and simple, carrying a small suitcase, getting on a bus, like girls in moves leaving home, convents, lovers [getting on with her life]" (Munro 210).
This untidy resolution to a subtly complex changing of attitudes captures the messiness of life. It shows how growing up is a continual process of self-discovery. This bittersweet conclusion is a wonderfully fitting ending to Munro's true-to-life chronicle of one girl's memorable coming-of-age.
Apologia
A three time winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, Alice Munro is well recognized among Canadian writers. Certainly, she deserves all the praise that she has recieved. Her unique style makes her short stories and her only novel, "Lives of Girls and Women", gems in the cannon of Canadian literature.
One of the most impressive qualities about her writing is her honesty. Recognizing that "nothing is easy, nothing is simple" ("Alice Munro"), she captures the complexities and messiness of life in her writing. For example, "Lives" is a coming-of-age story in rural Ontario, but she refuses to sentimentalize rurality or childhood (McGill). She depicts how stifling provincial anonymity and conservatism are, as Del, her protagonist, struggles against them. In addition, she captures how strange growing up is. For instance, when Del realizes that adults are not as omnipotent as she once thought, she describes her aging aunts thus: "in time every word, every expression of the face, every flutter of the hand came to seem something learned long ago, perfectly remembered, and ... something constructed with terrible care" (Munro 50). Munro's truthful and nuanced treatment of familiar themes is rare and refreshing.
In addition to her truthfulness, Munro has an incredibly keen understanding of human psychology. To illustrate, Del, the classic Munro narrator at an ironic distance from her own life (McGill), has an uncanny way of seeing and describing people's motives. For example, Del notices how her mother "was on the side of poor people everywhere, on the side of Negroes and Jews and Chinese and women, but she could not bear drunkenness, no, and she could not bear sexual looseness, dirty language, haphazard lives, contented ignorance, and so she had to exclude the Flats Road people from the really oppressed and deprived people, the real poor whom she still loved" (Munro 7). Del's description of her mother also exemplifies how she and Munro are acutely aware of life's subtle ironies. Munro's writing is so good because she has such a deep understanding of human nature.
Not only does Munro capture the complexities and inconsistencies of life, she does this in a skillful and illuminating way. She works for what she calls "emotional exactness... exactness of resonance" (Martin) through subtle detail and evocative turns of phrases. For instance, Del describes her brother's praying as the making of "desperate, private grimaces... as hard to look at as skinned flesh" (Munro 97). She writes that "Seeing someone have faith, close up, is no easier than seeing someone chop a finger off" (Munro 97). Munro resolves the contradictions and messiness of life by a sense of wonder. She celebrates the humdrum of the everyday lives of ordinary people by revealig how they are "amazing and unfathomable", "deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum" (Munro 210).
Somehow, Munro manages to do all this in an incredibly concise way. As Holcolme puts it, "nothing is wasted. Nothing is irrelevant. Every word glows. Munro is able to capture the shape and mood, the flavour of a life in 30 pages" (Holcombe). For instance, she describes a young girl who was beat by her mentally unstable mother as "suspicious of toys, cookies, milk anything we offered her, but she never whined or cried. Touched or cuddled, she submitted warily, her body giving off little tremors of dismay, her heart beating hard like the heart of a bird if you capture it in your hand. Yet she would lie on Uncle Benny's lap or fall asleep against his shoulder, limp as spaghetti. his hand covered the bruises on her legs" (Munro 16). Readers respond and connect strongly to her writing. Personally, I recognized my own extremely serious and easily embarassed self in Del as she steps awkwardly into adolescence "[feeling] the weight of my mother's eccentricities, of something absurd and embarassing about her ... I did want to repudiate her, crawl into favour, orphaned, abandoned, in my own wrinkled sleeves" (Munro 54). Munro's concentrated insight into humanity is what makes Holcombe claim that she teaches us "what it means to be human".
Munro's poignantly recognizable stories are delightfully human and immensely likable. At the end of the novel, Del is "greedy for Jubilee... [for] every last thing, every layer of speech and tought, stroke of light on bark or wells, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together- radiant, everlasting (Munro 210). Similarly, the reader wants every last subtle, illuminating detail of Munro's world to continue. With her distinctly vivid style, Munro has made a very memorable contribution to Canadian literature.
One of the most impressive qualities about her writing is her honesty. Recognizing that "nothing is easy, nothing is simple" ("Alice Munro"), she captures the complexities and messiness of life in her writing. For example, "Lives" is a coming-of-age story in rural Ontario, but she refuses to sentimentalize rurality or childhood (McGill). She depicts how stifling provincial anonymity and conservatism are, as Del, her protagonist, struggles against them. In addition, she captures how strange growing up is. For instance, when Del realizes that adults are not as omnipotent as she once thought, she describes her aging aunts thus: "in time every word, every expression of the face, every flutter of the hand came to seem something learned long ago, perfectly remembered, and ... something constructed with terrible care" (Munro 50). Munro's truthful and nuanced treatment of familiar themes is rare and refreshing.
In addition to her truthfulness, Munro has an incredibly keen understanding of human psychology. To illustrate, Del, the classic Munro narrator at an ironic distance from her own life (McGill), has an uncanny way of seeing and describing people's motives. For example, Del notices how her mother "was on the side of poor people everywhere, on the side of Negroes and Jews and Chinese and women, but she could not bear drunkenness, no, and she could not bear sexual looseness, dirty language, haphazard lives, contented ignorance, and so she had to exclude the Flats Road people from the really oppressed and deprived people, the real poor whom she still loved" (Munro 7). Del's description of her mother also exemplifies how she and Munro are acutely aware of life's subtle ironies. Munro's writing is so good because she has such a deep understanding of human nature.
Not only does Munro capture the complexities and inconsistencies of life, she does this in a skillful and illuminating way. She works for what she calls "emotional exactness... exactness of resonance" (Martin) through subtle detail and evocative turns of phrases. For instance, Del describes her brother's praying as the making of "desperate, private grimaces... as hard to look at as skinned flesh" (Munro 97). She writes that "Seeing someone have faith, close up, is no easier than seeing someone chop a finger off" (Munro 97). Munro resolves the contradictions and messiness of life by a sense of wonder. She celebrates the humdrum of the everyday lives of ordinary people by revealig how they are "amazing and unfathomable", "deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum" (Munro 210).
Somehow, Munro manages to do all this in an incredibly concise way. As Holcolme puts it, "nothing is wasted. Nothing is irrelevant. Every word glows. Munro is able to capture the shape and mood, the flavour of a life in 30 pages" (Holcombe). For instance, she describes a young girl who was beat by her mentally unstable mother as "suspicious of toys, cookies, milk anything we offered her, but she never whined or cried. Touched or cuddled, she submitted warily, her body giving off little tremors of dismay, her heart beating hard like the heart of a bird if you capture it in your hand. Yet she would lie on Uncle Benny's lap or fall asleep against his shoulder, limp as spaghetti. his hand covered the bruises on her legs" (Munro 16). Readers respond and connect strongly to her writing. Personally, I recognized my own extremely serious and easily embarassed self in Del as she steps awkwardly into adolescence "[feeling] the weight of my mother's eccentricities, of something absurd and embarassing about her ... I did want to repudiate her, crawl into favour, orphaned, abandoned, in my own wrinkled sleeves" (Munro 54). Munro's concentrated insight into humanity is what makes Holcombe claim that she teaches us "what it means to be human".
Munro's poignantly recognizable stories are delightfully human and immensely likable. At the end of the novel, Del is "greedy for Jubilee... [for] every last thing, every layer of speech and tought, stroke of light on bark or wells, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together- radiant, everlasting (Munro 210). Similarly, the reader wants every last subtle, illuminating detail of Munro's world to continue. With her distinctly vivid style, Munro has made a very memorable contribution to Canadian literature.
Reading Response #4: "Baptizing" and "Epilogue: The Photographer"
I had thought that the final chapter, “Baptizing” would be about Del baptizing her child, but it is about her first love affair. When Garnet tries to baptize Del in order to marry her, it dawns on Del that she had never meant to have a serious relationship with Garnet. They are from different worlds and she feels that she was too good for him and his family. While Garnet is in earnest, she is delirious over sex. In the end, Garnet lets her go:
He would not come. If we had been older we would certainly have hung on, haggled over the price of reconciliation, explained and justified and perhaps forgiven, and carried this into the future with us, but as it were we were close enough to childhood to believe in the absolute seriousness and finality of some fights, unforgivability of some blows. We had seen in each other what we could not bear, and we had no idea that people do see that, and go on, and hate and fight and try to kill each other, various ways, then love some more (199).
Although both are too naïve, their solemn parting is sad. It closes another chapter of her life.
We leave Del at a point of uncertainty in her life, at a crossroads. We don’t know whether she will go to university and lead the life her mother always wanted, or if she will follow in her mother’s footsteps. Del has not yet fully matured, but is only at another transitional stage in her life as the camera pans out.
In the epilogue, the reader learns that she does indeed leave Jubilee, and longs for it afterwards:
People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum. It did not occur to me then that one day I would be so greedy for Jubilee. … No list could hold what I wanted, for what I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together- radiant, everlasting (210).
Del is no longer too ambitious and proud for Jubilee. She had run through childhood and adolescence barely looking both ways, but there will come a time when she wants to stop and rewind and catch all the details in slow motion. Perhaps it’s a time when she’s lost herself and she wants to find something solid to ground her. Perhaps at that time, so much time will have passed her that she wants to hold on to a time when time did not matter. The reader ends up wanting “every last thing” to last as well, because Del’s world has become so real. In the end, Del learns to appreciate people as they are, in their every day humdrum. It's a fitting ending because every day life is what Munro celebrates.
He would not come. If we had been older we would certainly have hung on, haggled over the price of reconciliation, explained and justified and perhaps forgiven, and carried this into the future with us, but as it were we were close enough to childhood to believe in the absolute seriousness and finality of some fights, unforgivability of some blows. We had seen in each other what we could not bear, and we had no idea that people do see that, and go on, and hate and fight and try to kill each other, various ways, then love some more (199).
Although both are too naïve, their solemn parting is sad. It closes another chapter of her life.
We leave Del at a point of uncertainty in her life, at a crossroads. We don’t know whether she will go to university and lead the life her mother always wanted, or if she will follow in her mother’s footsteps. Del has not yet fully matured, but is only at another transitional stage in her life as the camera pans out.
In the epilogue, the reader learns that she does indeed leave Jubilee, and longs for it afterwards:
People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum. It did not occur to me then that one day I would be so greedy for Jubilee. … No list could hold what I wanted, for what I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together- radiant, everlasting (210).
Del is no longer too ambitious and proud for Jubilee. She had run through childhood and adolescence barely looking both ways, but there will come a time when she wants to stop and rewind and catch all the details in slow motion. Perhaps it’s a time when she’s lost herself and she wants to find something solid to ground her. Perhaps at that time, so much time will have passed her that she wants to hold on to a time when time did not matter. The reader ends up wanting “every last thing” to last as well, because Del’s world has become so real. In the end, Del learns to appreciate people as they are, in their every day humdrum. It's a fitting ending because every day life is what Munro celebrates.
Reading Response #3: "Changes and Ceremonies" and "Lives of Girls and Women"
The earnest, dignified manner with which Munro echoes the absurd longings of adolescent girls for gawky pubescent boys is absolutely side-splitting. She hits it dead on: "every day he wore a blue-gray sweater, darned at the elbow, and this smoky color, so ordinary, reticent, and mysterious, seemed to me his colour, the colour of his self" (11o). The romantic, idealistic, imaginative musings that fill Del's head are executed without self-awareness or self-deprecation. This brings painful, embarassed, but ultimately joyful bursts of recognition:
...We talked all the time about these two boys. We called them F.A.'s. It stood for Fatal Attraction.
"There goes your F.A. Try not to faint" (112).
This passage is so absolutely dead on I cannot help but laugh aloud each time I read it. It perfectly captures how seriously in love adolescent girls think they are, and how heroically they bear their secret longings. It shows how curiously these boys saturate their every conscious thought: they are not so much in love with the boys as they are infatuated with the idea of being in love. It shows how funny and fun "liking" some boy can be: how it is rather a sport, a secret game between friends. The scandalous secrecy and the constant threat of exposure, embarassment and loss of dignity are exhilarating. It's like a drug: they are absolutely giddy about it. How ridiculous it all is, when they known little to nothing of the objects of their liking, when neither girl nor boy has matured enought to actually talk of love. And yet, it is through this silly business that adolescent girls mature into women.
Miss Farris in her velvet skating costume, her jaunty fur hat bobbing among the skaters, always marking her out, Miss Farris con brio, Miss Farris painting faces in the Council Chambers, Miss Farris floating face down, unprotesting, in the Wawanash River, six days before she was found. Though there is no plausible way of hanging those pictures together- if the last one is true then must it not alter the others- they are going to have to stay together now (118).
The death of Miss Farris closes “Changes and Ceremonies”. It is an unsettling, disturbing, not fully reconciled ending to a mostly joyful chapter. Juxtaposed against the mirthful absurdity of adolescent pining, it is a surprising and somewhat tragic ending. It is full of mystery, “a mystery presented without explanation and without hope of explanation, in all insolence, like a clear blue sky” (118). It makes the reader pause and realize the complexity of the reality Del lived in, and realize what unhappiness slipped by her unnoticed. This troubling event closes the chapter, and her adolescence.
...We talked all the time about these two boys. We called them F.A.'s. It stood for Fatal Attraction.
"There goes your F.A. Try not to faint" (112).
This passage is so absolutely dead on I cannot help but laugh aloud each time I read it. It perfectly captures how seriously in love adolescent girls think they are, and how heroically they bear their secret longings. It shows how curiously these boys saturate their every conscious thought: they are not so much in love with the boys as they are infatuated with the idea of being in love. It shows how funny and fun "liking" some boy can be: how it is rather a sport, a secret game between friends. The scandalous secrecy and the constant threat of exposure, embarassment and loss of dignity are exhilarating. It's like a drug: they are absolutely giddy about it. How ridiculous it all is, when they known little to nothing of the objects of their liking, when neither girl nor boy has matured enought to actually talk of love. And yet, it is through this silly business that adolescent girls mature into women.
Miss Farris in her velvet skating costume, her jaunty fur hat bobbing among the skaters, always marking her out, Miss Farris con brio, Miss Farris painting faces in the Council Chambers, Miss Farris floating face down, unprotesting, in the Wawanash River, six days before she was found. Though there is no plausible way of hanging those pictures together- if the last one is true then must it not alter the others- they are going to have to stay together now (118).
The death of Miss Farris closes “Changes and Ceremonies”. It is an unsettling, disturbing, not fully reconciled ending to a mostly joyful chapter. Juxtaposed against the mirthful absurdity of adolescent pining, it is a surprising and somewhat tragic ending. It is full of mystery, “a mystery presented without explanation and without hope of explanation, in all insolence, like a clear blue sky” (118). It makes the reader pause and realize the complexity of the reality Del lived in, and realize what unhappiness slipped by her unnoticed. This troubling event closes the chapter, and her adolescence.
Reading Response #2: "Princess Ida" and "Age of Faith"
"Age of Faith" chronicles Del and her brother's honest, funny, and touching struggles with faith and doubt. Munro illuminates the deeply personal and private nature of faith:
With the making of his prayer his face went through several desperate, private grimaces, each of which seemed to me a reproach and an exposure, hard to look at as skinned flesh. Seeing someone have faith, close up, is no easier than seeing someone chop a finger off (97).
When Del's younger brother earnestly, desperately tests out his faith in a manner which she knows is not viable, she cannot help but feel like she is looking at "skinned flesh". She feels that his inevitable failure (he prayed to save his dog from being put down) is her fault because it was she who planted the idea in his mind that prayer could alter the future (she had prayed and succeeded in avoiding a sewing assignment in school). While her prayer deals with a trivial matter, her brother's prayer involves the life of another sentient being who he loves. The chapter shows how religion confounds children. Del doesn't understand that faith invovles belief without proof. Her brother doesn't understand that prayer is only applicable to certain things. To test one's faith against something inexplicable is frustrating; to watch a loved one desperately trusting something impotent is heartbreaking.
Through "Princess Ida", the reader witnesses the changing relationship between Del and her mother. Dramatic irony is created when the reader realizes how similar Del is to her mother before Del does. For example, as Del tests the existence of god by praying to be exempted from sewing, her mother had:
Once ate cucumbers and drank milk because she had heard that this combination was poisonous and she wished to die. She was more curious than depressed. She lay down and hoped to wake in heaven, which she had heard so much about, but opened her eyes instead to another morning (64).
Both Del and her mother are immensely likable characters. They are fully fleshed out with failings and insecurities and humorous anecdotes. However, Del distances herself from her mother as she steps awkwardly into adolescence:
I felt the weight of my mother's eccentricits, of something absurd and embarassing about her- the aunts would just show me a little at a time- land on my own coward's shoulders. I did want to repudiate her, crawl into favor, orphaned, abandoned, in my wrinkled sleeves (54).
Munro has an incredibly keen eye for describing adolescent girls. Del's self-consciousness, or rather, consciousness of how others percieve her, blossoms in this section. Del starts to see herself and her mother through others' eyes: as "absurd and embarassign". She hasn't sufficently solidified her own concept of self to have enough backbone to question the qualifications of outside observers. She reminds me of my younger self - extremely serious and extremely susceptible to embarassment. Munro's characters are delightfully relatable and endearing.
Reading Response #1: "The Flat Roats" and "Heirs of the Living Body"
Del Jordan, Munro’s narrator, has an uncanny way of seeing and describing peoples’ motives. For example, she describes her mother in this way:
My mother was not popular on the Flats Road. She spoke to people here in a voice not so friendly as she used in town, with severe courtesy and a somehow noticeable use of good grammar… She was on the side of poor people everywhere, on the side of Negroes and Jews and Chinese and women, but she could not bear drunkenness, no, and she could not bear sexual looseness, dirty language, haphazard lives, contented ignorance; and so she had to exclude the Flats Road people from the really oppressed and deprived people, the real poor whom she still loved (7).
Already old enough to recognize her mother’s faults, Del describes how her mother looks down on the people of Flats Road. Close to Del’s age, I became aware of a similar fault in my own mother, but I was less deft at articulating what I felt. Del describes the small, intangible ways in which her mother snubs them, by using “a somehow noticeable use of good grammar”. Del’s mother loves the idea of caring about the weak, but she is too detached from the actual dispossessed and their miserable conditions to genuinely feel for them. In this way, she reminds me of myself and my generation in general – we champion climate change without ever setting foot in a forest, and fight about poverty in export processing zones without ever entering a factory or a slum… The detached distance with which Del describes her mother shows that she has not yet gained self-consciousness- she hasn't yet learned to be embarrassed of her parents, as teenagers are apt to be. Munro skillfully allows us to get to know Del, the person Del is describing and the relationship between them in very few words.
While Del has a precocious understanding of some aspects of the other characters, she is less eager to examine herself. When she bites Mary Agnes’s arm: “I bit and bit and broke the skin and in pure freedom thinking I had done the worst thing I would ever do, I tasted Mary Agnes Oliphant’s blood” (46), she does not admit that her exaltation stems not only from doing something wicked, but from her jealousy of Mary Agnes. The reader can sense her resentment from an earlier disclosure: “The nimble malice that danced under their courtesies to the rest of the world was entirely lacking in their attentions to each other, to brother and sister. For each other they had only tenderness and pride. And for Mary Agnes Oliphant. I could not help thinking they preferred her to me… [She], it seemed to me, was received with a more unmixed, and shining, confident affection” (33).
As Del grows, her perception of people changes. After Uncle Craig’s death, she describes Auntie Grace and Aunt Elspeth in this way:
They told their same stories, they played their same jokes, which now seemed dried out, brittle with use; in time every word, every expression of the face, every flutter of the hands came to seem something learned long ago, perfectly remembered, and each of their two selves was seen to be something constructed with terrible care; the older they got the more frail and admirable and inhuman this construction appeared (50).
This pitiful description of her aunts contrasts with her earlier, more joyful description. She is growing up as fast as they are fading away; she realizes that adults are not as omnipotent as she once thought.
I have to share one more quote from the book that almost made me cry. It’s a description of Diane, a young girl who was beat by her mentally unstable mother.
She was suspicious of toys, cookies, milk, anything we offered her, but she never whined or cried. Touched or cuddled, she submitted warily, her body giving off little tremors of dismay, her heart beating hard like the heart of a bird if you capture it in your hand. Yet she would lie on Uncle Benny’s lap or fall asleep against his shoulder, limp as spaghetti. His hand covered the bruises on her legs (16).
The contrast between the tender, damaged Diane and carefree, innocent Del is heartbreaking. Munro has a gift for depicting intriguingly human characters who are deliciously and poignantly recognizable.
My mother was not popular on the Flats Road. She spoke to people here in a voice not so friendly as she used in town, with severe courtesy and a somehow noticeable use of good grammar… She was on the side of poor people everywhere, on the side of Negroes and Jews and Chinese and women, but she could not bear drunkenness, no, and she could not bear sexual looseness, dirty language, haphazard lives, contented ignorance; and so she had to exclude the Flats Road people from the really oppressed and deprived people, the real poor whom she still loved (7).
Already old enough to recognize her mother’s faults, Del describes how her mother looks down on the people of Flats Road. Close to Del’s age, I became aware of a similar fault in my own mother, but I was less deft at articulating what I felt. Del describes the small, intangible ways in which her mother snubs them, by using “a somehow noticeable use of good grammar”. Del’s mother loves the idea of caring about the weak, but she is too detached from the actual dispossessed and their miserable conditions to genuinely feel for them. In this way, she reminds me of myself and my generation in general – we champion climate change without ever setting foot in a forest, and fight about poverty in export processing zones without ever entering a factory or a slum… The detached distance with which Del describes her mother shows that she has not yet gained self-consciousness- she hasn't yet learned to be embarrassed of her parents, as teenagers are apt to be. Munro skillfully allows us to get to know Del, the person Del is describing and the relationship between them in very few words.
While Del has a precocious understanding of some aspects of the other characters, she is less eager to examine herself. When she bites Mary Agnes’s arm: “I bit and bit and broke the skin and in pure freedom thinking I had done the worst thing I would ever do, I tasted Mary Agnes Oliphant’s blood” (46), she does not admit that her exaltation stems not only from doing something wicked, but from her jealousy of Mary Agnes. The reader can sense her resentment from an earlier disclosure: “The nimble malice that danced under their courtesies to the rest of the world was entirely lacking in their attentions to each other, to brother and sister. For each other they had only tenderness and pride. And for Mary Agnes Oliphant. I could not help thinking they preferred her to me… [She], it seemed to me, was received with a more unmixed, and shining, confident affection” (33).
As Del grows, her perception of people changes. After Uncle Craig’s death, she describes Auntie Grace and Aunt Elspeth in this way:
They told their same stories, they played their same jokes, which now seemed dried out, brittle with use; in time every word, every expression of the face, every flutter of the hands came to seem something learned long ago, perfectly remembered, and each of their two selves was seen to be something constructed with terrible care; the older they got the more frail and admirable and inhuman this construction appeared (50).
This pitiful description of her aunts contrasts with her earlier, more joyful description. She is growing up as fast as they are fading away; she realizes that adults are not as omnipotent as she once thought.
I have to share one more quote from the book that almost made me cry. It’s a description of Diane, a young girl who was beat by her mentally unstable mother.
She was suspicious of toys, cookies, milk, anything we offered her, but she never whined or cried. Touched or cuddled, she submitted warily, her body giving off little tremors of dismay, her heart beating hard like the heart of a bird if you capture it in your hand. Yet she would lie on Uncle Benny’s lap or fall asleep against his shoulder, limp as spaghetti. His hand covered the bruises on her legs (16).
The contrast between the tender, damaged Diane and carefree, innocent Del is heartbreaking. Munro has a gift for depicting intriguingly human characters who are deliciously and poignantly recognizable.
Welcome!
Welcome to my blog about Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women. This blog is a record of my exploration of Munro's classic novel. It includes my personal responses and connections to the poignant story of Del Jordan's coming-of-age. I will be analyzing "All Sacrificed for Passion", one of Polti's Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, in Del's relationship to Garnett French. With references to commentary about the novel, I will be adding my own reflections about how Munro's unique style contributes to Canadian literature. Furthermore, I hope to discover what makes Munro's writing so human and illuminating. Through this process, I hope to become a more observant reader and a more honest writer.
Enjoy!
Mimi
Enjoy!
Mimi
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