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.