Alice Munro

Term Paper # 100102

English > Analysis
Literature > Canadian

Alice Munro

An analysis of the impact that growing up in small town had on Alice Munro's stories.

716 words () | 4 sources | MLA | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how growing up in a small town influenced Alice Munro's stories in many important ways. It looks at how at times it disempowers her characters, at other times it motivates them so much that the town itself becomes a major factor in driving the plot. It also discusses how on a more complex level, the setting impacts the story in the sense of being a foil against which Munro can juxtapose the more bizarre elements of her stories, as her characters reflect their author's alienation from their prosaic settings.

From the Paper:

"For example, Fowler points out that in Lives of Girls and Women, Del escapes the prosaic reality of the small town Jubilee in which she lives, by inventing a world based on the novels she reads, and keeps her fragmentary novel inside a copy of Wuthering Heights. We see Del facing challenges that must surely have beset Munro, such as trying to decide how her heroine can drown at the height of summer, when of course there will not be enough water in the river. Thus, the impact of the small town setting is to set up imaginative challenges for the protagonist. "

Sample of Sources Used:

Fowler, Rowena. "The Art of Alice Munro: the Beggar Maid and Lives of Girls and Women." Critique 25.4 (1984): 189-198.
Martin, W. R. Alice Munro: Paradox and Parallel. Edmonton, Alta.: University of Alberta Press, 1987.
Struthers, J. R. (Tim). "Alice Munro." In A Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English. Ed. Erin Fallon, et al. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. 288-295.
Thomas, Sue. "Reading Female Sexual Desire in Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women." Critique 36.2 (1995): 107-120.