STORIES AND STORYTELLING IN ALICE MUNRO'S FICTION By J. CHRISTINE SOMERVILLE B.A., Queen's University at Kingston, Ont., 1959 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the reguired standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 1985 © Christine Somerville, 1985 22 In presenting t h is t h e s is in p a r t i al f u l f i l m e nt of t he requirements f or an advanced degree at t he U n i v e r s i ty of B r i t i sh Columbia, I agree that t he L i b r a ry s h a ll make it f r e e ly a v a i l a b le f or reference and study. I f u r t h er agree that permission f or extensive copying of t h is t h e s is f or s c h o l a r ly purposes may be granted by t he head of my department or by h is or h er r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s. It is understood that copying or p u b l i c a t i on of t h is t h e s is for f i n a n c i al gain s h a ll n ot be allowed without my w r i t t en permission. Department of E n g l i sh The U n i v e r s i ty of B r i t i sh Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3 Date April 25. 1985. ii- Abstract References to stories and storytelling appear throughout Alice Munro1s five short story cycles: DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES, LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN, SOMETHING I'VE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? and THE. MOONS OF JUPITER. This thesis contends that stories—mentioned briefly or recounted at length—provide counterpoint to experience for Munro's characters. Oral and written stories influence them throughout life, but especially in youth, when they eagerly identify with, and imitate, fictional figures. In LIVES and WHO, storytelling becomes central because their protagonists are a writer and an actress. Occasionally, the narrators in a ll five works reflect on the difficulty of expressing truth in fiction, but SOMETHING raises this issue repeatedly. By embedding stories within her narratives, Munro imitates the workings of memory; moreover, she draws attention to her narratives as texts rather than glimpses of reality. A feminine perspective on narrative gradually emerges, in which the woman narrator sees her task not as imposing order, but as discovering order that already exists. Table of Contents Abstract ii Short Titles iv Acknowledgements V Introduction 1 Chapter One 7 Chapter Two 43 Chapter Three 73 Chapter Four 102 Chapter Five 126 Conclusion 164 Bibliography 168 iv • Short Titles The following short titles for Alice Munro's works are used in the text: DANCE for DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES LIVES for LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN SOMETHING for SOMETHING I'VE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU WHO for WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? MOONS for THE MOONS OF JUPITER V Acknowledgements For generously giving so much time to this thesis, I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Donald G. Stephens, whose wit and judgement sustained me throughout the entire project. For reading the penultimate draft and advising on i ts argument and style, I am indebted to Dr. Margaret Howard Blom and Mrs. Marya E. Hardman. I also gratefully acknowledge Mrs. Hardman's suggestion that I explore the connection between Gluck's ORPHEO and Alice Munro's DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES, an idea which Chapter One develops at length. Finally, I thank my mother, Beatrice Bryce, with whom I have discussed Alice Munro for years, and Richard, my husband, who has helped me every bit and byte of the way. •1 Introduction Forrest L. Ingram defines the short story cycle as "a set of stories so linked to one another that the reader's experience of each one is modified by his experience of the others " ."^ The separate stories within the cycle exhibit greater autonomy than do chapters in a novel, but s t i ll form a unified whole. For the reader of a short story cycle bi-focal vision is required in order to see clearly both the individual story at close range and the entire work at a distance. For the writer too, the form is a demanding one, in that the inner pattern of the individual story must be balanced against the unifying pattern of the entire work. According to Ingram, the unity of a short story cycle may be apparent (where a single narrative consciousness is used) or hidden (where the stories are linked through theme, setting, or imagery, rather than narrative voice). Alice Munro has published five short story cycles between 1968 and 1982. LIVES (1971) and WHO (1978) show apparent unity as a result of the narrative focusing on a single protagonist; DANCE (1968), SOMETHING (1974) and MOONS (1982) exemplify hidden unity. This study of Munro's short story cycles seeks to explain why the word "story", as well as related words such as "legend" and "tale", recurs so frequently in her fiction. As these words proliferate, they signal the importance of 2 stories in the lives of Munro1s characters. Moreover, by repeatedly mentioning stories, she draws attention to her own text as a text, and reminds the reader that the narrator is an interpreter of truth whose point-of-view is not entirely objective. By offering numerous realistic details to her readers, Munro brings them close to her characters. But, the stories her characters tell one another are often so exaggerated, grotesque, or otherwise unconvincing as to draw the reader back from the text and arouse his skepticism. Frequent references to stories appear in a ll five cycles, establishing a motif which offers a way into Munro's prose, which, while generally admired by critics and general readers alike, has an elusive quality that baffles analysis. Even the author herself claims to be unable to understand how her stories work. Discussing Munro1s 1981 interview with Tim Struthers, Eva-Marie Kroller observes that Munro 2 seems reluctant to articulate the secrets of her craft. It may be that Munro is unable, rather than unwilling, to analyse her own work. Her approach to writing is more like that of priestess to sacred spring than craftsman to craft. As she admits in an essay she wrote to accompany two of her early stories in THE NARRATIVE VOICE, "Writing or talking about writing makes(herj superstitiously 3 uncomfortable". Her attitude to the creative process is one of gratitude for gifts received; she neither claims responsibility for inventing her stories, nor inquires into 3 the wellspring of her writing. The one thing that she always claims is that stories embody the truth. She pays tribute to their importance by giving narrative anecdotes prominence in a ll her fiction. Often she treats storytelling at length, when the narrator describes a character retelling an incident from the past, or reciting a poem from memory, reading a newspaper story, writing or reading a letter. At other times, the reference to storytelling may be as cryptic as a book title mentioned in conversation or glimpsed on a shelf. Even more subtly, the reference may appear in the story cycle as a metaphoric pattern which runs parallel with a myth or a fairytale. Everyone, these story cycles suggest, is a storyteller because everyone remembers his own past, and looks for meaning in his memories. The professional storyteller—the writer, actress or other a r t i s t — d i f f e rs from others only in succumbing to the temptation to tell his story to a wider audience than the self or immediate family. Of course, storytelling that aspires to be art must satisfy stricter aesthetic standards than would be applied to the average storyteller recounting an anecdote; however, both the ordinary person and the artist share a common desire to discover truth through their fictions. The assumption that the essence of being alive is having a voice in which to tell one's story underlies a ll of Munro's fiction. Therefore, words are respected, held 4 almost in awe: they are italicized, repeated, their sounds and meanings discussed; they puzzle children who misuse and misunderstand them; they continue to struggle out of the mouths of the old, the sick, and the confused. In these stories, people go on talking as long as they are able to utter words. A senile old woman who can no longer carry on a conversation will s t i ll respond to a word said in her presence by spelling i t; a man who has lost the ability to form words clearly as a result of a stroke will s t i ll grunt anh-anh-anh, in a travesty of speech. Even when the aged stop talking, as the once garrulous Flo does in WHO, their silence is eloquent. This study examines Munro1s five published collections separately and in chronological order. Chapter One considers DANCE (19 68) , in which stories influence children as they learn about the world around them, form personalities and store up memories. Chapter Two is devoted to LIVES (1971), in which stories influence the development of a young writer, Del Jordan. Chapter Three analyses SOMETHING (1974), in which Munro experiments with point-of-view and explores the limits of storytelling. Chapter Four examines WHO (19 78), in which storytelling becomes a compulsion. Finally, Chapter Five, discusses MOONS (1982), in which stories reveal differences between male and female ways of thinking. Storytelling, then, is a common thread which runs through Alice Munro's fiction. Frequent references to