Alice Munro

More Than a Writer

In order to escape from the hardships of today's society without taking a vacation, many people turn to reading. Reading for pleasure has become more popular in the past century than it has ever been before. Alice Munro is a fascinating Canadian short story writer whose stories can take readers to a much needed get away. Alice Laidlaw was born on July 10, 1931, the eldest of three siblings, born to Robert Laidlaw, a fox farmer, and Anne Clark Laidlaw, a teacher. Alice began writing as a teenager in the 1940's. She published her first story while a student at the Western Ontario University. In 1951, she married James Armstrong Munro and moved to Vancouver, where she had three children. After twenty years of marriage, they called it quits and divorced. In 1976, she remarried a man named Gerald Fremlin. Through her first marriage and now through her second, she has been writing magnificent short stories and has received many awards for her accomplishments throughout the years. Alice Munro is an amazing writer and reveals spectacular themes in her short stories "How I Met My Husband," "Floating Bridge," and "What Is Remembered."

In the short story "How I Met My Husband," the theme of the best goods in life are there all along is conveyed. Edie, an unschooled girl, is working for the Peebles family one summer when a stranger comes along and steals her heart away. He is an older man, and being a foolish young girl she thinks that he really cares for her. "I am going to write you a letter. I'll tell you where I am and maybe you can come see me. Would you like that? Okay then. You wait" (Munro 136). He promises her he will write, and for months after that she sits and waits daily for the mail to come, not realizing she had a future husband waiting there for her the entire time. She later marries the mailman and he truly believes that she was waiting for him. "He always tells the children the story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day" (Munro 140). This story displays the quest for fulfillment by girls and women (Baron 2). Edie "discovers that the human inclination to pursue wished-for truths that often turn out to be forms of self- deception" (Baron 2). At the end of the story, Edie finds the happiness she longed for from the beginning, with a perfect husband.

"Floating Bridge" is a short story that teaches accepting life for what it is. Jinny is terminally ill with cancer, so she and her husband decide to hire a young girl to help them. "This is Helen... This is the girl that is going to look after us from now on" (Munro 60). Jinny has always envisioned that since her husband is sixteen years older than she that she would be the one to take care of him as he grows old and feeble. It haunts her to think that it is going to be the other way around. "She had asked him if he got used to the idea [of her dying] yet. He shook his head" (Munro 60). The couple ends up at Helen's old house in order to get some of her things. Neal (Jinny's husband) goes into the house, and Jinny refuses to get out of the car so she decides to just sit around and wait on them outside. She is in her own world when Ricky rides up. He is the son of June (the owner of the house) and he is full of life. Seeing, though, that Jinny is tired, he tells her he will drive her home. Instead of taking her straight home, he takes her to his special place, a floating bridge. "The floating bridge, providing an uneasy security above dark and mysterious water, is a spatial metaphor for Jinny's situation that holds together the thematic elements of this story" (May 2). Ricky kisses Jinny on this bridge. "He kissed her mouth" (Munro 85). He does not kiss her out of sexual desire but more out of acceptance. Ricky, in a sense, sets Jinny free and helps her to come to peace with her illness. "When