27/11/24
Lecture 14: Alice Munro’s ‘Open Secrets’ (1994)
Aims of the lecture:
1. Introduce Alice Munro and her collection of short stories, Open Secrets and
consider how the term 'feminist writer' may be applied to her.
2. Briefly examine each of these short stories
3. Discuss in more detail two stories: 'Carried Away' and 'The Albanian Virgin'
1. Focus on various key aspects of Munro's writing style, including
2. The significance of letter writing
3. Her diversely shifting time scales
4. The importance of photographs and visual images
5. The relationship between aging and the role of women in society
● Constant struggle between what the writer wishes to communicate and what appears
on the page. Focused upon the interaction between men and women. Constant
misunderstandings between women and men.
● Notorious for rewriting many of her stories. She sees prose as fluid - for every text
there may be transformations.
● Munro exploits the epistolary form within many of her stories to challenge the linear
progression of time. She also uses shifting time scales. Throughout her novels, she
highlights the importance of photographs and visual images.
● Entrapment of women in society: the relationship between aging and the role of
women in society.
Carried Away: Louisa, a lovely small town librarian in Carstairs, Alberta, exchanges letters
with Jack Agnew, a soldier from her town who is fighting in WW1. She keeps the library open
throughout the Spanish flu (1918-20), hoping to see him but she doesn’t realise that he is
already engaged. She recounts her story to a travelling salesman in the hotel where she
lives and he seduces her. The soldier returns home, marries his fiancée but is killed in a
tragic accident with a buzzsaw in the factory where he works. Louisa eventually marries the
factory owner and many years later when she is ill and widowed, she meets a man in
London, Ontario, whom she thinks is the long dead soldier.
A Real Life: Dorrie Beck, an independent, middle-aged woman who is a mink-trapper is
unwillingly getting married to a rich Australian, Mr Speirs, whom she has met only once at a
dinner party hosted by Murie who, with a friend Millicent, prepares her wedding dress. In the
day of the wedding, Dorrie insists that she doesn’t want to get Muriel persuades her to go
through with it so that she can have a ‘real life’ and she grows rich in Australia.
The Albanian Virgin: Lottar is a young Canadian whose guide is killed in Albania. She is
taken in by a local tribe and to be sold as the bride for a Muslim. However, a priest
intervenes and she chooses to live like a man, provided she remains a virgin and never
marries. The narrative is recounted later in Victoria by an elderly eccentric figure to a
bookstore owner. The storyteller, Charlotte, maybe Lottar - or perhaps not.
, Open Secrets: During a Girl-Guide overnight camping trip, a young girl disappears. The
narrator, Maureen, recalls going on the same trip and tires to work out what might have
happened. A couple claim to Maureen’s husband, who is a lawyer, that they saw some
events which may be connected to the girl’s disappearance. Her aged husband who has a
stroke demands sexual gratification from Maureen and she experiences some kind of vision
in which she sees the husband of the couple who had come to her husband who was
responsible for the girl’s murder and his wife has provided him with an alibi.
Alice Munro (1931-2024)
● Nobel Prize for literature (2013).
● ‘Canadian Chekhov’.
● Fictions are often set in southwestern Ontario
● Irish and Scottish descent.
Alice Munro and Stefan Åsberg, ‘In Her Own Words: Novel Lecture in Absentia’.
● The Identity of the Feminist Writer: 1950-2020.
● ‘I never thought of it being important, but I never thought of myself as being anything
but a woman, and there were many good stories about little girls and women. After
you got maybe into your teens, it was more about helping the man to achieve his
need and so on, but when I was a young girl I had no feeling of inferiority at all about
being a woman. And this may have been because I lived in a part of Ontario where
women did most of the reading, telling most of the stories, the men were outside
doing important things, they didn’t go in for stories. So I felt quite at home’.
● ‘I never knew about the word ‘feminism’, but of course I was a feminist, because I
actually grew up in a part of Canada where women could write more easily than
men. The big, important writers would be men, but knowing that a woman wrote
stores. Because it was not a man’s occupation. Well, that was very much in my
youth, it’s not that way at all now’.
● ‘Naturally, my stories were about women - I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term
is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by
‘feminist’. In the beginning I used to say, well of course, I’m a feminist. But if it means
that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not. I think
I’m a feminist as far as thinking the experience of women is important. That is really
the basis of feminism’.
‘Carried Away’- what is a letter lies at the very heart of this short story. Complexities
through the letter writing.
● 1917: Louisa, the librarian of the small town of Carstairs, Alberta, Canada - lives in
the local hotel. A local man, Jack Agnew, writes to her from the front during WW1.
● Their correspondence grows more intimate - Jack requests a photograph of her - he
professes his love and when the war ends Louisa keeps the library open - even
during the prolonged outbreak of the Spanish Flu - in the hope that he would come to
see her.
● 1919: She does not know that he was already engaged and he marries his
hometown fiancée - Louis is seduced in the hotel by Jim Farley, a travelling
salesman.
Lecture 14: Alice Munro’s ‘Open Secrets’ (1994)
Aims of the lecture:
1. Introduce Alice Munro and her collection of short stories, Open Secrets and
consider how the term 'feminist writer' may be applied to her.
2. Briefly examine each of these short stories
3. Discuss in more detail two stories: 'Carried Away' and 'The Albanian Virgin'
1. Focus on various key aspects of Munro's writing style, including
2. The significance of letter writing
3. Her diversely shifting time scales
4. The importance of photographs and visual images
5. The relationship between aging and the role of women in society
● Constant struggle between what the writer wishes to communicate and what appears
on the page. Focused upon the interaction between men and women. Constant
misunderstandings between women and men.
● Notorious for rewriting many of her stories. She sees prose as fluid - for every text
there may be transformations.
● Munro exploits the epistolary form within many of her stories to challenge the linear
progression of time. She also uses shifting time scales. Throughout her novels, she
highlights the importance of photographs and visual images.
● Entrapment of women in society: the relationship between aging and the role of
women in society.
Carried Away: Louisa, a lovely small town librarian in Carstairs, Alberta, exchanges letters
with Jack Agnew, a soldier from her town who is fighting in WW1. She keeps the library open
throughout the Spanish flu (1918-20), hoping to see him but she doesn’t realise that he is
already engaged. She recounts her story to a travelling salesman in the hotel where she
lives and he seduces her. The soldier returns home, marries his fiancée but is killed in a
tragic accident with a buzzsaw in the factory where he works. Louisa eventually marries the
factory owner and many years later when she is ill and widowed, she meets a man in
London, Ontario, whom she thinks is the long dead soldier.
A Real Life: Dorrie Beck, an independent, middle-aged woman who is a mink-trapper is
unwillingly getting married to a rich Australian, Mr Speirs, whom she has met only once at a
dinner party hosted by Murie who, with a friend Millicent, prepares her wedding dress. In the
day of the wedding, Dorrie insists that she doesn’t want to get Muriel persuades her to go
through with it so that she can have a ‘real life’ and she grows rich in Australia.
The Albanian Virgin: Lottar is a young Canadian whose guide is killed in Albania. She is
taken in by a local tribe and to be sold as the bride for a Muslim. However, a priest
intervenes and she chooses to live like a man, provided she remains a virgin and never
marries. The narrative is recounted later in Victoria by an elderly eccentric figure to a
bookstore owner. The storyteller, Charlotte, maybe Lottar - or perhaps not.
, Open Secrets: During a Girl-Guide overnight camping trip, a young girl disappears. The
narrator, Maureen, recalls going on the same trip and tires to work out what might have
happened. A couple claim to Maureen’s husband, who is a lawyer, that they saw some
events which may be connected to the girl’s disappearance. Her aged husband who has a
stroke demands sexual gratification from Maureen and she experiences some kind of vision
in which she sees the husband of the couple who had come to her husband who was
responsible for the girl’s murder and his wife has provided him with an alibi.
Alice Munro (1931-2024)
● Nobel Prize for literature (2013).
● ‘Canadian Chekhov’.
● Fictions are often set in southwestern Ontario
● Irish and Scottish descent.
Alice Munro and Stefan Åsberg, ‘In Her Own Words: Novel Lecture in Absentia’.
● The Identity of the Feminist Writer: 1950-2020.
● ‘I never thought of it being important, but I never thought of myself as being anything
but a woman, and there were many good stories about little girls and women. After
you got maybe into your teens, it was more about helping the man to achieve his
need and so on, but when I was a young girl I had no feeling of inferiority at all about
being a woman. And this may have been because I lived in a part of Ontario where
women did most of the reading, telling most of the stories, the men were outside
doing important things, they didn’t go in for stories. So I felt quite at home’.
● ‘I never knew about the word ‘feminism’, but of course I was a feminist, because I
actually grew up in a part of Canada where women could write more easily than
men. The big, important writers would be men, but knowing that a woman wrote
stores. Because it was not a man’s occupation. Well, that was very much in my
youth, it’s not that way at all now’.
● ‘Naturally, my stories were about women - I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term
is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by
‘feminist’. In the beginning I used to say, well of course, I’m a feminist. But if it means
that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not. I think
I’m a feminist as far as thinking the experience of women is important. That is really
the basis of feminism’.
‘Carried Away’- what is a letter lies at the very heart of this short story. Complexities
through the letter writing.
● 1917: Louisa, the librarian of the small town of Carstairs, Alberta, Canada - lives in
the local hotel. A local man, Jack Agnew, writes to her from the front during WW1.
● Their correspondence grows more intimate - Jack requests a photograph of her - he
professes his love and when the war ends Louisa keeps the library open - even
during the prolonged outbreak of the Spanish Flu - in the hope that he would come to
see her.
● 1919: She does not know that he was already engaged and he marries his
hometown fiancée - Louis is seduced in the hotel by Jim Farley, a travelling
salesman.
