The Fascinating Pain; the Humiliating Necessity

Abstract

<p>The following study of Alice Munro's collections of short stories, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Moons of Jupiter, and The Progress of Love, closely examines the feminine perception of human relationships and traces Munro's theme of lithe pain of human contact. Chapter I explores the changing perception of life and relationships as seen through the eyes of the central character of Who Do You Think You Are? and discusses the paradoxical view of life articulated by Munro, a view which asks that the abuse which characters inflict upon one another be seen as both savage and splendid, as perversely necessary in any relationship between her characters. This idea of a necessary pain is discussed in Chapter II in light of Munro's more intense fascination with it in The Moons of Jupiter. Her vision of the humiliating necessity of inflicting and enduring pain does not, however, culminate in a clearly-defined resolution to the paradoxes of experience; indeed, The Moons of Jupiter suggests Munro's growing hesitancy to solve the puzzles of human experience. Chapter II also examines Munro's experimentation with narrative time shifts and discusses this new interest in technique as it pertains to her preoccupation with the disparity between illusion and reality in the lives of her characters. The shifting back and forth between past and present is a technique which Munro continues to employ in her next work, The Progress of Love, which I examine in Chapter III. This most recent work, like Who Do You Think You Are? and The Moons of Jupiter, looks closely at the delicate moments of exposure in experience and at the necessary painfulness of those moments, but with a difference. In The Progress of Love Munro seems to allow her characters moments of serenity and moments of self-knowledge; the feminine perception of experience has altered to the degree that her characters appear able to move beyond disillusionment through to a kind of survival of those moments of exposure which in the Moons of Jupiter appear to overwhelm and almost paralyze the characters. </p>