Re-visions of Alice Munro

“Vanishing” in Alice Munro’s Stories

by Jaclyn McNeely
Alice Munro’s “Carried Away” and “The Albanian Virgin” are short stories that entail several elements of disappearance. Her work of short stories is entitled Open Secrets to demonstrate the mysterious aspects of all of the pieces included. Although I
have only read two of her stories, criticisms provide background on several others and critics address the recurrent themes of Munro’s work. Through these criticisms, I was able to note that the disappearance, or “vanishing” of plot, characters, and important background information, is Munro’s unique style of writing. “Her writing calls attention to itself not to underscore disruption or narrative excess, but to note the narrative strategies--the conditions and contingencies--that allow the pieces to come together” (Nunes 1).
“Carried Away” was the first piece I was assigned to read in English 102. I enjoyed reading the fictional piece about love and heartbreak, but found myself completely unsatisfied when I reached the end. While reading, I found myself becoming frustrated and asking “who is the narrator at this point? Who is ‘he’ or ‘she’?” The point in the story where Louisa comes into contact with the deceased Jack Agnew is what I found to be the most bewildering. However, I did not go back and look at the text more closely; I brushed it off believing that I had just misread the piece. I was not worried; I fully expected to come to class and listen to an explanation of the story by Professor Czepiel.
Much to my surprise, at the next class meeting Professor Czepiel did not clarify who the mysterious Jack Agnew was. She asked the class for ideas and several were presented, but there was no definite answer. I was unable to realize this until much later in the semester, but this is Munro’s goal. There is no definite answer as to who this man is; it is open to many interpretations. Each reader can see it differently; no one is ever fully aware of what Munro is thinking.
When Jack Agnew is pursuing his love for Louisa, he lurks behind the bookshelves and desks at the library. He may have been there for hours every single day, but Louisa is never aware of his presence. In order to avoid direct contact with his crush, he does not check out the books he chooses to read; he steals them. Louisa never notices the “vanishing” books, and is perturbed to have them returned after his death with the cards still in them. The “vanishing” of library books symbolizes the disappearance of Jack, and with him Louisa’s hope for love. First the books disappear, then Jack dies, and when Louisa hears of his death, she is left with no hope and an everlasting feeling of emptiness.
Louisa never meets Jack Agnew. They share intimate love letters and Jack leads Louisa to believe that when he returns from the war they will be together. However, Jack does not inform Louisa of his impending marriage to Grace Horne. When Louisa hears about their engagement she is heartbroken. Nevertheless, she still longs to meet Jack in person at least once. Her dreams are crushed when he is killed, and leaves that chapter in her life incomplete. Munro writes:
She picked up each book separately, and shook it as if she expected something to fall out. She ran her fingers in between the pages. The bottom part of her face was working in an unsightly way, as if she was chewing the inside of her cheeks. (Carried Away 27)
Louisa is seeking some form of Jack’s life between the pages of these books, but it is as if every element of Jack has “vanished”, leaving Louisa at an eternal unease and dissatisfaction.
The only compensation Louisa receives for her loss of Jack is a strange encounter many years later. After surprisingly seeing his name in a program, Louisa comes across Jack in what seems to be a mere hallucinatory or dream-like happening. They entertain a brief conversation in which information regarding his own life seems to be misunderstood by Jack and leaves Louisa confused as to what has happened to him over the years.
Louisa’s feelings about her meeting with Jack are explained in great detail by Munro here:
No wonder she was feeling clammy. She had gone under a wave, which nobody else had noticed. You could say anything you like about what had happened—but what it amounted to was going under a wave. She had gone under and through it and was left with a cold sheen on her skin, a beating in her ears, a cavity in her chest, and revolt in her stomach. It was anarchy she was up against—a devouring muddle. Sudden holes and impromptu tricks and radiant vanishing consolations. (Carried Away 50)
Munro provides a few thought provoking suggestions about this occurrence between Jack and Louisa, but her clear idea is indefinite. The metaphor of the wave suggests that Louisa goes through an imagined situation which nobody can see but herself. She is delusional and seems to have a semi-psychotic episode at this point. Her hallucination consequently leads her to a sense of paranoia; a belief that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were intentionally causing her more pain. Munro actually uses the thematic term “vanishing” in this passage to express the anger Louisa feels toward the Tolpuddle Martyrs for presenting a consolation and immediately snatching it away. She does not realize that the consolation she imagined did not “vanish”, it never existed.
“The Albanian Virgin” contains numerous elements that coincide with “Carried Away.” Immediately readers can see a connection between the style, the role of women, the recurrence of books, and intricate love affairs. On the contrary, Munro applies her theme of “vanishing” in a different way to “The Albanian Virgin.” There seems to be a great deal of disappearing information as well as characters, and the emotion of hope possessed by Claire, much like it was by Louisa.
In writing “The Albanian Virgin”, Munro neglects to state that Charlotte’s story of “Lottar” is the story of her [Charlotte] own life. There are several implications, but as pertinent to her style, Munro only suggests rather than confirming it. Through her work at the bookstore, Claire gains the acquaintance of Charlotte. Although she is eager to work for Claire, Charlotte loses the clerk job offer to a college girl. After Charlotte exits the bookstore, the clerk says “’There’s something I ought to tell you about that woman’” (The Albanian Virgin 124). At this point the reader is eager to learn what the clerk tells Claire, but Munro continues with a drastic shift in scenery, and the information to be provided by the clerk “vanishes.”
Ironically, the opening of the next thread reads “That part is not of interest” (The Albanian Virgin 124). The voice of this statement is Charlotte but it is almost as if it is coming from Munro herself. She chooses to keep the statement of the clerk from the reader as it will reveal one of her secrets. Instead, Munro uses this “vanishing” text as another hint to the connection between Charlotte and “Lottar.”
The information detailing the occurring events after Charlotte and her husband Gjurdhi leave the hospital also seems to “vanish” from the plot of the story. Claire arrives at the hospital one day to visit Charlotte, and finds that she and her husband have moved on, leaving no information as to their whereabouts, and their reasons for fleeing are never revealed. Thus, another secret is entwined in these events.
Not only is the information of reasoning “vanished”, but the characters themselves disappear. Why the married couple flees is another question left to the reader. Very late in the English 102 course, I realized that Charlotte marries the Franciscan and ‘Gjurdhi’ is his real name. Again, essential information to the understanding the text is omitted. If the reader is aware of the marriage between the Franciscan and “Lottar”, it is more easily recognizable that the couple flees to escape the punishment of the kula. The fact that Charlotte was once an “Albanian Virgin” prohibits her from marrying, and she has obviously violated this law.
Claire’s story is the second thread included in “The Albanian Virgin.” Although somewhat alternative to Charlotte’s story, Claire’s life connects to the theme as it entails the “vanishing” of hope. Claire is unable to decide which man she should pursue a relationship with; her husband, Donald, or Nelson, the man whom with she is having an affair. Her hope is lost when she cannot choose between the two men, as stated here:
If I could have my love of these two men together, and settle it on one man, I would be a happy woman. If I could care for everybody in the world as minutely as I did for Nelson, and as calmly, as uncarnally as I did now for Donald, I would be a saint. Instead, I had dealt a twofold, a wanton seeming, blow. (The Albanian Virgin 114)
After Claire’s scandalous actions unfold, both Nelson and Donald flee from her life. Her marriage with Donald deteriorates, and eventually “vanishes”, leaving her without hope for love. Although eventually Nelson returns to her, Claire seems to be left without hope for love in her life, just as Louisa is left hopeless after Jack dies.
The theme of “vanishing” is taken from Mark Levene’s criticism entitled “’It was about vanishing’: A Glimpse of Alice Munro’s Stories.” Levene noted the same passage about “vanishing” that was used previously in this essay. He discusses several recurrences of “vanishing” such as absence, loss, and characters. Much of his criticism involved applying his ideas to many of Munro’s stories, which were not as easy to understand without having read them. However, the idea of “vanishing” can be considered a metaphorical gate that opens countless possibilities.
Levene also mentions writers who are similar to Munro in his criticism. Among them is Margaret Atwood. Because of their similarity in writing, Munro’s recurrent theme of “vanishing” can be applied to Atwood’s writing. Lucy, of “Death By Landscape” “vanishes” herself to escape from the restrictions of her life and her eternal discontent. Like in Munro’s writing, the reader is left to make the assumption that Lucy has jumped from the cliff to her death. However, her “vanishing”, contrary to Jack Agnew’s, is not only the concrete disappearance of her life.
Lucy’s body is never located. Therefore, her “vanishing” is of her body, her soul, and basically her entire existence. Atwood writes, “But Lucy is not in a box, or in the ground. Because she is nowhere definite, she could be anywhere” (Atwood 1106). Using Lucy’s situation and applying it to “Carried Away”, and “The Albanian Virgin” enable the application of Levene’s “vanishing” idea in a new light. Lucy’s “vanishing” is much like that of Charlotte and Gjurdhi. The couple is “nowhere definite”, and “could be anywhere.”
Mark Nunes writes another interesting criticism discussing Munro’s writing techniques. He uses an interesting metaphor to display her instances of “vanishing” text.
She appropriates textile crafts, and specifically patchwork "piecing”, as a thematic reminder of her own narrative technique. In doing so, she places herself in a complex tradition that pairs women's writing with knitting, stitching, and quilting. (Nunes 2)
This quotation also brings forth the use of women in her writing provoking questions as to how Munro views her female characters – does she disregard information because it demonstrates a poor image of the female race? One idea is that her information seems to “vanish” between the holes of her stitches of text because she is demonstrating her disapproval of the actions of women in society who are similar to Louisa, Claire, and Charlotte.
Munro has a distinct desire for unease and conflict. Readers feel a strong desire for a resolution in any short story. This is where Munro plays games with the reader’s mind—her personal function in writing. “Indeterminacy, instability, formal and situational emblems of transience—these elements suggest anything but an absolutist aesthetic and evoke more general accounts of women’s writing as ‘resistance to tradition’” (Levene 3). Levene’s criticism of Alice Munro’s works addresses her lack of an informative conclusion which is the element that to the reader seems to break the expected flow of a short story. The “vanishing” theme that Munro uses so frequently throughout her stories is the innovative idea that distinguishes her writing, making her an author of literary merit.

Acknowledgements
I would to thank the students in my English 102 class for their input and thoughts throughout the spring 2006 semester. Specifically, the remarks of Ashley Brown, Jared Lombardo, Jessica Dunlap, and Jessica Benoit have been particularly helpful on this specific essay. I appreciate their peer editing comments and assistance. I would also like to thank Professor Czepiel for her dedication to her students and teaching throughout the entire semester and aiding in the progression of my writing to this point.

Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. “Death By Landscape.” Thinking and Writing About Literature. 2nd
Ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2001. 1095-1106.
Levene, Mark. “’It was about vanishing’: A Glimpse of Alice Munro’s Stories.”
University of Toronto Quarterly. 68.4. (Fall 1999). UTPJournals.com. April 18,
2006. <http://www.utpjournals.com/product/utq/684/684_levene.htm>. 1-15.
Munro, Alice. “The Albanian Virgin.” Open Secrets. New York: Vintage
Contemporaries, 1994. 81-128.
----------------. “Carried Away.” Open Secrets. 3-51.
Nunes, Mark. “Postmodern ‘piecing’: ontologies Alice Munro’s contingent.” Studies in
Short Fiction. (Winter 1997). May 2, 2006. <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2455/is_n1_v34/ai_20925782>. 1-21.

O’Malley 1
Patricia O’Malley
Prof. Czepiel
English 102
May 5, 2006
Essay IV

Reader Connections

Munro has a very unique writing style which greatly changes the way that each reader interprets her text. She uses her fictional stories as an attempt to truly make an impact on the life or experience of the reader. Many fiction writers do not have the ability to focus on anything except the storyline. Munro, however, takes the reader further than the storyline pulling their attention away from the words on the pages, and toward the connections between the characters and the connections to the realistic parallels to their own life experiences.
Munro writes with many holes throughout her stories. She leaves these as space to keep her stories realistic, “in terms of the short story, particularly as shaped by Munro and Gallant in their concerns with absence, displacement, and the boundaries of language, art is short and so is life” (Levene par 4). Munro’s holes encourage readers to use their imaginations. In Munro’s short story, “Open Secrets,” the readers are left with a gap between the young girls on a camping trip and their friend Heather’s disappearance, to when they are older and have their own adult lives. The hole must be filled with the personal parallels of the reader by using their own life experiences as guidelines. This is what makes each reader’s experience different when reading Munro’s writing. Their own
O’Malley 2
experiences cause different lessons to be learned from each of her pieces. A reader will only pick up on the most important points of Munro’s pieces that they can relate to. This is a very unique approach to fictional writing. It is another way that she changes the normalcy of most other authors. She does not write with a purpose of telling a fictional story, but rather with a purpose of teaching life lessons that all can relate to and learn from. The gaps that she leaves also are another example of where the reader can use their imagination by forming their own connections between the characters. This can influence other relationships that the readers have within their own lives and can be applied positively and/or negatively. “The imagination, Munro implies, flattens against the rock of simple mortality and inevitable loss, producing an elegiac note in recognition of the unknowable” (Levene par 17). Each individual’s imagination will carry them to their own conclusions.
Munro’s writing can also initially be confusing to read because it jumps around a great deal. She often writes jumping between two or more different story lines. One good example of this is in her short story, “Carried Away.” The story begins with only a short plot about what Louisa is doing in her own life and then jumps into letters written from a character that we do not know. Before we are even aware of whom the other person is that Louisa is corresponding with, we are faced with another plot of a past love from Louisa’s life. The story then follows with more letters between Louisa and Jack. Before the reader gets too focused on the letters again, the story jumps back to everyday events in Louisa’s life. Although this is extremely confusing for readers at first, this technique of jumping around is very purposeful for Munro. She allows the reader only to
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receive the information that they need while reading, rather than focusing too much on Louisa’s initial love interest of Jack Agnew. The story even then continues with many other plots of Louisa’s life and new love for her husband, Arthur, and then shifts back to Jack. This is also another way that Munro keeps her writing realistic. Life is not always laid out exactly how we want it to be, especially in the manner of love. By making her writing this way, it is easier for the readers to make the parallels to their own experiences. Critic Geddes says, “short-story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing one can be sure of – the present moment” (Levene par 5). When reading fiction, many readers get trapped into feeling as though they are just taking in another story, but Munro tries to change this way of seeing fictional short-stories by bringing the reader into the story itself making them a part of the experience rather than an on-looker.
Munro’s stories are often written without definite introductions or conclusions. She starts right into the stories. This is again a place where the readers must make their own inferences on the background information and result of the stories. Without background information, readers can focus more on exactly what idea Munro is trying to portray in her stories. Their minds are focused more on why things are happening within the time period presented, rather than looking to the past to find out the answers. “Although Munro refrains from using an omniscient narrator blatantly to control readers' responses to the characters and their actions” (Beran par 10). By leaving conclusions out of her stories, it is made clear that she feels it is not the author’s purpose only to tell a story with a definite ending, but rather to say something different. To show the reader that she has given you the information that you need to form the proper conclusions based on your own self both as a reader and as a person.
One example besides “Carried Away” where Munro feels no need for introduction or conclusion is in her short story “Open Secrets.” This story begins as one of young girls camping in Canada. Munro begins to describe how one of the girls goes missing then suddenly, she jumps to the future talking about the young girl’s lives as adults. At first, readers are focused on what happened to the missing girl, but as they continue to read they are drawn to forcing connections between the two other stories presented and how they can give answers to the character’s disappearance. Now the reader is no longer focusing on the original plot line, but rather trying to make connections between all the information presented. The reader must use his or her own imagination to make these connections which carries them into their own life parallels. The intended conclusion is clearer in “Open Secrets” than in “Carried Away” although it is still not directly written out. In “Open Secrets,” it is a theme of being lost. Even without technically disappearing as the character Heather Bell does, Maureen feels lost within her own life. She keeps secrets that prevent her from having a truly open lifestyle and trap her into her marriage. In “Carried Away” the theme is more unclear even at the conclusion of the text. As it’s title states, the story is about being carried away in many different aspects of a person’s life. Louisa is carried away by her different feelings for Jack and her husband. Jack is carried away by his feelings for Louisa while he is at war, even though he has a fiancée at home. Arthur is carried away by both the books that he reads and the way that they draw him into his love for Louisa. With each character’s emotional confusions throughout both of these short stories, readers can see that emotional struggle is something that all humans feel and can sometimes even give answers to some readers’ personal emotional dilemmas.
Munro chooses her titles very carefully to guide the readers. By describing the main themes in her stories in the title, the reader can have a general idea to map out their interpretations while reading. Many readers can relate to these themes that Munro presents and therefore read her writing differently than any other fictional pieces. Love is a theme that is carried throughout both “Carried Away” and “Open Secrets.” Munro shows how love can do many things to us which can be both good and bad. This is something that everyone can relate to and have an interest in making parallels to while they read. Specifically in these stories she focuses on how love takes people to a new place, whether it is an obsession with someone they can’t have as in “Carried Away” or a need to hide from someone that they are supposed to love as in “Open Secrets.” When Maureen refers to her reaction after a sexual encounter with her husband she says, “she was able to look into the bathroom mirror, and move her eyebrows, her lips and jaws, around to bring her expression back to normal” (Open 156). She only has a few times where her and her husband do express their love, but each time she is forced to pretend as though she is happy rather than escape and follow her true feelings. Keeping her true feelings inside is Maureen’s secret that is made open to us only as readers. These stories make readers think about what different emotions do to them and how much they allow them to control who they really are. Also, continuing with Munro’s gaps that she leaves in her writing, this is true of love in real life. Nothing is ever perfect, and it is unfair, therefore, to write stories as if they were perfect as well. This is a tearing of her emotions as many readers can relate to.
Many readers feel lost the first time that they are reading Munro. She writes on a level beyond what many other authors are capable of. Munro forces her readers into making connections, using not only the depth of her writing to show this, but also the structure and wording, “there is a painful tension between the story’s rhythm and our own ‘life rhythms,’ between presented, shaped narrative and our own jagged, graceless life stories” (Levene par 3). Many humans have a tendency to attempt to block out the pains or struggles within their life. They believe that by ignoring them long enough, they will simply go away. Munro is forcing the reader to look at even the painful experiences and show readers that the only way for them to truly be healed, is to face them head on. Munro uses her unique characters as avenues to show this to her readers. The main character in Carried Away, Louisa, allows herself to be distracted by a man she has never even met, Jack Agnew, through only the letters that he writes to her from war. When Arthur begins to come to the library frequently, Louisa begins to be distracted and ignores her feelings for Jack. It becomes very relateable for readers in the sense that “the romantic quality of the relationship between Louisa and Jack Agnew against the more sordid quality of her involvements with the married doctor” (Beran par 8). People with deep feelings for someone understand the hardships that Louisa faces between comparing within her heart what she believes to be her true love, Jack, and the man that she is married to. Eventually, Louisa’s ignorance catches up with her. She realizes that the life she has lead since she has last thought of Jack was not her way of moving on with her life completely, but rather her pushing him far enough back in her head only to be remembered and dealt with later. This is an example that readers can see causes emotional struggles for Louisa. When reading, people can relate these same emotions to their own experiences and learn from Munro’s characters.
When a reader is faced with making the connections to their own lives within the stories of Munro’s characters, they are forced to look at their problems from all angles. It can be scary for many readers, but it is Munro’s true goal in writing in this way. Her depth of both words and characters allows readers to make connections to her pieces in ways that they have not previously experienced. Rather than absorbing just another fictional storyline, they are reading something which forces them to use their own imaginations and experiences to be able to make parallels. Without those parallels Munro’s stories do not make sense. When someone reads a work they are always trying to make sense of it. This is what Munro uses as her key into the reader’s personal self, rather than just using them as a reader of words on a page.

Acknowledgements
There are many people that I would like to thank with their assistance to me on this essay. First I would like to thank Caroline Valdini for proof-reading my paper. Also, I would like to thank all of my classmates for assisting me in getting my ideas flowing about the pieces that we read and sparking my main idea for this piece. Finally, I would like to thank my professor, Professor Czepiel for her helpful assistance and private conferencing to make this essay as strong as I wanted it to be.

Works Cited
Beran, Carol L. “Thomas Hardy, Alice Munro, and the question of influence.”
American Review of Canadian Studies. Infotrac. (Summer 1999).
1-19. courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_34856_1>
Geddes, Gary. ed. The Art of Short Fiction: An International Anthology. Toronto:
HarperCollins 1993. qtd. in Mark Levene. “ ‘It was about Vanishing’: A Glimpse
of Alice Munro’s Stories.” University of Toronto Quarterly 68.4 (Fall 1999). UTPJournals.com. 1-15. Feb. 13 2006. 684_levene.htm>
Levene, Mark. “ ‘It was about Vanishing’: A Glimpse of Alice Munro’s Stories.”
Munro, Alice. “Carried Away.” Open Secrets. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. 3-51.
---. “Open Secrets.” Open Secrets. 129-160.