Unraveling Gender Dynamics: A Feminist Analysis of “Dear Life” by Alice Munro

Bethany Andrews

The short story, Dear Life by Alice Munro, is an autobiographical telling of Munro’s childhood in rural Canada. This story mainly focuses on Munro’s relationship with her mother as her mother’s health declines. Dear Life is told from Munro’s perspective as memories of her youth and as the oldest child and it is full of traditional gender stereotypes that were common for the time, but through the feminist lens this this story can be analyzed to show how the patriarchal standards of the time influenced the author’s life and how she writes about herself and women.

Under the feminist lens character autonomy must be looked at. Munro in this story does not have her own autonomy in the beginning because as a young girl, her parents control her life. At first, she is expected to help her father with their fox farm, and later she begins to take over the cooking and cleaning as her mother’s health declines. Her mother is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease so as the oldest, Munro has more responsibilities thrust upon her. With her father working away from home Munro must cook dinner and pester her younger siblings to do their chores. During this time Munro does not subvert the expectations placed upon her because while her mother’s health is declining, her family knows it will only get worse: “But the strange thing is I don’t remember that time as unhappy.” (Munro 3)

But Munro stays in school longer than most of her peers. It was not common as most girls in her area would get pregnant or married and boys would drop out to work. Munro’s ability to finish high school is evidence that she fought for her own autonomy. She mentions an old friend’s grandmother and a neighbor who both are surprised that Munro is taking so long to finish school. Instead of following social expectations she finishes high school. “I felt as if I were a lifetime away from most of the people I had known in grade nine, let alone in that first school” (Munro 2)

Alice Munro does not refer to herself as a feminist and she has said that her stories are not explicitly for women but are for everyone. She only thinks of what is going on in her story and does not think of feminism when she writes because, like the women she writes about, she doesn’t want to have another person’s view thrust upon her. The Cambridge Companion to Alice Munro states “Munro’s implicit feminism is encoded in various forms on the inextricably connected levels of story and discourse” (Löshnigg 61). While she doesn’t refer to herself as a feminist, Dear Life allows for a feminist reading because these cultural norms that Munro writes about have been experienced by herself and other women.

Alice Munro was born in 1931 and grew up in a rural Canadian town. She was the eldest child of her family. Dear Life takes place mostly in the 1940s when gender roles were more rigid. Munro writes that during this time her father’s family looked down on the ways her mother did things. The mother-in-law disapproved of Munro’s mother’s cooking and how she changed clothes in the afternoon. “I think of how she used to wear an afternoon dress, even if she was only washing things at the sink” (Munro 4). Munro writes that because her mother grew up on a farm, she was supposed to look like it and trying to better herself was the wrong thing to do.

Munro speaks less of her relationship with her father but what she does say about him indicates that he was the head of the house. Her father worked on their farm until it was no longer profitable and then he worked outside of the home. When Munro was younger, she helped her father on their farm until her brother was old enough to help out instead. Then she went to help her mother in the home. Munro’s father is also in charge of disciplining the children. She writes that when she talks back to her mother the mother would have her father punish her with beatings from his belt in the dining room. “The outcome was she would go to the barn to tell on me, to my father.” (Munro 2) While Munro looks at these instances with embarrassment it is important to note that her mother defers to her husband because gender roles dictated that the husband was the head of the family.

Dear Life also focuses heavily on the relationship between Munro and her mother. Munro’s mother’s health is declining in this story and it is Munro’s responsibility to pick up the chores that her mother can no longer do. She also discusses stories that her mother would tell her about another woman in the neighborhood. In one of these stories Munro’s mother was nervous that Mrs. Netterfield was going to snatch infant Munro from her baby carrier. Munro’s mother then talks about how she hid inside of her house holding her baby despite the fact that there is no evidence that Mrs. Netterfield is going to do anything to the child. Munro is aware of her mother’s protective feelings over her children but later in life when her mother is gone Munro feels guilt over the fact that she was not able to go home for her mother’s funeral (Spillard 149). She had her own family to worry about the guilt and shame that she carried with her over not being able to attend her mother’s funeral and be there in her last days is something that she touches upon in the in the final parts of this story she worries that she may never be forgiven but in the end she realizes that she is and that she forgives herself as well

Shame and guilt are ways that the patriarchy holds women back and prevents them from realizing their own autonomy but Munros last words are dedicated to her mother the woman who she felt shame and guilt around and because she was able to overcome those feelings she gained that autonomy back from the patriarchy whether or not Munro calls herself a feminist her actions and her words are feminist because she no longer lets the shame and guilt control how she feels and how she remembers her mother. Years later Munro would read a poem from her old town’s newspaper about a woman who lived in her house the same house that Munro lived in growing up and she realizes that this must have been Mrs. Netterfield’s daughter and so she understands now that Mrs. Netterfield was not trying to take Munro as an infant from her baby carrier but in reality she was just wanting to look at the home she grew up in and Munro’s mother saw this woman as a danger when in reality she was not

Munro’s mother is a great example of female agency in this story. She grew up on a farm and married a man who wanted his own farm as well but she did not want to settle for the simple life of a farmer’s wife. She wore her hair and her clothes in the style of the day to the chagrin of her husband’s family and she chose to cook meals that were considered too fancy. She bought golf clubs with the dream of her family being more than just provincial and even though they never achieved the lofty life that she wanted them to have, she still lived her life the way that she wanted to. Because of the way she chose to live her life her daughter realized her goal of finishing high school and becoming a writer herself. Munro writes stories about women who have normal problems and normal lives in which they are seeking their own goals and happiness even though many of her characters have husbands and children (Milder 34).

Munro lived in the 1960s during the rise of the second wave feminist movement though she does not credit this time for how she writes, it was her childhood (Milder 36). She realized that being a housewife and that other housewives during this time felt that they were incomplete. Munro says that during that women like her who attended college had ambitions and dreams and so when they married and started families they felt loss and as though and they lost their identities women who were weird and didn’t follow the traditional gender norms of the time were looked down upon so Munro would write women who had their own ambitions and through her writing people would be able to understand that being a housewife and a mother is not the only thing women can be.

Dear Life is not a story about men or a story that includes them much, but it still shows how the patriarchy was upheld at the time the story was written. Women and girls had less autonomy and were expected to follow the men in their families. Alice Munro’s story doesn’t follow a linear path, but it reflects how rural Canada did not expect her to finish school, much less for her to become an acclaimed writer. Despite this, this story and Munro’s other writings show how growing up under a patriarchy affects women.

Works Cited

Lucio-Villegas Spillard, Iris Melanie. “Before I say goodbye.” International Journal of English Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 26 Dec. 2021, pp. 139–155, https://doi.org/10.6018/ijes.475711.

Milder, Robert. “Differently: Alice Munro and the North American 1960s.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 91, no. 2, June 2022, pp. 33–48. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.cwi.idm.oclc.org/10.3138/utq.91.2.02.

Munro, Alice. “Dear Life.” New Yorker, vol. 87, no. 28, Sept. 2011, pp. 40–47. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=ns149246&db=a9h&AN=65511674&site=ehost-live.

Löschnigg, Maria. “‘Orangesandapples’: Alice Munro’s Undogmatic Feminism.” The Cambridge Companion to Alice Munro. Ed. David Staines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 60–78. Print. Cambridge Companions to Literature.