| Alice Munro(1931—) is the most critically acclaimed author of contemporary Canadian literature. In 2005, she was listed by Time magazine among “the 100 Most Influential People.†In 2013, she was declared as the winner of 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. She has altogether published fourteen short story collections and each of them is suffused with regional attachments and concentration on women’s existence.Based on Simone de Beauvoir’s theories of Feminist Existentialism, this thesis intends to analyze the heroines’ experiences of escape in the eight stories of Runaway, thus presenting the true living condition of small-town women in Canada.Five chapters will be included in the thesis. Chapter One is the introduction part,including a brief introduction to Alice Munro and Runaway, studies of Alice Munro and Runaway at home and abroad, the theoretical framework of the thesis, as well as the layout of the thesis. Chapter Two takes Juliet, Eileen and Grace as examples to explore the heroines’ situation as the Other, and points out that it is the result of women’s physiological feature, man’s intervention and cultural and social regulation. Chapter Three focuses on the protagonists’ futile attempts to achieve transcendence, including young Juliet and Penelope running away from stifling home, married Carla and Sara escaping from patriarchal marriage and old Nancy fleeing from past memories.However, the realization of transcendence is never easy and all the women who choose to run away fail to seek the ideal free lives and have to return to their former life circles again. Chapter Four analyzes three main reasons for women’s failure of escape seen from experiences of Mrs. Travers, Carla and Nancy: life-threatening situations,tendencies towards complicity as well as the failure of women to construct female values in opposition to male values. Chapter Five comes to the conclusion part, which states that Munro aims to reflect women’s predicament by portraying the heroines’ loss at life, excitement at the beginning of runaway, struggling on the way and meditation after return to former life. |
