Mothers And Daughters Hidden In The Shadow

Alice Munro(1931-)is a famous short story writer in contemporary Canada,who is also the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014.From her first collection titled Dance of the happy shadow to the latest one Dear life,Munro has published 14 collections of short stories.Throughout her works,Munro kept returning to the themes of female lives and consciousness,therefore,portrayed various female characters and complicated mother-daughter relationships.Meanwhile,in the stories concerning this kind of themes,materials of mothers' illness frequently recur.The disease causes the tense between mothers and daughters,and also bings to a strong sense of humiliation to those female characters.Under the influence of sense of shame,the heroines in Munro's novels are usually timid and lack of confidence,and even hold a pessimistic attitude toward love and marriage.This thesis makes a general review over Munro's oeuvre and analyzes texts involving disease,mother-daughter relations and female images with emphasis.Basing on three arguments,which include disease,shame,sexual relationships and theories including sociology,pathology,psychology and feminism,this thesis intends to discuss the complicated mother-daughter relations and the unique female images in Munro's work,with the method of close reading.Chapter one explores the influence of mother's illness on the relations between them and their daughters.On the one hand,illness in the family imposes a heavy burden on the daughters.They have to make self-sacrifice and give up on their future to stay at home to take care of the mothers.While dealing with all those household chores,daughters also need to stand humiliation from the outside world caused by the metaphor of illness.On the other hand,mothers,as patients,suffer from the agony both physically and mentally,sometimes even from their own daughters' mental isolation.The emotions revealed in such a subtle and complicated relationship are mixtures of agony,resentment,guilty and sympathy.Chapter two analyzes the images of females who are timid and lack of confidence and tries to explore the reason which caused such kind of personality traits.Psychological trauma resulted from the experience growing in the shadow of disease might be the answer.Due to the traumatic mental state,the heroines hold a strong sense of shame,not only extremely sensitive towards the outside world,but also lack of self-confidence.Ailing mothers who caused such an unhealthy living environment are often portrayed as some eccentric women.Narrative of shame is not only expressed on these eccentric images,but also on the plots,which are often set as protagonists' exposure to the public.The last chapter explores female characters' attitudes toward sexual relations,as well as love and marriage.Mothers and daughters in Munro's work often hold completely different attitudes toward sex,yet neither of them expects high for true love.Daughters hold an open,even radical attitude to sex,however,they are usually humble in a relationship with their husbands or lovers.They constantly make some confusing behaviors to abandon themselves,by rushing into a marriage or deliberately undermine their relationships with the opposite sex.The sense of shame causes their mental illness,and shapes their self-contemptuous personality.As a result,they lose their ability to love.For them,marriage is either an object of fear or a form of escaping from former life.With such a pessimistic attitude,they are frequently trapped in a lousy marriage,and even miss their true love for it.Through the discussions and explorations from the viewpoints above,we are able to solve the mysteries in Munro's works,and have a reasonable interpretation of those details and physical activities in her works.Therefore,while confronting those confusing plots and behaviors and those eccentric characters,we might find a satisfying answer to our confusions and reach a better understanding to her works.