The Albanian Virgin
ALICE MUNRO’S IN OPEN SECRETS EXEMPLIES HER CHARACTERISTIC APPROACH
To try to trace Alice Munro’s narrative techniques to any particular development in the short story would be difficult. This could be because it is simply written from careful observations as are many of her other short stories. In her short stories, it is as though she tries to transform a common, ordinary world into something that is unsettling and mysterious as was seen in Vandals. Most of her stories found in Open Secrets, are set or focused on Munro’s native Canada, Huron County, and particularly in the small fictional Ontario town of Carstairs, although the setting in is in British Columbia. The story, , ...
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was born, the characters and narrators are often thought of as being about her life and how she grew up; and making her stories appear from a feminist approach. This could also indicate why the central characters in the short stories in Open Secrets, are all women: a young woman kidnapped by Albanian tribesmen in the 1920’s in , and a young born-again Christian whose unresolved feelings of love and anger cause her to vandalize a house in Vandals.
Her theme has often been the dilemmas of the adolescent girl coming to terms with family and a small town. Her more recent work has addressed the problems of middle age, of women alone, and of the elderly. The characteristic of her style is the search for some revelatory gesture by which an event is illuminated and given personal significance. (The Canadian Encyclopedia Plus 1995)
Munro’s later work can probably be seen as that of her later or more recent memories, as she ages so does the characters of her short stories.
The ...
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seen throughout the story as "women were with women and men were with men, except at times in the night (women were teased about such times were full of shame and denial, and sometimes there would be slapping) and at meals, when the women served the men their food. (Munro, 88)
The short story An Albanian Virgin, is often referred to as a "kaleidoscope", as the narrative moves from the bookstore owner, the narrator; to Charlotte, the bookstore owner’s storytelling friend; then to Lottar, the mysterious heroine in Charlotte’s story.
Munro offers us (the reader) a bouquet of stories in one: the narrator’s escape from and longing for both lover and husband; Charlotte and her ...
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The Albanian Virgin. (2006, January 8). Retrieved November 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Albanian-Virgin/39282
"The Albanian Virgin." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 8 Jan. 2006. Web. 23 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Albanian-Virgin/39282>
"The Albanian Virgin." Essayworld.com. January 8, 2006. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Albanian-Virgin/39282.
"The Albanian Virgin." Essayworld.com. January 8, 2006. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Albanian-Virgin/39282.
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