Dance of the Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro

Esther Fisher is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and
a former food critic for The Globe & Mail.

This book contributes significantly to the critical appraisal of
Munro’s work. Rasporich considers what she calls “gender
implications”: Munro’s “female, feminist and feminine
sensibilities as they affect fictional form, technique and content.”
This tall order makes for a close, densely packed, and often
enlightening analysis.

The study opens with biographical information, greatly enhanced by a
transcribed interview with Munro. Throughout the interview, Munro is
open, curious, and questioning, giving the reader an intimate glimpse of
her background and of her changing attitude as a writer and as a woman.
Following the biography is an analysis of her work as feminist fiction:
her evocation of women’s quest for identity and freedom; the
passion/reason conflict from a woman’s viewpoint; the evolution from
childhood to adolescence, to womanhood, to the decline of reproductive
capability and sexual attractiveness, and finally to aging and death;
the shifting sexual relationships in our time; and the questioning and
ambivalence in her work about where the feminist quest is leading. All
this is interesting and rewarding, but does labelling it “feminist”
add anything to our understanding of her depiction of women in various
situations or to her portrayal of what being a particular type of woman
means?

Rasporich also looks at Munro as folk artist and ironist; discussing
her treatment of domestic women’s interests (food, furnishings,
fashion, and the physical life), the popular culture of girls and women
(rhymes, songs, and hymns), and the irony and comedy of her
characters’ dialogue.

Of the two remaining chapters, the first deals with Munro as a
regionalist; the second, with the structure of her fiction. The latter
treats, among other things, her use of shifts of time rather than “the
masculine concept of linear time”; the short story as a female
construct, because it “expands inwards”; and Munro’s use of
“female” images, such as light, glass, and birds. Does literature
not contain abundant examples of male writers using these techniques and
images? Similarly, in the chapter on regionalism, what is particularly
feminine about using the outer landscape to convey the inner landscape
of the heart and mind? This chapter in particular is rife with Freudian
analysis. What are we to make of the statement that “the skin of the
earth is equal to the skin of women”; or of the claim that a woman
trapped in a plane is in a “womblike machine”; or of rust in a sink
indicating a woman’s worn-out body? These simplistic analogies reduce
her work to the level of allegory, destroying the complexity and
multilayered texture of her art.

In her introduction, Rasporich claims she tries to avoid limiting her
approach to a feminist view; but, as D.H. Lawrence said, “never trust
the teller, trust the tale.” Still, she does present a methodical,
thorough, well-researched, and well-documented investigation that
provides some valuable insights into Munro’s work.