Introduction
Meneseteung is one of the famous short stories of Alice Munro which was published in writer’s collection, Friend of My Youth (1990). Meneseteung is entitled without any specific implications it is just a name of river, Champlain as Munro’s themes are concerned with her love of recalling history of rural Ontario, Canada where she passed her life in youthful age. Munro employs such narrative techniques to continue flow of eventful descriptions from 1800s to the 1980s by giving informative descriptions of different thematic stories via newspaper clippings and excerpts from books, break off of narrative story and questionable narrative authenticity due to extensive range of narrative devices. The story of Meneseteung is developed gradually with manifold thematic sense to boost up curiosity of readers interestingly.
Analysis
Sometimes the story of Meneseteung gives historical theme by giving details about life of a Canadian frontierswoman who has to face a lot of bitter experiences in life by leading life in a male-dominated society. The story reflects the elemental features of male dominated society where pervasive vulgarity, indecency and dissipation are prominent and all story is narrated by an impartial narrator who describes different events in perspective of historical happenings by full coverage of interpolation. A reader can find out some biographical elements of author who tries to progress story by self-narrative style of depicting story. (1)
Alice Munro’s stories have basic themes of love, romance, adventure, history, and horrors. The story of Meneseteung is described unidentified gender of a narrator who recites poetic verses of Almeda Joynt Roth from the book. The narrator’s descriptive style of poetry of Roth gives some historical background of poet’s life, shifting of here family in frontier of Canada West (modern-day Ontario), lamentable moments of life on deaths of her family members. The narrator describes major events of Roth’s life in 1879 when she had to live an isolated life in the house near Pearl and Dufferin streets after her parent’s death. The narrator gives comparison of both life style of living in old home and new one in the area of Ontario. The readers are also informed about the routine life of Roth’s small town via newspaper clippings, Vidette. In this story, how characters of school boys are depicted who continuously are harassing a drunkard woman, Queen Aggie by playing different mischievous tricks with her. The story revolves round the miner characters of the small town where Roth lives by creating sense of danger via characterization of bold men, thieves and robbers.
The theme of gender discrimination is depicted by scene of story when Roth was desperately shocked to see a drunkard woman in wretched conditions out of her home due to callous behavior of her husband. This scene also depicts underlying personal feelings of revulsion of the writer against men which were developed after clashes and ultimate divorce with her husband. In the final scene, the comments of the narrators are described via reading two Vidette clippings how the human beings are suffering from moral deterioration gradually. The ultimate deaths of Roth and Poulter after experiencing harassment of youths are related with some historical bits of past age. The narrator narrates how Poulter is “sufficiently stirred” and posits that it is most likely due to Roth’s “indiscretion, her agitation, her foolishness, her need.” The writer uses such narrative skills that she easily covers gaps or interpolations when she engages to describes historical events in prospective of current situation in the story. (2)
The presence of the narrator of story is questionable at the initial and final stage of story while in the middle of story, the narrator vanishes suddenly e.g. the narrator’s introductory story of Roth’s life in beginning and final visit of narrator to Roth’s grave. The readers are confused about the actual identity of the narrator as main character of the story with past history of Roth. Ruthless and callous attitude of Poulter is the delineation of materialistic and sophisticated male class type who doesn’t care of miserable plight of women.
“He has not been able to imagine her as a wife. Now that is possible.” (2)
The story relates historical themes by depicting similar scenes of story which have close association with personal life of Munro. The story of Munro tries to find out the exact place of women in society with true realization of their valuable role in society. She satirizes the male dominated tendency towards women in order to satisfy their own sensual desires and pride of being highly esteemed status. The writer tries to portray the character of woman as frail and weak that has to secure her status in the society by marrying men. The marriage is ultimate solution to reduce panic and tragic experiences of women of the age. This story demonstrates the themes of challenging issues of gender discrimination in male-dominated society by narrating all story of Roth. “Yet, as the narrator indicates, women are not powerless in marriage, and one of their primary roles in this era is “creating their husbands” by “ascribing preferences” to them.”(2)