Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness

Alice Munro

Too Much Happiness

Vintage 2009

ISBN: 9780099524298

$22.95, 303pp, paper back

I have chosen Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness as an example of literary fiction, specifically to demonstrate something of the art of writing the short story. If you haven’t studied the foundations of short stories, a good starting point is getting to know and understand how a story has traditionally been structured and how conventions of literary forms can be subverted and reassembled, which is something that Munro has accomplished to some degree; she really has mastered a contemporary approach to story writing.  Within these exploded and revised form’s she has established something new, her writing makes sense.

Munro has been compared to the great master of short stories Chekov, she is influential in the same respect, he is known as a master of the short story and his work is seminal. Likewise Munro fundamentally changes expectations of the Short Story form, whilst stylistically resembling another great Canadian female author, Margaret Atwood in her dialogue and narrative and like Atwood, she writes about women; also the mood and pace of life within these stories are similar- set mostly in rural Canada, there is also a pace,  silence and sharp observations of human character and morality, but without judgement; not questioned, but presented as being causative of events, and shown in detail, objectively and through the narrative rather than stated explicitly. Whilst many of the settings in Too Much Happiness are in Canada, Munro does set some of her stories in Europe: London, Sweden, France and Russia.

Munroe’s stories shift in time and place. Some of them, may cover a 30-year period. Like many authors of her time, she has abandoned the three unities found in the 19^th century literary classics and established by Aristotle in Ancient Greece (350 BC) in his book Poetics. These rules were set out for plays on a Greek stage. They are: Unity of Action; A play should have one main action, with few subplots; Unity of place: the play should take place in one setting or location; Unity of Time: the play should take place over 24 hours. This convention has been subverted by major literary revolutions during World Wars I and II. Munro redefines the short story and defies all of these conventions and from this has emerged a new form with new clarity and sense of purpose.

One good example is Munros Childs Play, where subplots, different locations and time frames are explored. Child’s Play is about a girl who has an intellectual disability, her death at the hands of two other girls, and the long-term effects on their lives. The story is told over at least a thirty-year period, and the events revolve around the central tragedy. It is a story about morality and ethics, and the protagonist seems somehow detached, like an objective reporter. Similarly Wood is unfolds over many years and is a story about Marriage, Partnership and parenthood. It is also a statement on demographics, on the characters and on their relationship with a working-class female who takes on a trade in carpentry. The man she works for is from a middle-class background, university educated, but involved in traditionally working class jobs. Class mobility, seems to be a theme here, and class lines are blurred. Munro’s stories also carry with them her relatively educated, yet domesticated, ‘civilised’ world view; her characters have professions, they generally eat meals together, and although there is often a central character who does not, they do family activities. This is not a voice from the fringes, her characters are Carpenters, Doctors, Teachers, Academics, Cafeteria workers, however they mostly live in rural areas. The characters live within a middle-class milieu, regardless of their social demographic. Munro’s voice is important regardless of the heterosexual colour of her books, there are no gay characters in her stories, the people take on traditional, well-regarded social roles. She seems to be critical of her surroundings however and I believe this perspective is of value and is what makes her voice interesting, possibly important. For the most part, her lead characters are women; she subverts psychological truths of individuals, looks at truths within a domestic framework, and within schools and colleges and places of employment where women might exist and she represents women of modest to middle class accomplishments. The men are nearly almost always educated and white. Each story is different yet will share some motifs from other stories. I believe that she avoids clichés, by telling her stories with acuity and accuracy, which has helped her longevity as an author. 

Author Jasmin Sara Moret- Former BA student at the University of Sydney and Drama student of Newtown High School of Performing Arts, NSW. Also hold a Diploma of Popular Music Performance from JMC and a Certificate III in Live Production and Services from Brisbane’s College of Theatre Practice. Student of Creative Writing via Griffith University (Open University)