Memory and Desire in Alice Munro’s Stories

The paper seeks to explore multiple interconnections between memory and desire in Alice Munro’s short stories. A first level of analysis is concerned with the content of memories. Munro’s mother, as a young lady, was affected by Parkinson’s disease and this personal experience pervades stories like “The Peace of Utrecht”, “The Ottawa Valley”, “Winter Wind” and “Places at Home”. The female first person narrator gives voice to the shame experienced for the signs and symbols of the disease on the mother’s appearance and behaviour. This feeling is here read as a powerful filter for the motivated construction of memories. Memory, then, refers to the cognitive faculty of remembrance, based on the retrieval and recollection of things past. In the story “The Bear Came over the Mountain”, Munro displaces her attention from Parkinson to Alzheimer and overtly explores the progressive loss of memory in her protagonist, Fiona. Desire and the mnestic faculty are strictly embedded in this story. Of pivotal importance are the relationship between memory and identity and the interplay between the progressive loss of memory in the female protagonist, and the obsessive exploration of memory in Munro’s narrative art. Last, the Canadian writer articulates this topic on the level of narration, with reference to the storytelling process itself. In stories like “Friend of my Youth” and “Winter Wind”, she can and does remember the story-telling potential and passion in her mother and gives voice and life to the desire for narration. She acknowledges the performative, open and fluid function of memory which can only be discovered in the re-writing and re-reading of stories.