The Awakening Of The Women In Alice Munro’s Short Stories

Alice Munro, the famous Canadian short story writer, is known as "Canadian Chekhov", and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. She writes from the female perspective, focuses on the ordinary life experience of a Canadian town, and explores ordinary women’s complex psychological and emotional world in keen perspective and realistic style. Although Munro is not a high-profile feminist writer, her works show the ultimate concern for the fate of women.In today’s society, women’s status has improved greatly. But influenced by the long-term patriarchal thoughts, women encounter many difficulties on the road of pursuing female independence and equality. Although Munro’s female characters are various, they all experience different degrees of awakening in love, sexual experience, and the aging process, vividly reflecting the female self-growth in seeking freedom and independence.This thesis focuses on Munro’s short stories, using feminism to analyze the awakening of the women in her novels, expounding the feminist thoughts contained in Munro’s works. The thesis includes five parts: introduction, three chapters of textual analysis, and epilogue.In the preface, the thesis mainly introduces the life of Alice Munro and her works. Firstly, it gives a concise introduction to Alice Munro and the short stories cited in the discussion and literature reviews at home and abroad. Secondly, there is the structure of the thesis. Finally, this paper analyzes the significance of the awakening of the women in Munro’s short stories—reflecting the growth of contemporary women, paying attention to female’s present survival situation, and discussing the enlightenments of Munro’s feminist thoughts for the modern people.The first chapter explains the awakening of the women in family relations in Munro’s stories. No matter what kind of passive role women play in family, the control and oppression from their fathers, husbands and other family members are the keys to the women’s awakening. The oppressed women reveal their awakenings through rebelling and escaping.The second chapter discusses the awakening of the women in social existence. In the patriarchal society, women suffer from varying degrees of discriminations in work, education and daily life, so their faith in pursuing freedom and independence and their friends’ inspiration and help are the important factors for the female awakening. Women achieve the awakening in social existence through pursuing economic and spiritual independence.The third chapter examines the awakening of the women in the relationship between man and nature in Munro’s short stories. According to ecofeminism, women have a natural connection with nature. Men’s oppression towards women is similar to the oppression of civilization towards nature. So the role of nature and animals in human society resonates with the passive subordinate status of women. Women achieve the awakening through obeying their own instincts and returning to nature.Through the discussion and analysis above, the conclusion part points out that as a female writer, Munro pays her universal attention to women’s destiny through the growth of the female consciousness in her short stories. She advocates that women should pursue independence and salvation by themselves. Meanwhile, individuals will reflect on the contemporary women’s survival situation. And women may become mature and independent through reading Munro’s novels.