The Clothing Writing In Alice Munro’s Short Stories

Clothing is the result of the comprehensive action of various social forces and environments.It is the external manifestation of the wearer’s identity and status.After entering literary works,clothing has become an important means to convey the character,reflect social life and public psychology.The writer’s attention to clothing is her attention to people.Alice Munro devotes herself to showing all kinds of life details,always arranging the corresponding clothes according to the identity and personality of the characters.In her novels,costumes emphasize the differences between characters and show their behavior and personality.In addition,as an image,clothing fully integrates her personal experience and aesthetic point of view,tells the changes of social history,and presents the author’s position of the times and cultural perspective.Therefore,the study of clothing writing in Munro’s works is of great significance to explore her concept of life and understand her creative skills.Taking the clothing writing in Munro’s novels as the starting point,this paper studies the clothing world she constructs,tries to further analyze the polysemy and complexity of her thought,and explore the function and significance of clothing writing.The introduction briefly introduces the research status of this subject,the value,significance and methods of research.The first chapter summarizes the characteristics of the costumes of different characters in Munro’s works,and classifies and analyzes the costumes of girls,young women,middle-aged women,elderly women and men.Adolescent girls are very dissatisfied with their mother’s clothes,and often have inferiority complex because of their clothes;Young women show their charm through clothes and hope to harvest sweet love;Single middle-aged women wear smart clothes,while married women prefer simple and simple clothes;Older women adhere to the values of frugality and simplicity and always wear outdated clothes.Men are the secondary characters in Munro’s novels.Men in the center of power wear decent suits and are the spokesmen of social morality and manners.Men on the edge of society tend to wear shabby and dirty clothes,and sometimes show a tendency to dress strangely.The second chapter is the analysis of the writing characteristics of clothing.First of all,Munro pays attention to the color of clothing and places different colors of clothing with rich symbolic connotation.Secondly,Munro shows the dress culture of different nationalities through clothing writing.The frequent appearance of Scottish costumes shows Munro’s inseparable feelings for Scottish culture.The costumes of Asian and African nations are not only the manifestations of the coexistence of Canadian national culture,but also the symbols of wealth and status.The third chapter analyzes the reasons why Munro attaches importance to clothing writing from three aspects: personal experience,social environment and creative concept.Munro loves writing clothes,which is closely related to her growth experience,family life and literary concept.First of all,Munro was poor in her childhood,and she had a strong desire to choose clothes freely from childhood.Later,she joined the middle class through marriage,but her desire for clothes remained strong.Secondly,from the perspective of social environment,the people in Munro’s hometown adhere to the conservative dress concept of Europe in the last century.Munro expressed her criticism of the traditional conservative psychology by writing about the tragic fates of women under the public opinion of the town.Finally,Munro follows realism and opposes macro narration.Clothing writing is an important way to reproduce ordinary people’s daily life.The fourth chapter discusses the functions and significances of clothing writing from the perspectives of characterization,plot structure and theme presentation.In terms of characterization,as a part of detail description,costume writing is conducive to enrich the character,show the physical health and psychological state of the character,reflect the wearer’s attitude towards life.In terms of plot structure,clothing writing can convey plot information,hint the trend of plot,and promote the evolution and deepening of the story.In terms of theme presentation,Munro deepens the theme implication with clothing writing,and expresses her thoughts on social hierarchy differences and women’s liberation.The conclusion summarizes and summarizes the views of the full text,and looks forward to the unfinished discussion.