Self-loss, Self-exploration, And Self-construction

As one of the best contemporary writers of short story in Canadian literary scene, Alice Munro has consistently produced works in which precise social observation and penetration psychological insight are expressed exactly with remarkable strategies in realistic way. She has made outstanding contributions to Canadian literature in her literary themes and artistic techniques. Alice Munro has already published short stories more than one hundred and most of them are compiled in her nine short stories collections, of which, three won Governor General’s Awards and one won National Book Award.Influenced by feminism and feminist movement in her era, most of Munro’s works, written mainly from the perspective of women in a realistic style, are about self-development of the heroines. The thesis’author takes Lives of Girls and Women and Who Do You Think You Are? as a case study with dividing two protagonists’ self-development into three stages—self-loss, self-exploration, and self-construction. In the patriarchal society, women are kept in the situation of self-loss. The process of getting rid of confusions about faith, love and death is the process of their self-exploration. They attempt to have sexual experience, financial independence pursuit and physical and spiritual struggle for freedom in the process of their self-construction. Munro presents a typical way of contemporary female development, that is, their struggling for establishing a harmonious gender relationship between men and women, and that for constructing a harmonious living environment in the society.