Who Am I ?-the Self-cognition Of The Women In Alice Munro’s Fiction

My paper mainly analyses the process of the self-cognition of female protagonist in Alice Munro’s novels. As a female writer, Munro is good at describing the ordinary life of women in the small town. With her unique female perspective and insight, she describes the conflicts in life. The women characters in Munro’s novels are intelligent, sensitive and they have many confusion of life. Different women have different answers about the problem of "who am I". This paper mainly analysis three short novels-- Boys and Girls,The Beggar Maid and Runaway which are in different periods of Munro. Women in Munro’s novels experienced a way of self—identity-- reconstruction – return.The first part of this paper mainly analyzes the embryonic stage of girls’, which is named self acceptance stage. For instance, Boys and Girl which is from Dance of the Happy Shades discusses the reason and process of what is a girl. Although the process is difficult, the girl finally accepts that she is a "girl", and gets cognition of herself.The second part of this paper mainly analyzes the development stage of the self—cognition of young women, namely self phase reconstruction. For instance,The Beggar Maid which is from Who do You Think You Are describes a girl named Rose.In the pursuit of self value, she faces many obstacles of "scholarship girl" and "the beggar maid". Finally, Rose gives up the identification that the rest people identify. With the efforts,she finds her life positioning finally.The third part of this paper mainly analyzes the stage of deepening self-awareness of middle-aged women, namely regression self stage. For instance,the short novel--Runaway talks about the problems of the heroine running away and returning. The result of her running away is returning.The best future of female is making a steady life.This paper argues that in the works of Munro, the female protagonist of knowing oneself is not immutable and frozen, but rather a flow process. Moreover, the process and the life experiences of Munro has a sort of complicate relationship. Through the inner character of the different stages, Munro showed the changing process of self understanding in the female life.It is from the identification to the reconstruction and to the return process. At the same time, Munro provides reference how to find their location for modern women.