A Feminist Analysis Of Alice Munro's Collection Of Short Stories Open Secrets

Alice Munro depicts ordinary women's daily life and living state in the collection of short stories Open Secrets to show the strong representation of feminism.The collection embodies women's weak and “other” status in the patriarchal society.Because of the financial and emotional attachment to men,women cannot escape from their tragic fate.Munro shows great sympathy for women as “the second sex”,so she pays more attention to the promotion of women's self-awareness.In domestic researches on Munro's works,scholars mainly concentrate on the collection of short stories Runaway,because it is the most famous collection of Munro's short story collections.As a result,this thesis will analyze the collection of short stories Open Secrets from the perspective of feminism in order to enrich and expand the researches on Alice Munro's works.Focusing on analyzing the collection of short stories Open Secrets from the perspective of feminism,the thesis includes six parts: chapter one gives an introduction to Munro's biography and her works,and a detailed introduction to the plot of the collection of short stories Open Secrets,together with an introduction to feminism;the last part of this chapter is the purpose and significance of the thesis.The next chapter talks about the research status and previous findings of Munro's works and feminism.In chapter three,the interpretation of the collection of Open Secrets is conducted from the perspective of feminism,analyzing the plights and bounds of the female characters.As for the female figures in Open Secrets,their eager for passion,their persistence for love and the unhappiness with marriage all conflict with the patriarchal society dominated by males.As a result,they fall into the predicament of pain.Chapter four focuses on analyzing the ways of how the female figures get out of the plights and explore female consciousness in the collection of short stories.Every female figure's story is different from each other.Some of them experience the awakening process of female consciousness,but some do not.This chapter will discuss different women's living conditions and the way in which they seek for emancipation.The last chapter shows a conclusion of the whole paper,talking about some limitations of the paper and making suggestions on future research.Through exploring the awakening and the growth of females' consciousness in the collection of short stories Open Secrets,the paper reveals that women are faced with a difficult life in which they have hope to escape,but cannot.The female images in Munro's works behave incredibly,and some even become insane,which is a result of an unconscious rebellion against the society dominated by males and the cruel reality.They suffer unfortunately in the patriarchal society,so they are eager to seek self-salvation.The thesis embodies the theme that depression leads to the awakening of female consciousness,and finally they rebel against the unfair society.