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CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN TWO SHORT STORIES BY ALICE MUNRO...
“THE ALBANIAN VIRGIN”: ASSIMILATION
BEFORE APPROPRIATION BEFORE ASSIMILATION
The short story “The Albanian Virgin” by Alice Munro was published in
the collection Open Secrets (1994). The story features two very different yet
entirely intertwined plots. The first is a story of a Canadian woman stranded
in Albania during 1920s. She is taken to a village in the northern region
of Albania, known for its mountains and adherence to the traditional way
of life. In the village, she is given the name Lottar and is largely culturally
assimilated. When the otherwise Catholic village decides to marry Lottar to
a Muslim, Lottar is made a sworn virgin® by the Franciscan priest in order
to prevent the marriage. Lottar then flees, and is helped by the Franciscan
priest. Lottar and, presumably the priest, return/emigrate to Canada.
The second story is told by an unnamed female narrator in the first person,
a member of a typical Canadian urban and liberal society. The narrator’s life
story is a stark contrast to that of Lottar in terms of personal freedom (that is,
the freedom to decide), and this is just one of the binary semantic oppositions
in the story. When she was young, the narrator married Donald, who she
had met at the University. However, she is having an affair with a neighbor,
Nelson, and that leads to her ending up alone, moving away and opening
a small bookstore. In the bookstore, she meets an unusual older couple,
Charlotte and Gjurdhi, and starts to bond with them. When Charlotte falls
ill, the narrator visits her in the hospital. During these visits, Charlotte tells
the story of Lottar. There are many hints in the story that point towards the
fact that Charlotte is actually Lottar, that Gjurdhi is the Franciscan priest,
and that the story Charlotte is telling from the hospital bed is actually the
story of her life.
2 A sworn virgin (Alb. burrnesha, vajzé e betuar, virgjineshé; Slavonic languages virdZina,
ostajnica, tobelija) is an Albanian tradition, especially in the northern mountainous region,
which was also recorded in Montenegro, parts of Bosnia, Serbia, Northern Macedonia, and
Dalmatia in Croatia. When traditional patriarchal families were left without a male head or
heir, or when the family was struck by other specific types of misfortune in the traditional
system of values, or when an unwanted marriage was to be avoided, woman of any age was
sworn to take on a male role in the family, usually without her consent. That meant that
the woman would dress and behave as a man and could not start a family of her own. The
woman could also carry a gun, smoke and spend time in the company of men, all of which
was forbidden to other women. In Albania, the tradition of sworn virgins originates from a
crucial legal document from the 15" century, the Kanuni i Leké Dukagjinit, and the sworn
virgins exist to this very day. Interestingly enough, similar practices were documented
between the indigenous people of the Americans. Knowledge about Albanian sworn virgins
was brought to the west by missionaries, travelers and anthropologists in the 19 and early
20* centuries. The idea and the exoticism of the sworn virgins was (over)exploited in the
western cultures ever since. (Partially based on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Albanian_sworn_virgins [accessed April 2020)]).
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