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NIKOLA TUTEK
There are three typically Munrovian switches in the story that are important
for this analysis: 1. Lottar becomes a sworn virgin, basically taking on all the
social functions of a male (gender switch), 2. the story of Lottar is a story
within a story, it is retold by Charlotte (switch in narration), and, 3. the story
strongly suggests that Lottar and the Franciscan priest are actually Charlotte
and Gjurdhi (a typical Munrovian switch in the plot and also another
semantic binary opposition between Charlotte and Gjurdhi in Albania and
Canada). It is important to understand that this is a story of constant change
and re-definition of characters and situations (like so many other stories by
Munro). And because the story of Lottar was retold by an older woman in a
hospital, making her a fairly unreliable narrator (who claims that her story
was a fictional idea for a movie), a certain distance from reality is achieved. In
that sense, Charlotte’s visions and depictions of Albania cannot and should
not be seen as (only) factual and credible.
“The Albanian Virgin” is especially interesting from the point of view of
cultural appropriation or cultural re-interpretation. This is so for at least
these four main reasons: 1. It is one of the rare stories by Alice Munro which
is partially not set in Canada, 2. It features a wide range of depictions of a
foreign land and people, from geography to cultural rituals, 3. The plot is
based on one specific cultural ritual of gender-swapping, which is also in the
title of the story, and, 4. It features two main characters who are exposed
to both processes of cultural appropriation and cultural assimilation. I will
proceed by establishing a set of focal points of discussion important for the
analysis and provide examples from the text for each point.
The focal points of discussion in this analysis will be 1. Appropriation and re¬
interpretation of traditions (customs, clothes, women), names (personal names
and toponyms), and factual cultural data (language, economy, geography,
religion), 2. Descriptions of assimilation, and 3. Binary oppositions used in
depictions of a culture. I will provide sources of knowledge possibly used by
Alice Munro for her literary descriptions explained by these three points.
Appropriation and re-interpretation of traditions,
names, and factual cultural data
As featured in the title “The Albanian Virgin’, the pivotal idea for
understanding the story is that of the sworn virgin. But let us first see how
Alice Munro came into contact with this ethnographic knowledge. During the
20° century, Balkan exoticism was often the theme of numerous scholarly and
popular publications in the West. It is worth mentioning the work of Edith
Durham, a British traveler and author of many works on the Balkans, and
especially Albania. In 1910, Durham took a trip “down the coast of Dalmatia,
traveling from Trieste to Kotor and then overland to Cetinje, the capital of
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