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CULTURAL APPROPRIATION IN TWO SHORT STORIES BY ALICE MUNRO...
Virgin” are indeed numerous and they are almost all established through the
literary use of elements of culture. I will provide only a short overview of the
ones more important from the point of view of cultural reinterpretations.
First of all, there is the opposition between Lottar and the Franciscan
and Charlotte and Gjurdhi. How do we know that they are the same people?
Munro provides at least nine proofs of that: 1. Gjurdhi wears a large wooden
crucifix over his coat, the same one mentioned in relation to the Franciscan,
2. Gjurdhi is wearing a cap with a tassel and his clothes are reminiscent
of an elderly clergyman, 3. He eats Albanian food and drinks sherbet and
“desperately strong coffee”. 4. Gjurdhi’s eating style and numerous elements
of mentality point towards a person from the Balkans, 5. From the story it is
evident that the Franciscan is in love with Lottar, and it is clearly stated in
the last sentence of the story that the Franciscan waited for Lottar in Trieste,
6. There is a joke about a wizard in the story, which is, in my opinion, one of
the less successful passages in the story, which ended with the protagonists’
escape to America on a steamer, 7. The name Lottar reminds us of the name
Charlotte, 8. Charlotte was an heiress, and that could explain how she and
Gjurdhi gained money in the end, and, finally, 9. If Charlotte and Gjurdhi
immigrated to Canada in the late 1920’, they would be exactly the age ascribed
to them in the story by 1964 (the year marked by the narrator as the time when
she opened her bookstore). The only question is if the whole story was true
or if it all, together with the cultural re-interpretation and assimilation (of
ideas), took place only in the head of the aging, sick, and bored Charlotte.“
Munro’s mastery of geography enabled her to construct binary oppositions
between cultures typical of certain regions. First, it is the opposition between
Albania and Canada, that is, Lottar’s/the Franciscan and Charlotte’s/
Gjurdhi’s lives. Charlotte and Gjurdhi seemed to be outsiders in both
places, as previously stated, and their existence mostly revolved around
survival; in Albania that meant survival according to traditional laws, while
in Canada it meant survival in a state of poverty. The second opposition is
between Albania and Italy, clearly stated by the Franciscan’s cultural input.
Finally, Munro provides the opposition between Albania and Malési e Madhe
(the Gheg land), the Gheg land being the rougher, wilder and more original
part of the land, where a given word still means something.
Another interesting point connected to the opposition between Albania
and Canada is that Munro often uses the information and style typical of
tourist guidebooks in her descriptions of the traditional Albanian life, which
“There is an instance in the story that might point to that direction when Charlotte claims
that she and Gjurdhi would have been something if they lived in a different country, revealing
a streak of escapism in Charlotte’s mind. Then again, this could be another proof that they
actually came together from a different country, namely Albania.
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