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CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS give the reader an insight into how the writer’s approach changes throughout her career. THE THREE STORIES: A MUNROVIAN SUBTYPE In what follows I will offer a reading of three short stories appearing in three different volumes across a time period of two decades, arguing that the narratives discussed make up a group or grouping of a type of story in Munro’s oeuvre. What justifies this reading is the striking similarities one finds not only in the setting but also in character types, situations, plotlines, narrative elements, and, most importantly, in underlying thematic preoccupations. The parallels are not remarkably striking on their own, nor are they overtly difficult to track, but because the obvious references are few and dispersed all over the narratives in asides, seemingly random remarks, they are easy to overlook. When considered, however, they open a new way to understand Munro's fiction. Yet, I do not argue that these short stories are mere rewritings, recycled material, more of the same. I argue for just the opposite: exactly because they approach an issue in a similar fictional framework contemplating fundamental human questions, the changes in their closures, the remarkable shifts for the central characters tell of the shift in Munro’s overall vision, too. The stories are “Vandals” published as the last narrative in Open Secrets (1994), and the first pieces in Runaway (2004) and Too Much Happiness (2009): “Runaway” and “Dimensions,” respectively. The fact that all three stories are given prominent positions in their respective volumes already indicates their centrality in Munro’s work; in addition, they garnered considerable critical attention immediately, which also attests to their recognition as instant classics. More importantly, the thematic convergence of the narratives is remarkable. All three stories explore what maintains a relationship, especially an abusive one, what individuals are willing, or able, to recognize as truth, how individuals react when intimating that they potentially come into possession of knowledge that may alienate them from or connect them to a significant other, what sacrifices individuals are ready to make, what prices they are ready to pay to maintain their loyalty, and to whom they accord their loyalty. But ultimately, the central question at the heart of the three narratives is why individuals do not seek knowledge, the truth, why they resist the obvious when their relationships are at stake. All three short stories draw on the archetypal plot, characters and setting of the biblical Fall: in each narrative, the female protagonist is tempted to confront the secrets concealed within the silences in the center of the narratives. Resembling Eve, the naive heroine grapples with a choice: she can remain loyal to an Adam-like figure (an enigmatic, older, grim patriarch) by rejecting
