Alice Munro: Examination

¶ … Met My Husband: An Examination Nearly every woman remembers how she met her husband: one would be hard-pressed to find a woman who would not remember such an event. Such a story tends to be seared onto the minds and hearts of women everywhere, regardless of how dull, ordinary or remarkable the story is. Alice Munro's story entitled "How I Met My Husband" allows the reader to taste once again the wonder and uncertainty of youth, along with the pain and excitement of first love.

As Munro demonstrates, the lesson is contained in the journey: even though humans falter, fail and make mistakes, the path that is travelled is the one which one is supposed to be on -- even if the results achieved are unplanned and unexpected -- one learns and discovers just the same. More than anything, Munro's story makes a strong case for the organization of the universe, and the greater force working on the behalf of all humans.

The story demonstrates how the thing one sets one's sights on receiving, can actually just be the vehicle for getting the thing one is meant to have. Munro's story of Edie and her encounters with the pilot have all the romance, tenderness, and sweetness that is necessary for a story of first love. However, it's exactly these attributes which Munro deftly uses to show ultimately at the end of the story, that sometimes the makings of real love aren't romantic or tender, but actually very ordinary.

Munro is able to do this so cleverly, as she demonstrates that sometimes love -- the thing that people associate with romance -- can sometimes flourish right under our noses, in the most commonplace manner. In this case, Munro makes a strong case in presenting Edie's encounters with the pilot as dreamy and passionate, but largely based on infatuation and appearance.

Consider the following statement: "He put the cake away carefully and sat beside me and started those little kisses, so soft, I can't ever let myself think about them, such kindness in his face and lovely kisses, all over my eyelids and neck and ears, all over, and then me kissing back as well as I could… and we lay back on the cot and pressed together, just gently, and he did some other things, not bad things, or not in a bad way.

It was lovely in the tent, that smell of grass and hot tent cloth beating down on it, and he said, "I wouldn't do you any harm for the world'" (Munro, 142). In this excerpt, Munro truly succeeds in creating an atmosphere of romantic intimacy: the tent described is like a lovely cocoon between these two people, and there's this profound sense of privacy and sharing.

Munro paints a vivid portrait of the lovely summer day, the sense of gentle excitement and passion between these two people, and the needs fulfilled between them. There's a sense of romance, excitement and safety. The tent described is like an isolated planet where just the two of them exist. While this is highly romantic, Munro, by creating such a clear picture of romance, is able to demonstrate that quite often real love is not made up of such heady romance.

When Munro describes the way that her relationship developed with the man who would become her husband, the text used and words chosen are completely devoid of romance. Consider the following when the mailman calls looking for Edie: "He said he missed me. He asked if I would like to go to Goderich, where some well-known movie was on, I forget what.

So I said yes, and I went out with him for two years and he asked me to marry him, and we were engaged a year more while I got my things together, and then we did marry" (Munro, 146). If one examines this excerpt, one can see how the author uses simple, declarative statements to convey the development of the love (or the romance which is not at all romantic). They go to the movies. They date for two years.

They get engaged, but don't get married right away, because of life obligations which stand in their way. Nothing about the unfolding of this union sounds terribly romantic or terribly tender. However, from the perspective of the narrator, these are the bricks which allowed them to build a solid union: to have kids, and to stay together for years and years.

The simplicity and directness by which Munro relates this, one comes to understand what real love can and should look like overall, and that sometimes real love doesn't come with the rush of fanfare and romance that Edie's experience with the pilot was characterized by. Finally, Munro demonstrates the power of the universe and the proper unfolding of the universe at large, and how as human beings navigating our own lives, we are often chasing after the things which don't particularly benefit us. Munro's story.