摘 要

爱丽丝·门罗是加拿大最具影响力的女作家之一，并于2013年获得诺贝尔文学奖。她以对普通妇女的细致入微的描绘而闻名。门罗的小说集《逃离》于2004年出版，由八篇短篇小说组成。作为这本书的第一篇短篇小说，《逃离》讲述了女主角卡拉的两次逃离。她为了理想的生活逃离了父母和丈夫，但最终还是归于丈夫，屈从于现实。到目前为止，鲜有学者研究小说《逃离》的女性成长主题，且只着眼于女主人公成长中的一两个阶段。本文系统而全面地研究了卡拉的成长路径，分析她逃离及回归的原因，进而探讨其女性思想的成长与成熟。

本文共分六章。第一章简要介绍了爱丽丝·门罗的生平和《逃离》小说集以及第一篇小说《逃离》的主要内容。第二到五章逐一分析女主人公的成长过程，包括顺从、逃离、回归与成长，这一部分详细讨论了故事中的对话和情节。最后一部分对全文进行总结，并阐述本文的局限性。本文通过对女主人公卡拉的生活的详细阐释，全方位探讨了女主人公的内心变化和精神成长。从逃离到回归的过程中，女主人公卡拉从一个天真无畏的小女孩成长为了一个心智成熟的已婚妇女，她试着去面对现实中的不幸，坚持自己的主见和判断，学会了在婚姻中和社会上寻找自己的位置。

关键词：爱丽丝·门罗；《逃离》；成长路径；女性思想

Abstract

Alice Munro is one of the most influential writers in Canada and she won the Nobel prize for literature in 2013. She is famous for her nuanced portrayal of ordinary women. Published in 2004, Munro’s masterpiece Runaway is a collection of eight short stories. As the first short story in this book, “Runaway” tells the two escapes of the heroine Carla. She flees from her parents and husband for her ideal life, but ultimately returns to her husband and succumbs to reality. Up till now, there are few of research papers on “Runaway” that emphasize the female growth, and they only study one or two stages of the heroine’s growth. This paper systematically and comprehensively explores the path of Carla’s growth, analyzing the reasons for her escapes and return so as to discuss the growth and maturity of her feminist thoughts.

The paper consists of six chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction to Alice Munro’s literary achievements, major features of the book Runaway and the first story “Runaway”. The following four chapters will analyze the process of the protagonist’s feminine growth, including obedience, escape, return and growth. In these parts, the dialogues and plots in the story are discussed in detail. The last chapter summarizes the whole paper and states its limitations. Through the detailed description of Carla’s real life in the story, this thesis will explore the heroine’s inner change and her mental and spiritual growth in an all-round way. In the process from escape to return, the heroine Carla grew up from an innocent and fearless little girl to a mature married woman. She gradually tried to face the misfortune in reality, stuck to her own opinions and judgments, and learned to find her proper place in marriage and society.

Key Words: Alice Munro; “Runaway”; the path of the growth; feminist thoughts

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Munro and “Runaway” 1

1.2 Literature Review 1

1.3 Structure of the Paper 3

2 Obedience to the Patriarchal Control 5

2.1 Obedience to Her Parents 5

2.2 Obedience to Her Husband 6

3 Escape for the Ideal Life 7

3.1 Escape from Her Parents 7

3.2 Escape from Her Husband 8

4 Return to the Dilemma of Reality 10

4.1 Reasons for Return 10

4.2 Changes for Return 11

5 Growth of the Spiritual World 12

5.1 Awakening of the Feminist Consciousness 12

5.2 Pursuit of Independence 13

6 Conclusion 14

6.1 Summary 14

6.2 Limitations 14

References 16

Acknowledgements 17

The Conflict between Ideality and Reality: The Analysis of the Initiation Theme in Alice Munro’s “Runaway”

1 Introduction

1.1 Munro and “Runaway”

Alice Munro is a famous Canadian female writer. She is known around the world for her short stories and has been selected as “100 Most Influential Persons in the World” by Time magazine. When she was 82 years old in 2013, she became the 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in history. She was praised as “a master of contemporary short story” and became the first Canadian writer to win this title.

Munro is famous for her Chekhovian realism, acute literary insight and attention to ordinary life, and a total of 14 works by her have been translated into 13 foreign languages and spread throughout the world. Her works are mainly derived from the love and family life of the common people in the suburban towns, and all of them involve serious themes related to birth, aging, illness and death. The main characters in her stories are mostly small-town women of all ages, ranging from a seven-year-old girl to a 70-year-old woman. They have experienced the baptism of life in Munro’s works, and have completed the self-pursuit and transformation.

Published in 2004, Munro’s masterpiece Runaway is a collection of short stories, including “Runaway”, “Chance”, “Soon”, “Silence”, “Passion”, “Trespasses”, “Tricks” and “Powers”. These eight short stories, to some extent, all tell the stories of the heroines’ love and separation, and the common plots of “escape” reflect the plights of female survival. Readers can not only appreciate the delicate and sensitive feelings of the characters, but also find that whether they stay or leave, they have to face different survival difficulties. To some extent, there is no escape for women.

“Runaway”, as the first story in the book, talks about the story of two escapes of the heroine Carla. For the first time, Carla ran away from home because she was tired of living with her parents. Then she married Clark, a riding teacher who had dropped out of school and made a living running a horse race. However, the depression of marriage and the triviality of life made Carla have the idea of fleeing again and then she fled to Toronto by bus with the help of her neighbor Sylvia. When she thought about the difficulties she might encounter in her future life, she finally chose to turn to her husband for help and gave up her escape plan. In the narration of the novel, the plain plot flashes one after another, interweaving the real situation of the heroine with the memory of the past and the expectation of the future, reflecting Carla’s inner desire, depression and entanglement. After careful study, it is not difficult to find that these two escapes show Carla’s mental journey from the rebellious period of youth to maturity.

1.2 Literature Review

In foreign countries, especially in western countries, Munro’s works are often regarded as the object of literary criticism by scholars. As soon as her works are published, they will arouse widespread concern and a large number of academic commentary articles will appear. The focuses of foreign academic researches typically include narrative research, feminist research and so on.

Scholars study the story “Runaway” from different perspectives. Some concentrate on Munro’s narrative art, and they explore the narrative techniques, narrative language and narrative structure. Tolan argues in her paper that Munro attempts to reflect women’s experiences through traditional narrative methods in Runaway, but the theme of women’s self-exploration is still within the framework of male-dominated narrative (Tolan Fiona, 2010). Reeves explores the narrative inflection in Runaway through the lives of women and men in stories (Eoin Reeves, 2016). Some scholars have mentioned geographical backgrounds in her novels. In “Mirage, Space and Hegemony: The Exploration of Identity in Alice Munro’s ‘Runaway’”, Carla is regarded as a typical figure to examine the social and mental spaces of Canadian women within the paradigm of Henri Lefebvre’s mirage concept (Bahador, Hashemi, Zohdi, 2018). Besides, in the spiritual level, Bahador and Zohdi use Freud’s psycho-analysis theory to elaborate the psychology of the heroine Carla (Bahador, Zohdi, 2015).

In China, the study of Munro’s works started relatively late. Domestic research on Munro has really started to heat up since 2009, and reached a climax after Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Before 2013, domestic studies mainly focused on narrative techniques, feminism, writing style and linguistic features. Compared with foreign studies, there are still deficiencies in breadth and depth. After 2013, domestic research has been further expanded in text selection and theoretical perspectives, and the shortcomings of previous studies have been effectively improved.

Most of the studies on the story “Runaway” are from three perspectives: symbolism, narrative arts, and themes. For example, Wang Xiao analyzes the image of Flora as the scapegoat to reveal the theme of the story in “On the Scapegoat Image in ‘Runaway’” (Wang Xiao, 2017). Similarly, Lv Jingnan also studies the deep meaning of three escapes and three main images in the story “Runaway”, including weather, scenery and animals (Lv Jingnan, 2016). In terms of narrative arts, He Shengnan analyzes the narrative features of Runaway from three perspectives: narrative voice, narrative perspective and narrative time (He Shengnan, 2015). Yan Lu reveals Carla’s mental struggles in the process of runaway by analyzing the shifts of three types of focalizations in the story: zero-focalizaition, internal focalization and external focalization (Yan Lu, 2016). Domestic scholars have also analyzed the multiple themes involved in Munro’s works, including the themes of escape, survival and so on. Ma Lili and Liu Lili explores Munro’s universal theme of the inadequacy and dilemma of the ladies between their puberty and adulthood in “Dilemma of Growth in Runaway by Munro” (Ma Lili, Liu Lili, 2014). Lv Ning and Zhang Hongyan combine Runaway with Atwood’s “survival theme”, and explore the key to the survival of modern women through the survival status of different women in Runaway (Lv Ning, Zhang Hongyan, 2016).