Simon Vance

This fantasy of total retribution, Monroe suggests with typical shrewdness, is how Rose consoles herself for what she has just been through. The story is more compassionate than Rose's fantasy, but still it carries a retributive sting. Monroe was finally telling her side. Many of her characters struggle to tell theirs.

This fantasy of total retribution, Monroe suggests with typical shrewdness, is how Rose consoles herself for what she has just been through. The story is more compassionate than Rose's fantasy, but still it carries a retributive sting. Monroe was finally telling her side. Many of her characters struggle to tell theirs.

In Wild Swans, published the following year, a teenage Rose is on a train alone to Toronto when a minister climbs aboard and sits down beside her. Feigning sleep, he puts a hand on her leg. Rose is paralyzed, feeling both arousal and disgust as the man proceeds to sexually molest her. She was careful of her breathing, Munro writes. She could not believe this.

In Wild Swans, published the following year, a teenage Rose is on a train alone to Toronto when a minister climbs aboard and sits down beside her. Feigning sleep, he puts a hand on her leg. Rose is paralyzed, feeling both arousal and disgust as the man proceeds to sexually molest her. She was careful of her breathing, Munro writes. She could not believe this.

Victim and accomplice, she was born past Glasgow's jams and marmalades, past the big pulsating pipes of oil refineries. The story is acute about Rose's psychology. In the prudish atmosphere of her family home, she has learned to be ashamed of her desire, a subject that is taboo.

Victim and accomplice, she was born past Glasgow's jams and marmalades, past the big pulsating pipes of oil refineries. The story is acute about Rose's psychology. In the prudish atmosphere of her family home, she has learned to be ashamed of her desire, a subject that is taboo.

It is this that has conditioned her to see herself like Liza in Vandals, as partly to blame for what is happening, both victim and accomplice. Her susceptibility to abuse is also a susceptibility to other people's narratives. This wasn't the first time Munro wrote about unwanted sexual contact.

It is this that has conditioned her to see herself like Liza in Vandals, as partly to blame for what is happening, both victim and accomplice. Her susceptibility to abuse is also a susceptibility to other people's narratives. This wasn't the first time Munro wrote about unwanted sexual contact.

One of her first works of fiction, Story for Sunday, published in her college literary magazine, features a girl who is kissed on the lips by the superintendent of her Sunday school. She, too, is unexpectedly aroused. In the title story from Munro's second book, Lives of Girls and Women, 1971, the sexually curious teenage heroine is groomed by the boyfriend of her family's boarder.

One of her first works of fiction, Story for Sunday, published in her college literary magazine, features a girl who is kissed on the lips by the superintendent of her Sunday school. She, too, is unexpectedly aroused. In the title story from Munro's second book, Lives of Girls and Women, 1971, the sexually curious teenage heroine is groomed by the boyfriend of her family's boarder.

Whether these episodes are based on real-life experience, like the physical abuse at the heart of Royal Beatings, has become a subject of intense speculation. When an interviewer once asked Munro if her work was autobiographical, she replied, I guess I have a standard answer to this. In incident, no. In emotion, completely. In incident, up to a point, too.

Whether these episodes are based on real-life experience, like the physical abuse at the heart of Royal Beatings, has become a subject of intense speculation. When an interviewer once asked Munro if her work was autobiographical, she replied, I guess I have a standard answer to this. In incident, no. In emotion, completely. In incident, up to a point, too.

The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, who was one of Munro's friends, told me she thought it very, very likely that Munro was sexually abused as a girl, if only because sexual abuse is so common. Peeping Toms and Gropers on Trains, Atwood wrote to me, were a dime a dozen in what she called the Dark Ages. In small towns like Wingham, there was a social imperative to keep such things private.

The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, who was one of Munro's friends, told me she thought it very, very likely that Munro was sexually abused as a girl, if only because sexual abuse is so common. Peeping Toms and Gropers on Trains, Atwood wrote to me, were a dime a dozen in what she called the Dark Ages. In small towns like Wingham, there was a social imperative to keep such things private.

Everybody knew stuff about other people, Atwood said. What you most feared was being shamed and ridiculed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Munro's stories themselves. Her abused young women invariably keep quiet. Monroe married her first husband, Jim, a classmate at the University of Western Ontario, in 1951, when she was twenty.

Everybody knew stuff about other people, Atwood said. What you most feared was being shamed and ridiculed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Munro's stories themselves. Her abused young women invariably keep quiet. Monroe married her first husband, Jim, a classmate at the University of Western Ontario, in 1951, when she was twenty.

Jim was from a well-off family in Oakville, near Toronto, and he promised his bride an escape from the social world she grew up in. they shared a passion for art and literature but his undisguised disdain for her working-class origins he was always correcting her huron county accent was an ongoing source of tension munro chafed against the conventions of their suburban existence in vancouver

Jim was from a well-off family in Oakville, near Toronto, and he promised his bride an escape from the social world she grew up in. they shared a passion for art and literature but his undisguised disdain for her working-class origins he was always correcting her huron county accent was an ongoing source of tension munro chafed against the conventions of their suburban existence in vancouver

Life was very tightly managed as a series of permitted recreations, permitted opinions, and permitted ways of being a woman, she said in an interview decades after they were divorced. The only outlet, I thought, was flirting with other people's husbands at parties. Monroe and Jim were both energetically unfaithful. When Andrea was born in 1967, the marriage was already on the rocks.

Life was very tightly managed as a series of permitted recreations, permitted opinions, and permitted ways of being a woman, she said in an interview decades after they were divorced. The only outlet, I thought, was flirting with other people's husbands at parties. Monroe and Jim were both energetically unfaithful. When Andrea was born in 1967, the marriage was already on the rocks.