#whatisremembering

[grizzli7e-blog]

#whatis #whatislove #whatispain #whatischange #whatissane #whatisremembering #whatismemory #whatisliving #whatisdeath #whatisbreath #whatisfamily #whatischoice #whatisavoice #my #album of #my #life #hereis #whatis https://soundcloud.com/nick-meyer-3/not-dead-cant-quit (at Arrowhead Towne Center)

[grouponemodernfiction-blog]

Abigail: What is Remembered, and What is Not (291)

I’ve read a few pieces revolving around adultery in the past: The Awakening, “A Respectable Woman,” The Scarlett Letter. Usually, when we get literature that is in some way about adultery, it is one of two things (and it is almost always about a woman sleeping with someone other than her husband). Either the woman is becoming more independent and celebrating a sexuality that society tells her she cannot (like in Kate Chopin’s work), or she is tormented by the sin or is legally punished (like in Anna Karenina and The Scarlett Letter).

But we don’t really get any that with Alice Munro’s piece. How does our narrator feel about having had an affair? I’m not sure. Does she feel empowered? Maybe, but all we know about her life with her husband is that, since she takes care of the house while he is forced to be the responsible breadwinner, she gets to regress back into a sort of “adolescence.” We do not, however, get any sense that she hates this, so the fact that she has an affair doesn’t necessarily free her from anything. If anything, it maybe makes her feel like an adult, but she does not tell us this. It doesn’t seem to change her life at all.

Based on the title, of course, it is more important what she remembers about the affair than the affair itself. But she still doesn’t seem to remember anything of real importance. Those memories do not really change her. They make her a little sad that she never sees the doctor again, and she remembers him fondly, but she never comes to a revelation about her sexuality or her independence, or really anything at all, which is very unlike most literature.