Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Furnishings

I think in "Family Furnishings," Munro is really talking about family baggage. And I think she pretty well described how a lot of people feel about their families and hometowns.

This line particularly resonated with me: "There was a danger whenever I was on home ground. It was the danger of seeing my life through other eyes than my own."

Probably we've all felt that sense of danger at some point, of seeing our lives through our parents' eyes.
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9 comments:

Ben said...

Back when I was a conservative Christian, I was very much in danger of seeing the world through my father’s eyes. Now that I am an atheist, I doubt that will ever be a danger again.

And I don’t think I see the world the way my mom does. I’m not really sure how she sees the world.

2:04 PM, June 06, 2007
Erin said...

Not seeing the world through our parents' eyes -- seeing our lives through their eyes. As in, you know what you think about your life and the choices you've made. But what does your life look like to them? Does my life look frivolous or poorly planned, etc. to them?

2:33 PM, June 06, 2007
kc said...

Oh yeah, that's a constant. I don't think I'll ever be free of that. It was a big theme in my family that you don't disappoint your parents. I think I told you that my grandmother, who was a chain smoker from the time she was a teenager, would never smoke in front of her dad. Never. Not even when she was in her 60s. She thought it would be awful to do it, to basically flaunt to your parents: Look how I'm destroying the life you gave me! I always admired that, even though some might say it was silly (he knew that she smoked; she just never let him see it). I would never light up in front of my mom either or use swear words. And I feel guilt when I do something she would never do, like pay a bill late or waste food or let weeds grow in the lawn or date someone who was not "respectable," and it's all because of, as you said, seeing myself through her eyes.

2:44 PM, June 06, 2007
Ben said...

Huh, I’m not sure why I read that wrong.

Anyway, I don’t think I see myself through my parents’ eyes at all. It really doesn’t matter to me what they think of me.

2:53 PM, June 06, 2007
cl said...

Maybe I misunderstood this passage, but I thought that line and the many references to how the family tap-danced around real topics of conversation had to do with the implied relationship between the narrator's father and Alfrida.

10:00 AM, June 14, 2007
Erin said...

You think there was something untoward going on? I really didn't pick up on that.

10:20 AM, June 14, 2007
cl said...

I got the sense that Alfrida's daughter was to have been born around when Alfrida would have been in or leaving high school, and that daughter's insistence on bringing up the anecdote of Alfrida and the narrator's father in the field in that same time period was an underhanded/hostile way to establish what the relationship had been. It also would help explain Alfrida's hostility toward the narrator.

10:29 AM, June 14, 2007
cl said...

There also was the narrator's uneasiness when she saw the difference between the memory her father shared with her (that painted their closeness in terms of childhood) versus what Alfrida's daughter emphasized (that they were teens, almost adults). The narrator has been reliable so far, and there's no other clues as to who would have fathered Alfrida's baby.

10:32 AM, June 14, 2007
Erin said...

Interesting. I'm going to have to go back and reread that part.

3:00 PM, June 14, 2007

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