Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Remembering
"What Is Remembered" gives us the first real sexual infidelity in this story collection. Rather than a wife who pines her whole married life for something exciting to happen, fantasizing about some imagined love affair, we have Meriel, who has her moment of excitement and then spends her whole married life clutching the memory like a life preserver. Do you think she's happier for having taken that plunge than the wives who only long for it?
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5 comments:
I don't know about happier. It certainly made her life more interesting on some level, having this little "treasure" to mull all those years.
I think Meriel is happier for it. She cherishes her memories of that day but never wonders about what might have been.
I really can't imagine being like that. I would obsess and worry and feel guilt and all sorts of other negative things in that situation. But Meriel and I are very different.
I tend to feel like Meriel's situation really isn't much different from the women in the other stories. She's still spending her time pining for something that isn't her real life. Yes, the sex really happened, but she turned it into a fantasy in her mind. She started doing it immediately, changing the setting into an elaborate hotel room, etc. And then she "forgot" about the part where he wouldn't kiss her goodbye. What she was clinging to might be as unreal as what the other wives are dreaming of.
Yes, great point, Erin.
And it even crosses her mind that women in another era might have jumped off the ferry and drowned themselves over the transgression. Her imagination is in high gear, romanticizing the liaison, when, for the guy, it was just a casual tryst and he probably didn't give her or it a second thought; he probably just went on to have more experiences of the same ilk while she sadly clung to that one adventure that, it turns out, was not even like she had "remembered" it.
She didn't even love the guy as an individual; it was just the "romance" she cherished, as you said, and the romance wasn't real.
I think it satiated Meriel to have a taste of the road not taken, so to speak, even if it didn't make her happy. But it was interesting how determined she was to handle its aftermath -- how she would review it in-depth, then put it away, then found she could not. That's what I found intriguing about it, especially since neither the doctor nor her husband really proved themselves to be the better man. You know, in most cases the husband would be the noble figure, or the lover the "true love" whom through whatever circumstances would be unattainable, and instead Munro just offers this interesting either/or scenario of imperfect, regular joes.
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