Bring what you Know of Life to Life: Alice Munro's Storytelling

When asked about her impressions on being called a feminist writer in 2001, Alice Munro explained that, although at the beginning she used to affirm she was, she neither practiced nor knew anything about feminist theoretical approaches whatsoever. She stated: “ I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important” (Feinberg

'Bringing Life'). It is precisely part of this female experience what she explores in her short story “Family Furnishings”, included in Hateship, Frienship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001). Proof of her mastery as one of the best Canadian storytellers ever, “Family Furnishings” leaps a realistic depiction of two extraordinary women as epitomes who validate female ambivalence. Both the feminine narrative voice, who also participates as pivotal character of the story, and Alfrida devote their life to writing and explore the contours of mainsntream society opening a new door into women's diverse life choices, contradictions, anxieties, decisions, changing emotions, similarities and differences for whom marriage is sometimes a refuge, sometimes a burden, and even both or neither. In- between the inherited social mores of a Canadian small town and new life choices in the city during the aftermath of the First World War, both are excellent examples of Munro's realistic, genuine, challenging and moving fictionalization of life, in this case, through female experience, the life experience she seems to know better.But Alfrida and her niece are much more meaningful since they serve as axis of an extraordinary storytelling by Munro in which stories mingle, grow apart, travel from past to present, move from the first to the third person, and open doors to new stories. All of them as small but fundamental pieces that form an emotional life sketch, a tale of life.