In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • To Close or Not to Close:Alice Munro's "The Love of a Good Woman"
  • John Gerlach (bio)

"The Love of a Good Woman" poses unusual problems for the reader at its conclusion—which is virtually no conclusion at all. Many of the best analyses of closure in short fiction, particularly those of Susan Lohafer, have dealt with very short stories; here I examine closure in a difficult case at the opposite end of the scale. Munro's story has already gained considerable attention, recent as it is; it first appeared in The New Yorker in 1996, and later as the title story in a 1999 collection. It has been the focus of several fine articles, in particular those by Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Mark Nunes, Ildiko de Papp Carrington, Dennis Duffy, and Judith McCombs, but the implications of the ending have broad implications for how open endings in stories of different length might work and for the reader's desire for closure in any narrative.

The story centers on Enid, a practical nurse, caring for the dying Mrs. Quinn, a relatively young woman with two small daughters. It happens that Enid, a woman in her mid-thirties, still single, has known, as one might expect in a rural Ontario town, Mrs. Quinn's husband Rupert since childhood. In grade school she had been part of a group of girls who enjoyed teasing him. Later in high school, her desk in front of his, she tried in small ways to make up for that mistreatment. Rupert Quinn seems to have taken no notice of her, not when she teased him, not in high school, [End Page 146] and not now as she cares for his wife, Jeannette, dying from a painful kidney disease of uncertain origin.

The story meanders, not driving toward any particular ending; a key emerging element is the possible murder of a Mr. Willens, an optometrist. Mrs. Quinn in fact tells Enid three variants of the tale, but in each case it seems clear that Rupert discovered Mr. Willens in the middle of more than a home optical examination of Jeannette Quinn, and Rupert pounded the optometrist to death. Thereafter, at Mrs. Quinn's insistence, husband and wife set about disposing of the body. Having heard this story, Enid becomes obsessed with making matters right, getting Rupert to confess. The story ends with her waiting by a river while Rupert seeks the hidden oars of a boat: "Her boots sank into the mud a little and held her. If she tried to, she could still hear Rupert's movements in the bushes. But if she concentrated on the motion of the boat, a slight and secretive motion, she could feel as if everything for a long way around had gone quiet" (141).

It's a teasingly restful conclusion, replete with what I would have called markers of natural termination in Toward the End: it concludes with the peaceful tableau of intensified awareness of quiet and slight motion, an image of tranquility. But Enid has gone dressed to the nines on this muddy bank, at the brink of recreating the boating scene in An American Tragedy: she will put herself in a position of absolute vulnerability, announcing that in truth she cannot swim and giving him the opportunity to confess—or to murder her and cover everything up. At the same time it has at least entered her mind that she could become a mother to the two Quinn girls in a way that Jeannette never was. Furthermore, during this moment of quiet, Rupert is hacking a path in the brush with a hatchet. We've reached a situation as uncertain as that nineteenth-century classic, Frank Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger." What will happen on this boat in the middle of the river, what will happen to these two and the Quinn children even if Enid survives?

Should the reader attempt to provide an extension, imagining a continuation in order to provide a resolution, i.e, allowing thematic elements to fall into place? Does the story in fact provide any clues to a future resolution? After reviewing several possibilities, I will argue that Gary Saul Morson...

pdf

Share