Munro, "The Shining Houses" (1968)
First published 1968 in Dance of the Happy Shades.
Loss of story
Introduction (Geddes 232-3)
- Predominance of feeling over event and setting
- Stories made the way dreams are made, catching truth
Narrator: limited omniscient -- focalises on Mary; she represents both sides, renders her impotent at the end
Setting: Mrs Fullarton's house: the place, p. 234, 235
-- contrast with new, p. 236 -- temporary nature of the new? p. 239
Character: individuality (non-stereotypical): Mrs Fullarton, p. 234; Mary?
vs. group behaviour, e.g., p. 237; and their stereotype of community
power struggle manifested in torn up hillside, violence of men's work on gardens (236), legal strategy to evict Mrs Fullerton; children's party an interesting mirror image reversal of this: constraint of flash cameras and birthday games, then they go wild (236)
"community"? p. 239 (end); as organized violence on character, imposed on setting
gender issue: individuals under attack, rendered powerless, happen to be the women: Mrs Fullerton and Mary; real power lies with the men, Carl and Steve, and their "lane deal."
Munro's commentary in "What is Real?":
Story like a house, move about in it different ways (not directional, plotted), p. 363
-- thus, starts with a certain kind of structure, around feeling, p. 363
Needs bits of the real, "starter dough," p. 364
Lyotard (Postmodern Condition (1984), p. 37): no more grand narratives, the turn to instrumentality; loss of plot -- clash of values instead; Munro's story is indecisive ("put your hands in your pockets" p. 239 -- but who is saying this? Mary or Munro?)
something like a more global or totalizing "crisis" in the narrative function in general, since . . . the older master narratives of legitimation no longer function in the service of scientific research -- nor, by implication, anywhere else (e.g., we no longer believe in political or historical teleologies . . . )" (Jameson, Forward to Lyotard, xi-xii)
More on Lyotard:
- the end of grand narratives (brief) -- "'grand narratives' . . . represent totalizing explanations of things like Christianity or Marxism -- dominant modes of thought . . . Postmodernism . . . deconstructs these 'grand narratives'"
- a longer summary -- "the internal contradictions of the use of narratives to legitimate science's quest for objective Truth enhance the "incredulity towards metanarratives" (105). Lyotard thus argues that postindustrial society marks decisively the end of the tolerance of metanarratives."
Document prepared September 4th 2002 / updated October 23rd 3002