The Office by Alice Munro

Alice Munro is widely considered to be Canada’s best writer of short stories, whose penetrating

insight into the environment that shapes people and the social customs around them have made

her one of the foremost commentators of life in this country. Munro’s works are marked by the

lavish care she showers upon her effort, where the thoughts of her characters are rendered with

subtle precision and clarity, which make them seem so life-like (Thomas C. Tausky). Alice

Munro’s artistic touch makes ordinary lives look extraordinary and by highlighting the details,

Alice Munro turns the most mundane incidents into amazing experiences.

“The Office” a short story by Alice Munro deals with a woman’s struggle to carve her

identity as an independent writer, which would give her life more meaning, than just being

merely a housewife. The story can be seen as a creative person’s search for fulfillment of their

dreams, where the narrator vents her frustrations at being merely a mother and wife, but finds

that the obtrusive behaviour of society, displayed by the landlord Mr. Malley, does not allow her

to fulfill her desires. The narrator feels that she is so “bound” to her domestic life that she refers

to this as - “A woman is the house” itself and looks for a role beyond this tiresome, mundane and

traditional one.

In “The Office” Alice Munro brings out the harsh reality of female stereotyping that

exists in society, where the position of a woman is confined to being a homemaker and a

provider. Women are also seen as inferior, a fact brought out into the open by the nasty attitude

of Mr. Malley when his advances are spurned by the narrator. Mr. Malley, on learning that the
 narrator is single, begins to woo her relentlessly, unaware that the narrator has taken up an office

to divide her professional identity from her societal one, and not for the fact because she craves

company.

The narrator’s feminine instincts make her sympathize with Mr. Malley, but when he begins to

take advantage of the situation, she is helpless and realizes that “This is a test and I did not pass

it”. Mr. Malley pursues her relentlessly, refusing to acknowledge the narrator’s need for

independence and to stay unfettered, and when she shuts the door on him he accuses her of being

immoral and abnormal. The narrator is left with no choice but to leave her new life with

“absorbing depression”.

Alice Munro painted a true picture of what many women like her have to endure when

they decide to chart out a new course for themselves. The frustrations of a woman at her inability

to fulfill her creative longings and the need to be emancipated from things that bind her, find an

echo in all women who are making a professional life a priority for themselves. The author has

also highlighted the pitfalls which such women have to endure and how in the end, they are often

forced to sacrifice their dreams at the altar of society that is a male creation. In this story, Alice

Munro uses the image of an apparently satisfied woman, to show that beneath an exterior of calm

fortitude, there is much tumult, which can be calmed down only when the self needs of the

individual are fulfilled.

References

Alice Munro as a Literary Entrepreneur- By Jeet Heer

National Post (May 11, 2002).
 Jeet Heer, "Alice Munro as a Literary Entrepreneur"
http://www.jeetheer.com/culture/munro.htm

Canadian Literary Archives - Alice Munro Bio-critical

http://www.ucalgary.ca/lib-old/SpecColl/munrobioc.htm

Hausarbeiten.de - Munro, Alice - The Office – Text analysis

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