46 pages • 1 hour read
Alice MunroLives of Girls and Women
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
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Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
The Flats Road
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to murder, death by suicide and suicidal ideation, and sexual abuse, including sexual interactions between an adult and a young teenager. The source text also includes outdated and offensive language surrounding race and mental health conditions that are reproduced only via quotations.
The Flats Road is a recurring motif and setting throughout the stories in the collection. According to Del, the Flats Road exists between two worlds: “The Flats Road was not part of town but it was not part of the country either” (9). By not having a defined place among the area’s social structure, the landscape allows Del to engage in The Discovery of Identity Through Exploration. As a child, she has the opportunity to explore the natural world, which coexists with the Flats Road. Del’s viewpoint that her environment does not have any social confines allows her to exist relatively freely, positioning the Flats Road as a symbol of possibility. Once she gets older and moves to Jubilee, the Flats Road becomes a place to reflect on her childhood. However, toward the end of the book, Del begins to visit her house on the Flats Road and spends her time cleaning rather than exploring the land. She claims to see “nothing but [her] own shadow floating over the gravel” and not the wildflowers as she did as a child (252).
This motif also supports The Impact of Social Class and Poverty. Although Munro implies that those living down the Flats Road are of a lower economic class than those who live in town, Del’s father sees it as a step above the “proud poverty” of the farm families in the country. Ada, on the other hand, views the Flats Road and its inhabitants with disdain and, early in the text, aspires to live in town. The Flats Road thus represents a lower-middle rung on the socioeconomic ladder for the stories’ characters—a place that is a step up, for some characters, but a place that others hope to escape.
The Library
The library, for Del, symbolizes a place of knowledge and understanding. She discovers comfort in being surrounded by books and the information that they hold. Del feels close to the stories, or lives, of the characters within books, and she yearns to be close to the knowledge they possess:
I had read them, didn’t read them anymore. Other books I knew so well by their spines, knew the curve of every letter in their titles, but had never touched them, never pulled them out […] They were like people you saw on the street day after day, year after year, but never knew more than their faces; this could happen even in Jubilee (131).
Although Del does not feel incredibly close to many people at this time in “Changes and Ceremonies,” she finds solace in the library because it allows her the opportunity to explore new ideas and concepts. The books she has yet to read also hold the potential of knowledge she has not yet learned, giving her comfort. The library also houses people, such as herself and the librarian, who do not always fit comfortably within other social realms. For example, Del finds the librarian to be intriguing because she is unable to hold a job anywhere else due to her disability. Del believes this to mean that the library is a safe place for anyone who does not feel comfortable among the rest of society.
The Wooden Box
The wooden box that Aunt Elspeth and Aunt Grace give Del along with Uncle Craig’s manuscript serves as a safe space for Del to keep her thoughts and writings until she is ready for them to be seen by others. In this way, the wooden box symbolizes both safety and possibility. While the aunts are primarily concerned with passing along the manuscript in the hopes that Del will complete Craig’s work, in recognition of her “knack” for writing, it is notable that Del is most excited by the potential of its container. That Del retains the wooden box but places the manuscript in the basement, where it is later ruined, suggests that she is less interested in the histories other people have written than she is in writing her own histories and truth, in keeping with her character’s tendency to shrug off social norms. Del claims that the box “would be a good place to keep those few poems and bits of novel [she] had written” to keep them safe from other people or even the elements (70). The ability to place her writing in a safe space allows Del to feel as though she can write freely and partake in her creativity without holding back. It provides a space for her to express herself and engage with her identity as she develops from childhood to adulthood.
Related Titles
By Alice Munro
