“Passion”
by Alice Munro
from Runaway
In “Passion,” a poor, brilliant, twenty-year old girl with a ferocious appetite for learning, is shunted away from further education by her high school principal. His position is that Grace cannot afford college, and she should see a little of life before she assumes the role chosen for her by fate — to be her uncle’s assistant in the business of chair caning. The reader is appalled by the vision of this smart, ambitious girl surrounded by rows and rows of chairs waiting to be caned, as if she were behind bars. As if she herself were awaiting a caning.
But the reader must also consider whether the principal is providing Grace flight from her uncle, a man who is, we learn later, probably a criminal.
What follows is a very close reading of Munro’s “Passion.” You should really read Munro’s story first. Then judge whether what I say holds any water. Munro’s writing is typified by gaps and ellipses, and the reader needs to encounter the real thing first hand.
As guided by the principal, the girl, Grace, goes to a lake-side town to be a waitress. There she meets a privileged college boy named Maury, and (old story) she doesn’t so much fall in love with him as she falls in love with his house and his mother. The rest of the family? A much older half-brother who is a doctor who drinks. The doctor’s wife and children. A sister who seems to like to get to the point and get herself outta there. Guests now and then. The Able Mrs. Abel, who keeps the house. And books, a lot of books.
It’s a summer idyll. The mother, Mrs. Travers, likes Grace so much she picks Grace up at work to come out to the house. There’s class, so much class: books to read and talk about, guests, word games, a servant. Maury adores Grace and has begun planning their life together. The livin’ is easy.
Not so fast. You might think the story is going to be easy. Yes and no. It helps an awful lot to check the etymology of names with Munro. Travers is a name descended from the French word for passage, a word that subsequently denoted the toll-taker, at the bridge, for instance. You pay a price for your passage, Munro seems to suggest. What price, for instance, will Grace pay for her swift passage from the lower class of poverty into the lower realms of the elite? Given that it is not Maury she loves but the way of life?
Note that Maury has begun planning their life together. Although Munro doesn’t say so in so many words, Maury has the inner conviction of class – that she who marries money earns it. Ironically, very early in their relationship, Grace explains herself, sort of, to Maury, but he appears to not really hear her. Grace will pay a toll.
To explain: Early in their relationship, they have gone to see Father of the Bride (1950), the famous movie with Elizabeth Taylor, and Grace is enraged by it. She makes a somewhat rambling attack on why it is so maddening. It isn’t that women are chosen for their beauty so much as that women are chosen for their pea-brains. What is worse, they are expected to be “pea-brained” forever. Maury is deeply moved by her, he says. He says that she is “special.”
But he doesn’t recognize her love of learning. Has Grace explained to Maury that she excelled in the state 12th-grade examinations? That she stayed in school an extra year to take advanced math and science? That she wanted then to study four more languages on her own and take the examinations for those? That she had a determination to “learn everything she could for free”?
Even if she did, Maury’s plans for their married life had no provision for her to learn anything.
As for Maury, his need for total control was something to behold. Even though Grace was very willing to have sex with him and pressed him for it, he refused! He said he was “protecting” her. She was quite attractive, and he said he adored her. What was his hang-up? The reader thinks it was partially his need to be in total control, given that she was quite powerful in her own right. He was practicing saying no, thinks the reader.
He’s pretty silly.
But so is Grace. Her adolescent vision is that she wants to learn as much as possible “for free.” Even though she feels no passion for Maury at all, even though she doesn’t love him, it seems that her affair with him is an opportunity for her. She gets to see how the other side lives. She gets to try out the pampered life of the servant-served class. She gets to lie on the couch reading books she has plucked from the family library, and she gets to talk books with the Mother of the house.
She doesn’t notice, though, a couple of things about Mrs. Travers. Grace remarks that she likes listening to Mrs. Travers talk. Grace pays no attention to Mrs. Travers’ throwaway reply: “I like listening to myself.”
Mrs. Travers may have revealed herself in a nutshell: she’s no pea-brain, but there’s not ever been anyone to listen. Listening, apparently, is not in Mr. Travers’ wheelhouse.
Mrs. Travers at one point alludes to a famous English poem. Munro is playing with her New Yorker readers. Canadians are probably taught to revere this poem in high school, but the American has to look it up. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is drenched in gloom, written not for an individual beloved person, but for the common man. Gray sings for the brilliance or hard work of the common man that both go completely unnoticed in the world, maybe to the good, given that not having any power, the common man might be guilty of misusing it. Like Oliver Cromwell, for instance. Here, however, Munro is being wry. The common people in this story all mis-use their greatness.
Referring to her son Neil, Mrs. Travers speaks to us as if from a Delphic oracle in a scrap of the long poem: “Deep unfathomable caves of ocean bear — what am I talking about?”
Indeed. What is she talking about? Powerlessness. Being closeted, hidden, trapped, held in captivity, smothered, lightless, undiscovered, unknown, and, to use one of Munro’s favorite words, to go unrecognized. Or is she talking about how Neil’s greatness is buried in an ocean of drunkenness or worse?
What do the deep caves in the ocean hold? Jewels. Treasure.
In the previous three stories, we met Juliet, a twin of Grace. Juliet told us about the peril of losing track of what is, essentially, your treasure — your passion, your gifts. Not money. Money is not the treasure. It’s your passion that is your treasure.
Mrs. Travers is somehow explaining to herself the mystery that is her son Neil, but at the same time, she is more explaining her own self, and like an oracle, warning Grace. There are situations in life, bargains that you make (bargaining being another favorite word) that lead to the complete loss of the treasure that is yourself.
Grace notices that Mrs. Travers has “red” cheeks, but around Labor Day, it’s Maury who reveals that Mrs. Travers has gone into the hospital for a couple of weeks to get “stabilized.” That she has trouble with her nerves. That it’s all “okay”: “[The doctors] can get her straightened around easy now, with drugs. They’ve got terrific drugs. Not to worry about it.”
Although Maury says that he “doesn’t think [the doctors] know” what causes Mrs. Travers to periodically fall apart, Maury makes his own diagnosis: “women’s problems.”
What are “women’s problems” exactly? Are they really only hormonal? Or is one of the problems that it is that men like Maury define their problems?
Several red flags fly up for Grace regarding the toll she might have to pay for marriage into this moneyed family, but she recognizes none of them at the moment they appear. Maury’s assumptions encapsulate them — his need for control, his “protection” of women, his planning for their future, his definition of his mother, his vision of women, and his complete lack of recognition for who Grace actually is. The other red flag is that Mrs. Travers’ cheeks are red. Perhaps she is a drinker.
Even though Maury says it only takes “a couple of weeks” to straighten out Mrs. Travers, this time it actually seems to take a couple of months. She goes in after Labor Day and by Thanksgiving and she was “feeling well.”
You be the judge. Munro lets us know that Mrs. Travers has forgotten to make her traditional cranberry sauce and is “wearing a look of hazy enthusiasm” despite the fact that she knows her older son Neil, the doctor, has begun drinking already, even though it’s morning and dinner is not until 5.
Mrs. Travers has gained weight and she also walks with “a stiffness in all her movements.” She has a dry crust around her mouth. It sounds like Thorazine to me, a drug that was used for psychosis and treating the D.T.’s. Is it that Mrs. Travers goes to the hospital periodically to be dried out?
What is the bargain Mrs. Travers has made? A loss of her goals or ambitions when she married Mr. Travers for the guarantee of safety for herself and her son?
Grace cuts her foot and it is arranged for Neil will take her to the hospital. Wait. Mrs. Travers sees Grace off with Neil, who has been drinking, doing the driving? And Mrs. Travers says to the bloody Grace:
This is good. . . .This is very good. Grace, you are a godsend. You’ll try to keep him from drinking today, won’t you? You’ll know how to do it.
This is appalling. What is the price Grace will pay to gain entrance into this family? First of all, bloody injuries will be ignored? Second, she will be assigned a role, she will be the caretaker? Is she supposed to keep the men in line? “You will know how to do it.” We are alarmed. Is Mrs. Travers aware of the sexuality Grace has offered Maury, and does Mrs. Travers think it might be better used to “keep” Neil from drinking?
Mrs. Travers has already told Grace that Neil is “deep.” Maybe she thinks they will talk about books. Or maybe, given her exotic lower class, Mrs. Travers imagines Grace will charm the addiction out of him. Or hazily, maybe she thinks Grace is basically a prostitute who will seduce him, thus keeping him busy. The statement is completely Delphic and almost impenetrable. What is clear, however, is that Grace’s well-being, in contrast to Neil’s addiction, is of no importance to Mrs. Travers whatsoever.
Should Grace allow herself to slip into a marriage with Maury, the reader has slowly been let in on what a big mistake it would be. Which brings us to the matter of the title: “Passion.”
There is, of course, the issue of women’s individual passions, be it to be a scholar, an athlete, a philosopher, a scientist, an artist or you name it. We know that Grace has a passion — to learn as much for free as she possibly can. But will Mrs. Travers’s wings be broad enough to keep that light alive? Given that Maury seems oblivious to the necessity of Grace’s ambition being part of the marriage plan? Given Mrs. Travers seems to spend substantial time in the hospital or drugged?
Regarding the passions one person might feel for another, these seem to be skew gee in this story. Grace has a passion for learning but none for Maury. Maury has a passion for seeing Grace as a part of his PLAN, but has no passion for her passion and, in fact, does not actually seem to have a passion for sex with her either. It is as if what he really wants is the inequality and power imbalance that would result from him being superior to Grace, class-wise, money-wise.
Mrs. Travers looks back on the period of time when all she and Neil had was each other, thus setting up a kind of oedipal situation, as if Neil were actually imprinted on his mother and cannot escape. This idea is not developed, except that we know that Maury wants to have a summer house near his mother and father. When he refuses to have sex with Grace, the reader wonders whether there is some kind of weird mother-imprinting at work with Maury as well. The passions in this story are a little skewed, and this becomes even more pronounced when we get to know Neil better.
Which brings us to the possibility that another version of passion is also at work in this story, similar to the Passion of Christ, his suffering and ultimate martyrdom for the salvation of others. Or, in ordinary language, that people find meaning in suffering for the good of others.
Does Neil, in fact, “save” Grace when he kidnaps her to go joyriding with him? Is it that his wildness that recognizes Grace’s inner wild-girl? Is there a little premonition in the naturally curly black hair they both possess? What we know for a fact is that it is on this wild jail-break jaunt from bar to bootlegger that Grace realizes it would be “treachery to herself” to have stayed with Maury.
It is clear that Grace is a kind of soul-mate to Neil. She tells us that when they are at the bootlegger’s she realizes that he is aware of the kind of background she comes from. She says that “the partitions” between legal and illegal are “thin” when you are poor. Does she mean that perhaps her uncle is also a bootlegger and the chair caning is just a front? (Which makes sense, now that you think of it.)
Treachery to herself. What a great line to leave you with. There’s a lot of betrayal and treachery in this story. Neil betrays his mother and his wife. Mr. Travers possibly betrays Mrs. Travers when he hospitalizes her and possibly consents to drugging her. Society betrays Grace when it denies her the rest of her education. Maury betrays his own sexual nature when he refuses to have sex with Grace. Grace betrays Maury when she chooses to run off with Neil.
But the real betrayal is the one that has been staring us in the face the whole time: the possibility that Grace might betray herself in the service of a dollar or the comforts of class or what looks like an easy solution to her chair-caning problem.
In the end, of course, the running away is a mess. Neil blows himself up in a car crash into an abutment, shortly after he has, with great emotion and great need, embraced Grace and at the same time renounced his sexual opportunity.
When he does that, does he save her? Protect her? Or simply honor his bond with his mother? We just don’t know. Neil is a locked-room mystery.
As for the issue of grace — that which is spiritual healing — who is it that performs the role of grace-giving? Each of them, really, to the best they are able. Mrs. Travers shares her books with Grace and shares her admiration of her. Maury offers Grace a way out, a need I’m sure he sensed as palpably as a perfume. Neil offers Grace recognition, which may sound strange, given that Munro always associates recognition with true sexual communion. But you can actually have the passion without the act. What Neil does is prove to Grace she deserves passion.
What grace does Grace herself provide? When she arrives in the Travers library, she is the wild spirit Mrs. Travers craves, the spirit they all crave. Grace’s passion is what they all want to capture, the way the entomologist craves to pin the butterfly. She makes them, for a short while, feel alive. But they are all so dead, even Grace cannot wake them. They have been treacherous to themselves, and saving them is beyond her.
Except for this. She did go with them, accompany them, for a while, while they each pursued their own dark solutions.
And how about that pay-off? The thousand dollars Mr. Travers gave Grace? Was she the first? Had he paid off others?
Note Re Henry James
Munro never mentions Henry James when she cites her influences, the same way she avoids mentioning William Faulkner. But Isabel Archer, the heroine of James’s Portrait of a Lady shows up, so to speak, in several of Munro’s stories. There’s Isabel, in “Leaving Maverley.” And here, there’s the thousand dollar pay-off from Mr. Travers, matching, in an odd back-end-to manner, Ralph Touchett’s huge gift of money to Isabel. Ralph wanted to see what the lovely Isabel might do with it, what she might learn. In the end, Isabel made what you might call a ruin of her life, having misread two very evil people, a man and a woman.
Will Grace make of her life a ruin by way of Mr. Travers’ “gift”? We think not. She has met evil and owns it: it is she who has had the capability to commit a treachery to her self, and she who has the ability to choose, instead, a passion.
Note: Re runaways
Grace has run away from a bad commitment. Neil has run away from something overwhelming, something so obscure that it is the real mystery. His father’s suicide? The wrong wife? Not fit to be a father? Paternal postpartum depression? A third child on the way? Yet another replay of the painful father’s role? An oedipal attachment to his mother? An inability to save his mother? So he saves Grace instead?
Note: “Passion”: “Me, Too” and “She Said”
I was writing this on the day that Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twomey’s book appeared about the Harvey Weissman serial sex abuse and silencing of women, She Said. Kantor and Twomey’s work for The New York Times set off the “Me, Too” movement where women famous and not so famous came forward to talk about the way they had been had by men. The most famous, of course, was the Christine Blasey Ford accusation of Brett Kavanagh, candidate for the Supreme Court, a replay of the Anita Hill testimony against Justice Thomas in 1991.
This story was published ten years after the Bill Clinton impeachment hearings. Clinton paid Paula Jones $850,000 in 1999 to silence her.
The post-2020 feminist is probably not going to like Munro’s story: that there is a lot we will never know about any he-said-she-said encounter, and that women may have complex motives for entering into or allowing themselves to be in compromising situations. Grace accepts money from Mr. Travers, money that implies Neil sullied Grace’s reputation, money that implies he wants her to disappear. She took it. Do we judge her?
If I were teaching this story today, I am sure the greatest debate would not be over Thorazine and its ability to silence women, or the toll that “jumping-class” takes on women, or what it was that destroyed Neil – all high-fifties questions.
The debate today would be over whether Grace should have accepted that check.
Based on my reading of the story a year or two ago …
SHORT SUMMARY
Rural Ontario, early 1950s. Grace, a gifted 20 year old with no prospects and no vision for herself, inadvertently gets suddenly involved with an alcoholic, perhaps suicidal, doctor. A single day changes the course of her life.
SCORE
07/10. Though now I’m thinking about the story again, maybe that should be an 8. It’s my kind of Munro story. Maybe I need to invent a genre. Magical ambiguism?
FAVOURITE BIT
Neil said to Grace, “You didn’t want to go home yet, did you?”
“No,” said Grace, as if she’d seen the word written in front of her, on the wall. As if she was having her eyes tested.
SPECULATIONS
I’m a Brit and hardly know Canada. But once I’d consulted a map I reckon you could surmise that the semi-derelict cabin is maybe where Neil lived as a very young child with his parents, and perhaps even where his father killed himself. ‘a time of hardship almost like penal servitude’ as Mr Travers describes it to Grace. After this event we could further surmise the future Mrs Travers moved with young Neil to an apartment in the nearby town of Pembroke (which we’re told about).
So maybe Neil is visiting where his father killed himself – or at least the place where he, Neil, was when his father killed himself. Or perhaps just the place he associates with his father.
Wilder speculation: does an impoverished uncle of his now live there, scraping a living as a bootlegger? (“He keeps it under the house”?)
Is Neil visiting this place from his childhood in order to steel himself, prepare himself, for his own death?
This interpretation then raises the question: at what point did Neil decide to kill himself? (Assuming he didn’t die in a car accident.)
TITLE
Very minor point but I find ‘Passion’ such a weak title for such a great story. IMHO either of these would’ve been better: ‘You’ll Know How To Do It’ (what Mrs Travers says to Grace, meaning ‘you’ll know how to keep Neil away from drinking today’). Or ‘Now We Know’ (what Neil says to Grace as they get closer to their mystery destination, the semi-derelict bootlegger cabin, meaning ‘now we know where we are / what we’re doing / why we’re here’).
Betay —
Thanks for writing this analysis. It’s not only good in itself, but it stimulated me to read (and re-read) this story, which I had not read before. I agree with many — but not all — of your comments. Mofreover, I think you “missed” — or at least didn’t suitably emphasize — some of Munro’s “clues” — phrases and sentences and paragraphs that tell us important information about Grace.
For me, writing comments is hard work. I don’t like to tax my brain. I prefer reading mystery stories. However, when I have enough energy I will send my thoughts.
William, I think you’re saying Passion is a mystery story. If so, I agree with you.
Do you think Neil deliberately killed himself?
Howard, I love your alternative titles. I am also very interested in your idea that this story is about deliberative suicide. When you think about it, Mrs. Travers was engaged in a deliberative suicide. And Grace was in the verge of doing the same.
William, I am looking forward to any “clues” you noticed that Munro planted — that readers should highlight or notice or give different emphasis! Part of her wonderful mysteriousness. That she speaks differently to different people. Sometimes I think that she has an audience of very real relatives, friends, writers and philosophers in mind when she writes – all with different slants on life.
Betsy, I’m touched that you like my title suggestions. Thank you.
Of course the idea that Neil committed suicide isn’t mine. At the end of the story the hotel manager is convinced that’s what happened.
Am not familiar with your phrase ‘deliberative suicide’ but am certainly familiar with the idea of ‘rational suicide’. And if Neil committed suicide, I’m not sure I’d call it rational. Deliberately smashing yourself up in your car is one hell of a lot more emotional than that. After all, he’s a doctor with access to all kinds of drugs. He has readily to hand the means for a peaceful death.
Licking Grace’s hand, and then the fulsome hug he gives her when they part “as if he was telling her she was wrong to give up on him, everything was possible”: I certainly read him as being in a highly charged emotional state.
I don’t read Grace or Mrs Travers as being in the same place at all.
Are we allowed to post links to other websites?
Anyway there is a website out there that has a couple of interesting suggestions:
(a) it isn’t Neil in the car accident (personally I don’t believe this)
(b) the 1000 dollars, while perhaps a compassionate gift, is also so the Travers can wash their hands of Grace who (they mistakenly believe) had a fling with – as they see it – hopeless case Neil. In the early 1950s socially such a fling would have been seriously socially stigmatizing for all concerned.
My commentary on this story is somewhat long and pedantic, but that is the only way I could include all of my observations about Munro’s writing. I’ll post my comments in three stages.
I read this story in the collection, “Family Furnishings”. In the Intro to that volume, Jane Smiley quotes Munro as saying that she originally wanted to write novels, but couldn’t, so she wrote short fiction. Munro added: “I suppose that my trying to get so much into my stories has been a compensation.” Smiley comments that the way she did that was to “cut out the relaxed parts of the novel and focus on the essence of transformation.” That’s so insightful, and this story is a prime example.
In this longish short story, Munro presents an entire bildungsroman about a young woman’s growing up and maturing. Grace remains 20 years old throughout the short time span of the story, but at the beginning she is more like a 16-year-old and at the end she is more like a 24-year old.
Betsy refers to Munro’s gaps and ellipses. There are several in this piece, and I’ll point out a few.
We start right away with Munro warning us that we are not going to get a completely reliable narrative. As Grace looks for her childhood village and the Travers’ house 40 years after the events in the story, she gives us several clues: Highway 7 has surprise straights and curves, her confusion about how to get to Little Sabot Lake foretells places where her memory about those events also is unclear, the route to the village has too many roads in and too many roads out. She remembers that the octagonal house had 8 doors, but it only has 4.
Grace’s comments about the past are also revealing. Addressing her reason for going back, she refers to “what she might have thought she was after”. The scene of her past is “so diminished, still existing, but made irrelevant.”
We also need to address the name “Travers”. “To traverse” is “to travel across or through”. Grace is traveling through her early life, as she remembers it.
So, the first step in Grace’s coming of age is that she leaves the house where she lives with her great-aunt and -uncle. (Later we learn that she doesn’t think of her uncle’s house as home.) Her uncle makes a living caning chairs and it is assumed that Grace will eventually take over her uncle’s craft. In the meantime, her high school principal suggests that she get “a taste of life” before settling down. Does he have a suspicion that going into the wider world will ultimately take Grace away from the caning business forever? We can’t know. The principal gets Grace a waitressing job at a hotel in a nearby town.
Second step: the Travers’ younger son, Maury, asks her out. Grace’s doubting response emphasizes the social difference between them. She says that, when boys from the summer houses asked waitresses out, “sometimes they only meant to park, without taking you to a movie or even for coffee.” This reminded me of the 1970’s song “In the Summertime, ” by Mungo Jerry, which had these lines:
“If her daddy’s rich,
Take her out for a meal.
If her daddy’s poor,
Then just do what you will.”
Grace takes another step forward when she sees “the whole of him” — “the true Maury, scared, fierce, innocent, determined”. Seeing deeply into someone is not something she has done, probably because she didn’t know any complex boys.
It turns out that Maury is a decent guy and takes her to a movie. At the movie, Grace takes another step into maturity and self-knowledge when she feels a rage that she doesn’t understand. She realizes that it is because the movie presented the Elizabeth Taylor character as what girls were supposed to be like – which is very different from Grace.
When Grace explains this to Maury, he responds positively. In fact, she realizes that “He had fallen in love with her.” He recognizes “the integrity and uniqueness of her mind and soul.” But Grace doesn’t want to be adored. Maury is too soft, he capitulates to her. She can’t learn anything from him.
Then Grace meets Mrs. Travers, and “She fell in love with Mrs. Travers as Maury had fallen in love with her.” Mrs. Travers is someone from whom Grace can learn. She is bright and witty and plays word games. So Grace changes work shifts, thus trading time with Maury for time with Maury’s family. Appreciating the dinner conversations and games, Grace makes another step between social classes and toward her destiny.
We need to recognize here that Grace is not afraid of these social jumps. Somehow she has confidence that she can handle them. She is also not afraid of preferring the “useless” art of conversation and social skill over the “useful” career of caning. She is not planning her future, she is discovering it.
Here is an ellipse: Grace’s memories of parking with Maury are “hazy”. They are not as important or as memorable to her as the times at the Travers’ house.
Another ellipse: Mavis, the wife of Neil, the Travers’ older son, is bitter. She does not enjoy evenings at the travers’ house. We don’t learn if that is because of Neil’s absences and alcoholism or if it is the cause of them.
1/3
Looking deeply into people is a major lesson of Grace’s growing. Eventually she recognizes Mrs. Travers’s shortcoming, some sort of mental fragility. Also, Mrs. Travers has a limited view of a woman’s life. She tells Grace, “Passion gets pushed behind the washtubs.” Is Mrs. Travers’ problem that she has never become herself? Does Grace intuit this?
In any case, this is the first introduction of passion into the story. It is a particular kind of passion, and Grace has to grow beyond it.
Grace herself has a romantic vision of passion. Imagining her future husband, she thinks: “He would be passionate like Maury. Pleasurable physical intimacies would follow.” What a funny, vague, naive phrase. But — no physical intimacies follow with Maury. Grace is willing, but cold. “She herself did not understand how cold she was.” Can she be conventionally passionate with Maury when that kind of passion is not in her repertoire? She is still trying to do what she thinks is expected of her. Maury senses this and cannot “perform” the role that Grace expects from him.
What does Grace like? We are told, “It was a relief to Grace to be alone.” When Mrs. Travers finds out that Grace has an afternoon off each week, she goes to pick her up at the hotel and takes her to the Travers house. (Why does Mrs. Travers do this? Perhaps she wants to nurture something that she sees in Grace that no one nurtured in her?) Mrs. Travers says Grace can sleep or read. Her choice is clear: “Grace never slept. She read.”
Grace is all about learning, both about people and academic subjects. While she was still with her aunt and uncle, after graduating from high school, she spent two years taking free classes and passing exams about them. Humanities and math and science — all were grist to her mental mill. She got “unnecessarily high marks”, unnecessary because there was no money for her to go to college. But she wanted to learn for its own sake, to stretch her mind. That is her passion. That is what she must learn about herself.
Enter Neil. According to Mrs. Travers, Neil is “deep” while Maury is “uncomplicated”. Munro smoothly manipulates the story to get Grace and Neil together. Grace cuts her foot and just then Neil drives up. He is a breezy character. When his sister comments on his new car, he says, “Piece of folly.” When someone says his skill is needed, he suggests that one of his nieces swallowed a toad.
As Neil examines Grace’s foot, she notices “the smell of liquor edged with mint”, which she recognizes from her waitressing, suggesting he is an alcoholic. Neil treats Grace’s foot, then says he’ll take her to the hospital for a tetanus shot. As they are leaving, Mrs. Travers asks Grace to keep him away from drinking, so now we know he’s alcoholic, a fact that informs and shapes the rest of the story.
At the hospital Neil contrives to take Grace away while Maury is waiting for her. Neil asks, You don’t want to go home, do you? ‘“No” Grace said, as if she’d seen the word written in front of her, on the wall.’ Munro adds, “Later in her life she said that it was as if a gate had clanged shut behind her. As if the rights of those left behind were smoothly cancelled.” Grace chooses the unknown over the ordinary, her future over social obligations. Thus begins her final and most important odyssey.
As they leave the hospital in Neil’s car, there are several references to flight:
? “Grace had the impression that at its crest the car had lifted off the pavement, they were flying.”
? “Their speed approaches the flight on the highway overpass.”
? “This gave her the illusion of constant speed, perfect flight.”
Grace is flying away from her past into her future.
2/3
Her memories of this day are unreliable. “And what she remembers is, to tell the truth, hardly distinguishable from her idea, her fantasies at that time, of what sex should be like.” This is what she is disabused of in the next several hours: “An airy surrender, flesh nothing now but a stream of desire.” Which sounds like a definition of passionate romance, the opposite of Grace’s true passion.
Neil teaches her to drive – another step toward independence. She likes it.
Grace realizes that Neil is hunting for liquor, and that the place where he stops is a bootlegger’s. Instead of being repelled, she thinks, “How strange that she’d thought of marrying Maury.” That would have been a treachery to herself. “But not a treachery to be riding with Neil, because he knew some of the same things she did.”
They discuss his alcoholism. He asks her what he would say if she rebuked him. She replies, “You’d say, what else is there to do?” Her answer opens up a new truth to herself. “She’d been trying to impress him with these answers, trying to show herself as worldly as he was, and in the middle of that she had come on this rock-bottom truth. This lack of hope – genuine, reasonable, and everlasting.” Just as she had seen into Maury, she sees into Neil, but he’s deeper and darker: “Looking at such dark cold level water and knowing it was all there was.”
Neil is unconscious drunk, so Grace takes over and gets them home. This seems to be the downslope of the story arc, as the situation resolves. But Munro has one more plot twist. The next morning Grace learns that Neil had killed himself by driving at high speed into an abutment. It’s interesting that Neil’s father had also suicided, a pattern similar to Hemingway.
Now the money. The morning after Neil’s suicide, Mr. Travers gives Grace a cheque for $1000. Grace briefly thinks that refusing it would be “grand”. But she immediately decides to keep it. “It was enough money to insure her a start in life.” She is poor, and in no position for pointless gestures. This money will allow her to avoid the fates of Neil and Mrs. Travers.
Moreover, she is not trading anything for the money. Mr. Travers is not buying her silence, since she had no intention of making any kind of fuss. Maury sends her a note saying, “Just say he made you do it.” But we saw earlier in the story that he did not make her do it, she went with him willingly, something that a naif like Maury couldn’t understand. She replies to Maury’s note, “I did want to go.”
One final thought. Why does Grace say that Neil’s depression – and, by extension, his suicide – is “reasonable”? I tie that in with her saying that “He knew some of the same things that she did.” They both knew that, for a life to be satisfactory, you had to become yourself. Neil hadn’t done that, so he killed himself. Grace wasn’t afraid because she had a good idea of what she needed to become and felt that she was on that path.
3/3
Welcome, William. I enjoyed your careful observations about “Passion,” especially that you mention Mrs. Travers’ remark – “Passion gets pushed behind the washtubs.”
Also like your closing conclusion: “They both knew that, for a life to be satisfactory, you had to become yourself. Neil hadn’t done that, so he killed himself.” This ties in with the ideas earlier in Juliet’s 3 stories about guarding your treasure – and, actually knowing what your treasure is.
I very much like your comment about gaps and ellipses: “We start right away with Munro warning us that we are not going to get a completely reliable narrative. As Grace looks for her childhood village and the Travers’ house 40 years after the events in the story, she gives us several clues: Highway 7 has surprise straights and curves, her confusion about how to get to Little Sabot Lake foretells places where her memory about those events also is unclear, the route to the village has too many roads in and too many roads out. She remembers that the octagonal house had 8 doors, but it only has 4.”
And – in general, to me this is the way to approach Munro. In good faith that it should be a conversation.
Thanks, Betsy. I like that idea of a conversation. As in a conversation, our thoughts can change as we move further into the story.
Do you plan to do “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”?
William
“As in a conversation, our thoughts can change as we move further into the story.”
Yes. Couldn’t agree more with you, William.
About “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Trevor and I addressed this story in 2013 – which shows how long we have been at this. We have about maybe 25 more to do of Munro’s 150 or so stories. Would love to have you add a comment at https://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2013/10/14/alice-munro-the-bear-came-over-the-mountain/
Thanks, Betsy. I’ll read it and see if I have anything to add.
I found a source that said Munro had published over 160 stories, 40 in the New Yorker.
‘for a life to be satisfactory, you had to become yourself. Neil hadn’t done that, so he killed himself.’
William, Betsy …. but then as readers don’t we also have to think about the satisfactory nature or otherwise of everyone else’s lives? If indeed Neil kills himself, then at the very least he’s leaving behind a wife and two young children. Let alone all the other people that will be affected by his suicide.
I like William’s Mungo Jerry reference.
Side-note.
Maury’s note to Grace, saying “Just say he made you do it.”
I read that as Maury assuming Grace and Neil had had sex. And Maury believing (perhaps correctly) that that is what everyone else was assuming.
And of course Grace is fully aware of this, but refuses to pander to him and correct him, and simply asserts what I take to be the simple truth … that she wanted to go off with Neil, at least for the afternoon, and see what happened.
Howard —
On your second comment, that’s certainly plausible. Then Mr. Travers gave Grace the money because Neil has besmirched her virtue.
On your first comment: people who suicide don’t think of the consequences to others. They are so overwhelmed by their own depression that they have no strength to consider whoever is left behind.
A final comment: Betsy, you wondered whether Grace made good use of her money and you said she probably did. Two thoughts. One: You said she had encountered evil and overcome it. I don’t know what you are referring to as evil. Two, Munro gives us a big clue to support your interpretation. Early in the story adult Grace says “She had seen houses like that in Australia.” Evidence that Grace had not only gotten out of the backwoods, but also out of Canada. Maybe it was for vacation and maybe for work. Either way, it implies that she rose above her background.
‘people who suicide don’t think of the consequences to others. They are so overwhelmed by their own depression that they have no strength to consider whoever is left behind.’
William, by-the-by, I disagree that this applies to all suicides. But in the case of Neil (if his is a suicide) then, yes, we readers might well believe this to be the case.
Maybe I was mistaken, but when you said ‘They both knew that, for a life to be satisfactory, you had to become yourself. Neil hadn’t done that, so he killed himself’, I didn’t take that to be only about Neil’s and Grace’s interior worlds. I took you to be saying that Munro wants we readers to understand that Neil killing himself was, as it were, the existentially pure and correct thing for him to do. And I guess I took you to be saying you agreed with that.
So while I agree that Munro is quite possibly dabbling with that idea, and tries to show us the young Grace tuning at least partially into the notion, I was also trying to say (even to Alice herself I guess) that that’s all fine and dandy, but then you have to consider the real world consequences.
‘but then you have to consider the real world consequences’.
By ‘you’ I don’t mean Grace or Neil. I mean you the reader, you the writer.
“I took you to be saying that Munro wants us readers to understand that Neil killing himself was, as it were, the existentially pure and correct thing for him to do. And I guess I took you to be saying you agreed with that.”
Definitely not. That’s going way too far. You’re making Munro sound like Goethe and Neil like Young Werther. I don’t think Munro deals with existential truth. Only the psychological truth of her characters. So Neil realizes that he has failed at life’s biggest task and that depresses him and saps his vital life force, as it were. So he shuffles off this mortal coil.
Now I’m going to drop out of this stream and move on to something else.
I love this blog series, and after reading an Alice Munro story, this site is my first stop. I usually find myself in agreement with the analysis provided here, but on this story I see things differently.
“As for Maury, his need for total control was something to behold. Even though Grace was very willing to have sex with him and pressed him for it, he refused! He said he was “protecting” her. She was quite attractive, and he said he adored her. What was his hang-up? The reader thinks it was partially his need to be in total control, given that she was quite powerful in her own right. He was practicing saying no, thinks the reader.”
*This* reader didn’t think that at all–and in fact I find that to be, while not impossible, highly implausible. It’s the diametric opposite of the behavior most most heterosexual men would engage in while pursuing a mate. And I don’t think the story supports the interpretation of Maury being a domineering controlling type. For example, Grace easily and with no apparent opposition form Maury rearranges her schedule so she is spending much more time with Maury’s mom than with Maury.
The big problem with the relationship is not that Maury is controlling and domineering–rather it is that there is a very distinct LACK of passion on both sides. Maury seems to be more in love with the *idea* of marriage and with the *idea* of Grace being his wife than with Grace as a real flesh and blood person that he lusts for and wants to make love to. And Grace while willing to have sex with Maury, does not have any passion for him–for her the main attraction of the relationship in the short term is spending time with Maury’s mom and gaining access to her books, and in the long run is escaping from spending her life caning chairs.
Neil taking Grace along on his bender is the best thing that happens to Grace. It provides an escape from an impossible situation, one which had been made to look attractive only in comparison to the bleaker future she saw as her fate. Grace goes along willingly, and this trip provides a sort of epiphany. She sees a tiny glimpse of the type of passion that is so lacking in her relationship with Maury and quickly realizes that she cannot–will not–marry Maury.
Sometime Reader —
I’m with you on your re-interpretation of Maury’s problem about having sex with Grace.
Can you expand on this:
“Grace goes along willingly, and this trip provides a sort of epiphany. She sees a tiny glimpse of the type of passion that is so lacking in her relationship with Maury and quickly realizes that she cannot–will not–marry Maury.”
What is the passion that Grace discovers — aside from Neil’s passion for alcohol?
‘A car had gone into a bridge abutment halfway down the road to Little Sabot Lake. It had been rammed right in, it was totally smashed and burned up. There were no other cars involved, and apparently no passengers. The driver would have to be identified by dental records.’
There’s passion here if we believe Neil did this to himself deliberately.
I agree he did it deliberately but I don’t call that passion. It’s more depression, which is lack of passion:
” a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something”.
Can you imagine Munro writing:
“Neil was enthusiastic and excited about killing himself.”?
Collins dictionary has:
‘Passion is a very strong feeling about something or a strong belief in something.’
And includes as synonyms, mania and obsession:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/passion
William, I wanted to respond to this: “Can you expand on this: “Grace goes along willingly, and this trip provides a sort of epiphany. She sees a tiny glimpse of the type of passion that is so lacking in her relationship with Maury and quickly realizes that she cannot–will not–marry Maury.” What is the passion that Grace discovers — aside from Neil’s passion for alcohol?”
She sees a glimpse of the sexual passion that she should be seeing from her would-be husband, Maury. It is not consummated in that they do not actually have sexual intercourse, but it is there.
The biggest manifestation of this is Neil’s absconding with her. As an apparent long-time inveterate long-time drinker, one who already smells of mint-masked alcohol when he arrives at the house, Neil would would have had practice and skill in accessing alcohol–that is to say he would not have “needed” to go out on the impromptu road trip with Grace in order to fufill his needs. In fact when they are at the hospital and Neil has finished treating Grace it is only when the nurse tells Neil that Maury is in the waiting room that Neil seems to hatch the plan to abscond with Grace. And Grace readily agrees, simultaneously understanding on some level that this is a pivotal moment: “Describing this passage, this change in her life, later on, Grace might say—she did say—that it was as if a gate had clanged shut behind her. But at the time there was no clang— acquiescence simply rippled through her, the rights of those left behind were smoothly cancelled.” While later in life she may be somewhat exaggerating and dramatizing the importance of this moment, even at the time she was aware that by going along with Neil she was essentially turning the page on Maury, “smoothly cancelling” his rights.
While Grace does not have sex with Neil, her driving away with him is a explicitly described as a sexual act, at least from Grace’s point of view: “And what she remembers is, to tell the truth, hardly distinguishable from her idea, her fantasies at that time, of what sex should be like. The fortuitous meeting, the muted but powerful signals, the nearly silent flight in which she herself would figure more or less as a captive. An airy surrender, flesh nothing now but a stream of desire.”
And when he gets to the bar, “Taking her hand, kneading his fingers between hers, slowing his pace to match her uneven steps. Neil led her into the bar.” None of this is what would be considered acceptable behavior with one’s brother’s fiance. This is a sexual act, albeit a small one.
Then after the leave the bar: “He picked up the hand that was not holding the Coke bottle, pressed the palm of it to his mouth, gave it a lick, and let it drop.” Again, a sexual act.
And the elephant in the room gets addressed: ““Did you think I was abducting you for fell purposes?” “No,” lied Grace, thinking how like his mother that word was. Fell. “There was a time when you would have been right,” he said, just as if she had answered yes. “But not today. I don’t think so. You’re safe as a church today.” The changed tone of his voice, which had become intimate, frank, and quiet, and the memory of his lips pressed to, then his tongue flicked across, her skin, affected Grace to such an extent that she was hearing the words, but not the sense, of what he was telling her. She could feel a hundred, hundreds of flicks of his tongue, a dance of supplication, all over her skin.”
He is telling her that he is not going to try to have sexual intercourse with him on this day, but the sexual attraction is clearly there.
Their next stop is quite a way further. And it is rundown house into which, unlike when the visited the bar, he says, “Now, this place,” he said, “this place I am not going to take you in.”
She wonders, “Who did he know here, who lived in this house? A woman? It didn’t seem possible that the sort of woman he would want could live in a place like this…” She then concludes that it is a bootlegger’s house. But given how far out of the way they went to get there and how long he spent there, there is a real possibility that this establishment might be offering both alcohol and prostitution. We know from the “fresh smell of whisky” that she was right at least about the bootlegging…
Then when he stops the car at the park to sleep off the booze, their road trip and their interaction and discussions on it are likened in Grace’s mind to a sexual encounter: “She’d thought it was touch. Mouths, tongues, skin, bodies, banging bone on bone. Inflammation. Passion. But that wasn’t what had been meant for them at all. That was child’s play, compared to how she knew him, how far she’d seen into him, now.”
When they part ways back at Bailey’s Falls, Neil feels and presses her foot, under the pretense of it being a medical exam: “Nice. No heat. No swelling. Your arm hurt? Maybe it won’t.”
She does not remember the exact words they spoke when they finally parted, but she does remember this: “he only caught her, wound his arms around her, held her so tightly, with such continual, changing pressures that it seemed more than two arms were needed, that she was surrounded by him, his body strong and light, demanding and renouncing all at once, as if he was telling her she was wrong to give up on him, everything was possible, but then again that she was not wrong, he meant to stamp himself on her and go.
And we know what Neil did next: He rammed his car with high speed into the bridge abutment. This is believed to likely be suicide, and I think that is the most likely explanation.
But why? Why would Neil commit suicide now, on this day? We know he is a depressed alcoholic. We know his father committed suicide. We have vicariously (through Grace’s recollections) met his wife, Mavis, and seen how insufferable she is (whether in part to her marriage to Neil or not is not highly relevant). So there were lots of reasons for Neil to commit suicide, but this was the steady state background of his life–they do not explain why he did it at the particular day and time he chose.
What was different this time? Grace. He’s just finished his little road trip with Grace. While is ramming his car into the the bridge was not itself an act of passion, I would submit that we have good reason that it was motivated in big part by some unconsummated passion he had for Grace–and also maybe motivated by his realization on a general level of the lack of passion he is enjoying in his everyday life–his not having Grace or someone like that in his life.
And really, I am just touching the surface of this. If I had the time, there is a LOT more I could say. And in my opinion, that is one of the things that makes Alice Munro’s writing so great. To really comprehensively flesh in writing everything worth discussing in one of her stories would result in an article/essay many times longer than the length of the actual story.
But I can’t resist adding one more comment responding to this: “I agree he did it deliberately but I don’t call that passion. It’s more depression, which is lack of passion:
” a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something”.”
Yes, Neil does have unconsummated passion for Grace. But in my opinion probably not enough for his inability to consummate his passion to lead him to suicide by itself. Rather, the time he spends with her makes him realize the extent to which passion is generally missing from his life.
No one has mentioned this little passage. Surely one of the pivotal moments in the story:
‘“Tell me about what interests you, then. What interests you?”
She said, “You do.”
“Oh. What interests you about me?” His hand slid away.’
His hand slid away. Why?
My take: he doesn’t want to talk with Grace about himself in any depth. She’s trying to get too close and he doesn’t want to let her in. Because that might deflect him from his purpose (and complicate his life and make it even more of a mess than it already is). And also he doesn’t want them to get any closer to each other. He’s trying to protect both himself and Grace. Instead he tries to deflect the talk to his drinking. Tries to deflect it away from what both of them know – or suspect – is going to happen. They then engage in double-talk about suicide:
“… I know what you’d say.”
“What’s that? What would I say?”
“You’d say, what else is there to do? Or something like that.”
“That’s true,” he said. “That’s about what I’d say. Well, then you’d try to tell me why I was wrong.”
“No,” said Grace. “No. I wouldn’t.”
Sometime Reader and Howard —
I will offer a few comments, then I will end my contribution to this thread. It is becoming a life’s avocation! You both may have the last word.
Howard: “Collins dictionary has:
‘Passion is a very strong feeling about something or a strong belief in something.’
And includes as synonyms, mania and obsession.”
It’s amazing that we can each find a dictionary definition to support our interpretation. Rather than argue about semantics, I’ll just agree to disagree.
SR: “Rather, the time he spends with her makes him realize the extent to which passion is generally missing from his life.”
I endorse this view. I think it also supports my side of the disagreement with Howard.
I categorically disagree with you, SR, about the primacy of sexuality between Grace and Neil. Sure they have some sexual feeling for each other, you quote several passages to this effect. It may be the deciding factor for Neil, but not for Grace — who is, after all, the central character of the story. It is not the foremost aspect of the ride for her. What Grace learns from this ride is not sex, or even inhibited sex, but seeing deeply into another person. We can see this from the passages you quote:
“And what she remembers is, to tell the truth, hardly distinguishable from her idea, her fantasies AT THAT TIME, of what sex should be like. The fortuitous meeting, the muted but powerful signals, the nearly silent flight in which she herself would figure more or less as a captive. An airy surrender, flesh nothing now but a stream of desire.”
That’s what Grace was thinking as they started. But, as her odyssey with Neil continues, she is disabused of this shallow vision of passion. We can see this from a later realization of hers.
They discuss his alcoholism. He asks her what he would say if she rebuked him. She replies, “You’d say, what else is there to do?” Her answer opens up a new truth to herself.
“She’d been trying to impress him with these answers, trying to show herself as worldly as he was, and in the middle of that she had come on this rock-bottom truth. This lack of hope – genuine, reasonable, and everlasting.”
And again:
“She’d thought it was touch. Mouths, tongues, skin, bodies, banging bone on bone. Inflammation. Passion. But that wasn’t what had been meant for them at all. That was child’s play, compared to how she knew him, how far she’d seen into him, now.”
And:
“Looking at such dark cold level water and knowing it was all there was.”
William, I wanted to respond to this: “I categorically disagree with you, SR, about the primacy of sexuality between Grace and Neil. Sure they have some sexual feeling for each other, you quote several passages to this effect. It may be the deciding factor for Neil, but not for Grace — who is, after all, the central character of the story. It is not the foremost aspect of the ride for her. What Grace learns from this ride is not sex, or even inhibited sex, but seeing deeply into another person.”
I agree with much of the rest of your post, but I do not think you are refuting my argument, but rather supporting it. But then the quote above, you say you “categorically disagree” with me “about the *PRIMACY* of sexuality between Grace and Neil.” (emphasis added)
“Primacy”? That is your word, not mine! It’s not the word I would use. To reiterate, my thesis on this was, ““Grace goes along willingly, and this trip provides a sort of epiphany. She sees a tiny glimpse of the type of passion that is so lacking in her relationship with Maury and quickly realizes that she cannot–will not–marry Maury.”
There little road trip is very consequential to both Grace and Neil. It is on the road trip that Grace unequivocally decides to break of the relationship with Maury. (Whereas, immediately prior to the roadtrip she was on the trajectory of getting married to him.) And as to Neil–he commits suicide in a dramatic fashion almost immediately following the end of the roadtrip.
But they key words in my statement above are “tiny glimpse!” I’m not arguing that they were in a passionate relationship! Rather, they each got a tiny glimpse into what a more suitable relationship for each of them should include. It’s not what they have together, it’s what through their interaction they see they are *lacking* on their current relationships with their respective significant others–this is particularly the case with Grace.
Also, regarding Grace’s realization of a new truth after she realized that she’d been trying to impress him with her answers. Remember that Grace had already decided that she was never going to marry Maury *before* having this realization. And I would see this as adding to the sexual element. Here, she’s seeing more depth and in a sense having more emotional connection with Neil in the course of this short road trip than she she’s developed with Maury over the course of the entire summer. (Remember she doesn’t remember much about the time she and Maury spent together alone, and early on she reorganized her time to spend more time with the mother and less with Maury.)
To Howard, William, and Sometime Reader: what a wonderful discussion.
Howard, I noticed with great sadness your comment about Neil’s children – and William – your observation that “suicides don’t think of others” is part of it – and Howard – that sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t . What I notice is that on this ride, we hear nothing from Neil about his children.
Howard – I notice with great interest your discussion about how Neil answered Grace’s request for him to tell her about himself . “His hand slid away,” you note. Thank you for that note. I am so deeply moved by Munro’s construction here. Neil has become a locked room.
Sometime reader – I notice your attention to the “lack of passion” between Maury and Grace and that Neil gives Grace “a glimpse of passion.”
What a wonderful discussion. My own thought is that I imagine Munro would be delighted with it. That your discussion is what she wanted.
Betsy, you say ‘we hear nothing from Neil about his children … Neil has become a locked room’.
Yes, and from memory, we also hear nothing from Grace on the matter either. As the car journey commences we’re told ‘Mavis and the rest of the family were wiped from her mind’.
Maybe I’m repeating myself but I rather take it that at the point Neil enters the story he is already a man on a mission (to kill himself) – a locked room, if you like. And Grace taps into that, accepts it. Subconsciously she knows there’s no point entertaining a notion of a relationship with him, no point coming out with “but what about your wife and children?”
Betsy —
It’s all your fault. Yours and Alice Munro’s. For many years I have read NYer stories. I have always found a few readable (aside from those by Tessa Hadley and T.C. Boyle). Since you started this thread with your close reading of “Passion”, I can’t get past the first page of any NYer story. They’re all rambling, pointless, dull, and full of extraneous material. And no plot! Are all conbtemporary short story writers really so awful?
This is a real problem. As one of my daughters noted, the problem of reading Alice Munro is that afterwards most other fiction seems boring and flat.