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摘 要

2013年诺贝尔奖得主爱丽丝·门罗被广泛认为是当代短篇小说大师。短篇小说集《逃离》中八个故事揭示了人物关注点：只能局限于片刻的启迪满足而不是改变命运的启示。研究门罗的国内外学者主要聚焦《逃离》中的安大略南部哥特式或女性主义。生态女性主义元素也有所涉及。然而生态女性主义评论只限于女性与自然，社会，男人和自我之间的冲突，隐藏在小说集中的和谐之路的重建却被忽略。因此，基于生态女性主义理论，本文试图从两个维度探讨文本：女性与自然，社会，男人和自我之间的失衡和重建和谐之路。生态女性主义视域下的阅读将丰富对这本创新之书的研究。

关键词：门罗；《逃离》；女性主义；失衡；生态和谐

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 A Brief Introduction to Munro and Runaway 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Brief Introduction to Eco-feminism 3

4. Munro’s Eco-feminist Awareness in Runaway 4

4.1 The Imbalance between Woman and Nature 4

4.2 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Nature 5

4.3 The Imbalance between Woman and Society 6

4.4 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Society 6

4.5 The Imbalance between Woman and Man 7

4.6 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Man 8

4.7 The Imbalance between Woman and Self 8

4.8 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Self 9

5. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

1.1 A Brief Introduction to Munro and Runaway

Munro, a famous Canadian writer, she is known for short stories. In more than 40 years of literary career, she has published short stories more than one hundred. She was born in the community of Wing ham in North Huron Ontario, Canada in 1931. She got divorced with her first husband in 1972 and then married her present husband in 1976. The couple have been living in a small town of Ontario ever since. Up to the present, Munro has published more than fifteen collections of short stories. From the earliest Dance of the Happy Shades to the newest Too Much Happiness, out of which three won Canada’s Governor General’s Award and some others won Canadian Book Award, Griller Prize, O. Henry Award and Trillium Book Award, etc. Munro is skilled in writing about the perplexed and conflicting status of people, especially of women, and is good at using the women writer’s particular insight and point of view to describe people’s various kinds of conflict in life. (Warren, 49-61)

Alice Munro’s rapturously acclaimed Runaway, published in 2004, consists of eight short stories. It is a book of extraordinary stories about love and its infinite betrayals and surprises, from the title story about a young woman who, though she thinks she wants to, is incapable of leaving her husband, to three stories about a woman named Juliet and the emotions that complicate the luster of her intimate relationships. In Runaway, the female protagonists are all trapped in troublesome and confusing relation with nature, society, men or self. Like her usual writing style, Munro tries reveal the complexities of this kind of relation covered by the seemingly ordinary and simple life. All the protagonists in the story have deep and complicated inner world, just like the literary images in Munro’s other works. In this thesis, each protagonist from all the eight stories is picked out and analyzed in detail from the eco-feminist perspective. (Reuther, 1975: 34)

The prime reason to choose the collection from Munro’s piles of works is that the collection is relatively her earlier works, so the study into the female characters from the book can be more persuasive and comprehensive to prove the eco-feminist thought of Munro. Besides, it can be chosen as the representative works of Munro. Munro was not even known to the literary field until the publication of the collection, which won the Griller Prize and was recommended as one of the best books around the world by the French Lire magazine.

2. Literature Review

Research on Munro"s work has been undertaken since the early 1970s, with the first PhD thesis published in 1972. The first book-length volume collecting the papers presented at the University of Waterloo first conference on her oeuvre was published in 1984, The Art of Alice Munro: Saying the Unsayable. Numerous critical studies have acknowledged Munro"s mastery of the cultural and vocal tones of a region. Written within the conventions of literary realism, her fiction reflects the preoccupations of figures who must remain satisfied with momentary illumination rather than life-changing revelations. Her numerous and award-winning collections of short stories, set mostly in southern Ontario. Munro is often classified into Southern Ontario Gothic, which analyzes and critiques social conditions such as race, gender, religion and politics, but in a Southern Ontario context. Southern Ontario Gothic is generally characterized by a stern realism set against the dour small-town Protestant morality stereotypical of the region, and often has underlying themes of moral hypocrisy. Actions and people that act against humanity, logic, and morality all are portrayed unfavorable. In Munro"s stories, plot is secondary and "little happens." Munro"s work deals with love and work, and the failings of both. She shares Chekhov"s obsession with time and our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward. In Runaway she has focused on the travails of middle age, of women alone, and of the elderly, "a mark of her style for characters to experience a revelation that sheds light on, and gives meaning to, an event" ( Alice Munro). Munro"s prose reveals the ambiguities of life: "ironic and serious at the same time," "mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry," "special, useless knowledge," "tones of shrill and happy outrage," "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the joy of it" (Thomas, 1995: 107-210). Her style places the fantastic next to the ordinary, with each undercutting the other in ways that simply and effortlessly evoke life. As Robert Thacker has it: "Munro"s writing creates an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude – not of mimesis, so-called and "realism" – but rather the feeling of being itself of just being a human being" (Clark, 1996: 49-61). It is often noted that her amplitude of style and approach give her short stories the moral density of lengthier novels. However, these critics do not pay as much attention to Munro’s specific stories as to her overall writing style.

Some domestic critics analyze the themes and the narrative techniques of the collection. Yu Yang ping takes an eco-feminist interpretation of the collection by examining women"s individual consciousness: economic and mental independence. Wan Wei makes a research on the narrative technique and analyzes the description of female’characters, in order to highlight their complex psyche. Li Yan studies the male society, the traditional role of woman, and her confusion, awakening and self-salvation, discusses about the theme of women’s escape in the collection, ending with a conclusion that all of those women’s failure because they cannot escape from their ordinary life. From the above literature review it can be seen that some literary critics have touched upon the eco-feminist elements in Munro’s works. The critics all limit their attention on the conflicts between women and nature, society, men, and self while ignoring the construction of ecological harmony between woman and nature, society, men, and self.

3. Brief Introduction to Eco-feminism

Since ‘eco-feminism’ was developed as a concept in the 1970s, there have been, arguably, major policy shifts in the fields of gender in equality and environmental sustainability which warrant a consideration of the achievements of, and work outstanding for ecological feminism. Eco-feminism refers to women as the main body status, function and value in the objective world of consciousness, it is to inspire women to pursue independence, autonomy, initiative and creativity of intrinsic motivation. Eco-feminism embodies for women able to consciously awareness and fulfills their historical mission, social responsibilities and obligations in life, and clearly knows its own characteristics, and in a unique way to participate in social life, affirmation and realize their social value and life needs. It is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism. (Clark, Miriam Marty, 1996: 49-61) Eco-feminists argue that a strong parallel exists between the oppression and subordination of women in families and society and the degradation of nature through the construction of differences into conceptual binaries and ideological hierarchies that allow a systematic justification of domination by subjects classed into higher-ranking categories over objects classed into lower-ranking categories They also explore the sexism, the domination of nature, racism, and other characteristics of social inequality. (Thomas, 1995: 107-210) In some of their current work, eco-feminists argue that the capitalist and patriarchal systems that predominate throughout the world reveal a triple domination of the Global South (people who live in the Third World), women, and nature. This domination and exploitation of women, of poorly resourced peoples and of nature sits at the core of the eco-feminist analysis.

4. Munro’s Eco-feminist Awareness in Runaway

4.1 The Imbalance between Woman and Nature

From Carla in “Runaway”, we can know that she could only get the comfort from the animals, especially from the goat named Flora. Flora is actually characterized by Munro as a symbol of Carla’s eco-feminist spirit, it is a nature, the purpose of raising Flora to make the effect of comfort and security to horses. But with Flora in the morning and night get along with Carla feelings for it is growing. Flora is her pet, it is also her best-friend. Unfortunately, the little goat suddenly disappeared. In Carla’s eyes, it is by no means a little goat. It has scored all of wisdom. Its disappearance upsets Carla, also let her to rethink the same annoying of marital life. Carla realizes that the only way to get rid of a real may run away like Flora. Flora’s running away is an eco-feminist inspiration for Carla to escape from the oppressive marriage, even though at the price of physical hardship and injury. Her leg seemed to be hurt but she ran anyway. She led Carla to a barbed-wire barricade, the Flora slipped through it, hurt leg and all, just slithered through like a white eel and disappeared. Carla is reminded of the escaping Flora, and in the pursuit of Flora’s spirit, she wants to run away from Clark’s oppression. When she decided to escape from Clark, one begins to runaway, also no longer to think of the goat, no longer want to go to look for it, even though they used to be a good friend, she is also chose to escape .

4.2 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Nature

"Passion" is a short story about a girl named Grace to escape her boyfriend Maury and runaway with Maury’s brother Neil on the eve of Thanksgiving. From eco-feminist perspective, however, it tells the process of the spirit of grace between the choice of external forces and self. According to the eco-feminist, the relationship between woman and nature are equal, the relationship between men and women, because these relationships mean control and dominate the rule. Therefore, in "Passion" Munro also expressed her eco-feminist from human’s natural indicated that women in the oppression of patriarchy society. In the description of the deserted house in the Ottawa valley, where the story happened, Munro occupied land by comparing its appear in different time, from the initial quaint now "lonely" and "wrong" neighbors "waste heap together against side. In addition, due to build a new house, used to wade through the river can even see now. Even if the lake is located in, too much more roads seem to run towards it, there are a lot of crossing the highway more than forty years ago, there is only one road leading to it, because the highway now avoid town but invaded the country. The scenery description of the story not only reveals people overuse of ecology, patriarchal rule as well as women. Elegant and Murray like plain boiled water days commonly, the relationship between the well may be comfortable, but no passion. And Neil relationship is a bit like a roller coaster, ambiguous, the heart beat faster. In "Passion ", which left her fiancé and his younger brother Neil fleeing one afternoon. She doesn"t want to escape, she just leave for a while, coming up for air. Freedom is so important and she wants to find the peace of mind in nature.

4.3 The Imbalance between Woman and Society

From Grace in "Passion", she faces the cruelty of real life, she knows that she must give up something in life. However, to some degree, she advocates personality and rebellious. Neil and Murray is actually represents two road signs, one is a crazy dream of freedom, and another is a boring and ordinary life, and her rebellion ordinary life, so there is an elopement plot for her and Neil. He is actually a kind of resistance of the dissatisfaction of social reality, also is a kind of pursuit of the value of freedom, from the desire for freedom, it embodies the contradiction between woman and society, in the realistic society, people feel biased for eloping, regardless of the social’s eyes, she chooses to escape from the society, so the imbalance of women and society is obvious.

From Penelope in "Silence", we can see her fled and betrayal, in the eastern morals is almost unacceptable. A child leaving away her parents and relatives, the only explanation is Penelope feels disdain to realistic society and life. An informal family (parents were not married) and incomplete family (her father died), this did not let he feel free and happy, although Juliet loved her. But this kind of abandoned is cruel. Finally, she went back to her parents and her family, to feel the love of real life, by Penelope, she lets us see women’s stray and helpless from society, it embodies the imbalance of the society.

4.4 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Society

Eco-feminists regard nature as a friend who is amicable to all the lives the construction of this character can be also found in Tessa with her purity, sincerity and friendliness, which are especially reflected by Ollie, who is depicted by Munro as the representative of the male-centered society. When Ollie is introduced to Tessa, his habitual flattering to women cannot be even employed in front of Tessa because of her deep and soft blue eyes showing the most truehearted politeness and honesty.

The increasing desire and technological development are both based on more consumption of social resources, producing more waste and greater pressure to society. As a representative of the modern society, Ollie is portrayed full of estrangement, he curses the wild roses on the path to Tessa’s house and asks in carnation what they really are, he refuses to drink the water in Tessa’s yard because it is “too natural” without any “civilize processing”, besides, in accordance with the dominant role of the “domination framework”, Ollie has strong consciousness of male’s superiority to women and believe in women’s stupidity and men’s intellectuality. He would fell it weird and unacceptable if woman appear smarter or more powerful than himself. The social concept of “science and technology first” is especially satirized by Munro. Ollie claims in bold and straightforward terms that his “ambition” is based on his scientific curiosity, which he is quite proud of. He takes Tessa to the United States to be scientifically investigated while he acts as “a scientific journalist”. Tessa purity and spiritual simplicity result in her being cheated by Ollie’s false love and then she leaves the countryside for cities. As is mentioned in the novel:

She (Tessa) is swamped with people coming and it is the worst possible time for cars to get in where she lives and the wreckers have been hauling people out of ditch. The road is an awful mess, getting chewed up past repair. The wild roses will certainly be a thing of the past. (297-298)

The self-destruction of Ollie, who is the representative of the civilized society, finally begins to take place after Crash, which dries up the interest and funding for the investigation of Tessa. Then they give “high taste” public performances showing Tessa’s magic power to make living, however, Ollie’s coming to the U.S. Is for his scientific curiosity, but now the progress of scientific technology prevents him from attracting audiences, because people can enjoy the entertainment with radios or see the travelogues at the church hall, forcing him to go with some vulgar display. The overuse of Tessa’s power results in its decreasing and final vanishing, and then the “useless” Tessa gets abandoned to a remote hospital. Here Munro intends to show the numbness and coldness not only of man, but also of the whole society which is indifferent and apathetic to the marginalized people, which are represented by Tessa.

4.5 The Imbalance between Woman and Man

From Carla in "Runaway", she tries to escape from her husband Clark. However, due to her immature eco-feminist thought with the impenetrable spiritual cage which is similar to the eco-feminist. Carla finally fails in the escaping and goes back to the suffocating marriage. Through the characterization of Carla, Munro exposes the contradiction between the husband and wife and the hegemonic male’s oppression of women. Carla is a male authority full of the patriarchal culture and it is he that has necessitated through his forcing Carla to take responsibility for his strong monetary desire without any respect towards her.

Clark even gets notions to meet his desire in an illegal way. For example, in order to interest the indifferent husband, Carla fictionalizes her sexual harassment by their neighbor Mr. Jamieson, and then Clark even feels disappointed at Carla’s refusal because he wants to extort money from wealthy Mrs. Jamieson As one of the most successful achievements and considered by feminism as “the best proof for the male’s rationality”, it is indicted by Munro in this story as another cause for the estrangement between men and women.

4.6 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Man

Carla and her husband raised horses together for many years, they had a relatively quiet life. Suddenly, her most beloved (Flora) is lost, which made her very depressed. By a chance, with the help of the neighbor Sylvia, she ran away from home, to leave her Flora, let her could not take another minute with her husband (because he shouted at her angrily, like hated her very much in the mind). She seemed relieved to sit on the bus go to Toronto, but on the way of the landscape and make her constantly recall old memories and romantic things, she want to start a life without her husband in Toronto, she Collapsed (when she are fleeing his Clark still occupy a place in her life). At this time, we are seeing that Carla shouts to get off and two lines of italics“to pick me up，please, come to meet me”，“I’ll come.” she still called her husband, her back to make her life unbearable. When she backs to family, she does not want to see the neighbor Sylvia. Escape is helpless choice, she gives up the way of escape and return to her husband, and she wants to live a more harmony life with her husband.

4.7 The Imbalance between Woman and Self

Munro expresses her expectation of the harmony between men and women through the application of the androgyny ideal by the portrait of Robin and her androgynous character Daniel in "Tricks". However, just like the final result of Juliet and Grace, owing to the fear of Robin for the patriarchal values, Robin finally fails in the other half self her androgynous object Daniel. The concept of androgyny has a long history in the western literature. Dating back to the ancient times, ideologist Plato from ancient Greece wrote in his famous Symposium that human being has three kinds of genders, which are respectively the man, the woman and their combination. According to Plato, the androgyny is the most satisfactory and harmonious state of human’s life and the cause of People’s current tribulation is just that Zeus has cleaved the satisfactory hermaphrodite apart in order to punish the human being. Since the emergence of Plato‘s notion about the androgyny, many litterateurs have delivered their wish for the gender harmony by writing about the androgyny ideal in their works, including Ovid and Virginia Woolf. At the beginning of the 20th century, Virginia Woolf wrote in her classic A Room of One’s Own that everybody has two powers for domination, one of the man and the other of the woman, but the most well-balanced and feasible case is the harmonious cooperation between these two powers. Since then, the ideal of androgyny has been considered to be closely connected with the feminist theory. In the story "Tricks", the realization process of androgyny lies in Robin’s pursuit of the self by the union with Daniel, it is an important term of feminism referring to the constitution of androgyny to realize a balanced cooperation between the bisexual temperaments. In another sense, hermaphrodite is also seeking women and social"s harmony, to build ecological feminism and self harmony by hermaphrodite.

4.8 The Construction of Ecological Harmony between Woman and Self

After the common-law marriage of Juliet and Eric, the contradiction within her mind between the conventional housewife and her original self is gradually increased, resulting in her eagerness to search for the return way leading to the original Juliet. In the story of "Soon” and "Silence", Alice Munro respectively describes the efforts of Juliet to retrieve her original self through her visit of her parents in order to find the similar self in her father and through the nourishment of herself in her daughter Penelope. Juliet aims to find herself by the inspiration from her father Sam, who once has the similar rebellious spirit like her, but she fails because of Sam’s assimilation by the dominant system of society. In the mind of Juliet, similar to the self of her, her parents live a happy and harmonious life with mutual respect towards each other in spite of their isolation from the other people. Juliet especially finds her similarity with her father Sam, who believes in the equality of human being instead of the hierarchy defined by the social dominant system. He is not afraid of disagreeing with people over him and will do everything to make people understand his feeling, he’s not at all different from them. However, when Juliet visits her parents to recover her original self, she disappointingly finds that Sam has been assimilated by the other town people. But, she has been in the search for the self, once she lost herself, she hopes to be back. She wants to find ecological harmony between woman and self.

5. Conclusion

This thesis has focused on the relationship between woman and nature, society, men, and self, the construction of ecological harmony between woman and nature, society, men. Munro lives up to its reputation as one of the greatest writers in this time, in the beginning period of old eco-feminism, she thinks the shape of ordinary woman, to reflect on and think that woman no longer need to completely dependent on man, In pain struggle, Shouting in the conflict, no matter what choice, it cannot stop the vigorous development of feminism. Sometimes just is the salvation of the soul. Munro said: “I want to use the traditional way to express something that happen on someone, I want to let the reader feel something is amazing.”

The eco-feminist writing can be divided into two kinds: the self-conscious type and the conscious type. The writing of Munro belongs to the unconscious type because the write is not aware of the affinitive relation between woman and society but her works have manifested a lot of eco-feminist concern. This thesis chooses the collections of short story the story, which is respectively one of the newest works in 2004.

In the collection, Munro focuses female characters to write about their love, marriage, family, offspring and social relation. It is indicated by Munro that woman can live without the social hierarchy only through the escape from society. Munro also describes the escape from the man through Carla. And escape from self though Grace. The interpretation of the story in the perspective of eco-feminist provides a new approach to the study of Munro’s works and could help readers to understand Munro’s thoughts about the situation of woman and nature, woman and society, woman and man, as well as woman and self.

Works Cited

[1] Anonymous. “Author Profile: Alice Munro.” World Literature Today 79.2 (2005): 61.

[2] Bale, Susan. “Women Writers of a Certain Age.” The Hudson Review 2010 (4).

[3] Clark, Miriam Marty. “Allegories of Reading in Alice Munro’s Carried Away.”

(1996):49-61.

[4] “Alice_Munro.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 May 2014 Web.1 May 2014 lt;. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munrogt;.

[5] Munro, Alice. Runaway. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

[6] Reuther, Rosemary Radford. New Women, New Earth. New York: Sea bury Press, 1975.

[7] Thomas, Sue. “Reading Female Sexual Desire in Munro’s works.” 1995: 107-210.

[8] Warren, Karen J. Eco-feminism: Woman, Culture, Nature, Indiana University Press, 1994: 49-61.

[9] 李燕. 《西方女性主义的自我救赎》.兰州教育学院学报学报, 2013 (1):31-32.

[10] 万威. 《逃离的女性主义叙事技巧解读》. 时代文学, 2010 (12):136-138.

[11] 于艳平. 《逃离》的背后：《女性意识的觉醒和成长》. 郑州大学学报, 2011（3）：109-112.

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