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Runaway 豆瓣 Goodreads
8.5 (13 个评分) 作者: Alice Munro Vintage 2005 - 11
The incomparable Alice Munro’s bestselling and rapturously acclaimed Runaway 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 Munro’s hands, the people she writes about–women of all ages and circumstances, and their friends, lovers, parents, and children–become as vivid as our own neighbors. It is her miraculous gift to make these stories as real and unforgettable as our own.
2013年11月5日 已读
Runaway这篇情节略老套?
2013年11月7日 评论 Why Carla Returned - (A piece of homework.) Runaway is not exactly a new story. Being only an inexperienced reader, I have encountered several similar runaway stories in my reading history. One is the famous Jane Eyre, who practically declared an open war against a patriarchal society to fight for independence and respect. The other is the A Doll's House, in which the heroin left her husband with an equally forceful declaration of rights. Another story of Lu Xun, Shang Shi ended on a tragic note, quite different from the two stories above. The heroin ran away from home and founded a family with her love only to fall from the good graces of her lover who left her to face the consequences alone. They are all stories of how women stand up against social norms and “leave” their familiar environment to fight for freedom. At first glance, Runaway is just another one of these stories. Carla left her husband to get away from his ever present influence and his constant whims. The end of the story corresponds perfectly with the prediction Lu Xun made decades ago, that Nala had nowhere to go even if she did leave her home. But what Munro told, was a quite different story. First of all, there are two runaways in the story. The first one is actually quite similar with the three stories above, in that Carla left her middle class home in a courageous and enthusiastic mood and embraces a new ‘authentic’ life with her love Clark. She had a leading ideology that pushes her forward which takes the form of a Beatles song that encourages her to follow her love and live the care-free and authentic life of a ‘gypsy’. Carla, not being the kind of girl that stands out in a middle class ideology and finds the middle class ethic repulsive, leaves with Clark and starts her life on a farm. Living on a farm and attending to farm animals is something that both Carla and Clark love. It is not something that Clark has decided and forced onto Carla, but rather part of Carla’s choice too. It is her escape from the middle class ethic and his ambition to build up image of an independent and rebellious ‘hero’. But by siding with Clark, Carla has to cut off from her family to humor his judgment that families are burdens and cut off from the middle class world she grew up in to cater to the reality of an authentic proletariat life. Carla has practically bonded her dream of pursuing a care-free farm life with the image of Clark. He is the personalization of her whole ideology and a vivid reminder of what she had fought for. But being a patriarchal man, Clark turned Carla’s free choice into only a part of his will and a part of his scheme. She had no place in the decision making process, only a tool in achieving it. Carla begins to understand it. Yet she cannot leave. By leaving Clark, she would be standing against everything that she so decidedly declared for. She would prove that her parents are right and herself wrong. She had made Clark her salvation from her middle class ethic and embraced instead for the life that Clark proposed. She was not her own savior and her whole escape depended heavily on others, first on Clark and then on Sylvia. Carla is the symbol of ordinary women who do not share the strong revolutionary ideas of feminist pioneers and who lack the dramatic life stories of a heroin in a novel that pushes them forward. Her story is the version that actually happens. Carla never staged her own flight. She wondered back. Flora’s return, like Carla’s flight, brought up fear and disturbance in her husband which was a slap in the face for his masculinity and since he cannot do anything to Carla, though he did threaten her, he had to kill Flora to erase the memory and display it as a triumph in his heart. The pain is sharp, yet, it will grow ordinary.
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