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I'm a college graduate from the Environmental program of AU. Welcome to my f***ed-up humor and stories about my kitties, family, or old papers/DB I wrote for the industrious student to recycle. I also like to post things about fracking from time to time. Hey, I'm all about sharing my intellectual property (if you can call it that) with anyone who is running short on time or intellect :)


























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16 August 2011

English Paper

For those of you who don't fear the Turnitin Police, here's a 100% paper. 

I'm a strong believer in The Commons:  My work is here for you to benefit from and build on.


Edie’s Journey
“How I Met My Husband” by Alice Munro, is a short story about a young girl named Edie who works for the Peebles.  The theme of her narrative is the coming of age of Edie, the protagonist in this story.  Munro develops Edie’s character as she passes from innocent naiveté into adulthood.  Munro uses various symbols that guide and shape Edie’s perspective through an ironic twist of events involving a letter that never arrives.  Her believable story is told through first person point of view as an adult looking back on her life.  Edie’s antagonist is not a person, but rather her own inner struggle as she strives to reach adulthood.  During her struggle from a naïve teen into adulthood, she observes and interacts with other characters in the story.  Even though there is not a major human antagonist in this story, several people influence Edie and her struggle to discover herself.  These people do not aid her in conventional methods like advice, but by their actions, conduct, and Munro’s use of symbolism with each. 
The first person Munro introduces to the reader that aids Edie in her journey is Mrs. Peebles.  She is a kind employer, but feels as if she is “tied down” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 24) with her country life and two children.  Edie and her family find this amusing (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 25) since Mrs. Peebles has many modern conveniences that they do not own including running water, an automatic washer and dryer, a double sink, and a modern bathroom.  Edie describes the irony of Mrs. Peebles’ feelings compared to her mother’s workload.  She points out the difference between washing clothes at home where it is a “struggle with the wringer and hang up and haul down” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 25) and concludes it is difficult to remember now that she has these modern conveniences (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 25) in her adult life.  In this way, she excuses Mrs. Peebles’ perspective by comparing it to the way she lives now.   
Mrs. Peebles has many nice things that Edie may want when she finds her husband; however, the one item Munro uses to symbolize Edie’s inner struggle towards adulthood is Mrs. Peebles’ dress.  Edie discovers dresses in Mrs. Peebles closet that are pushed to the back.  She expresses her disappointment that there is no wedding dress (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 30), but tries on a beautiful satin dress.  Mrs. Peebles dress represents two things.  First, it shows Edie’s innocence and her desire to play dress-up.  The second thing it symbolizes is her desire to try on Mrs. Peebles’ life to see if it suits her.  After she puts on the dress, “one thing led to another” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 31) and she loses herself in the moment.  She is trying on the image of a well-off lady, but finds herself in an embarrassing situation with Chris Watters—something a lady of a higher social class may not find herself entangled in.  This experience also leads her to conclude that she has crossed an unspoken line when she states that employers “...like to think you aren’t curious” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 51) about anything but their wants.  She enjoys trying on the dress, but also regrets that someone else found out her secret.    
Loretta Bird, another character Munro introduces, is a woman that Edie does not want to become.  She is nosy, judgmental, and at times rude.  When she is alone with Edie she comments about Mrs. Peebles’ naps and how “[s]he wouldn’t find time to lay down in the middle of the day, if she had seven kids like I got” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 22).  This statement is both ironic and judgmental at the same time.  She judges Mrs. Peebles by claiming she (Mrs. Bird) does not have time to take a nap.  This is also ironic because Mrs. Bird has plenty of time to sit and gossip with Edie.  She is also too curious about the Peebles’ personal life when she asks whether the Peebles fight or use birth control (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 23).  She asserts that using birth control is a “sin” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 23) passing another judgment on Mrs. Peebles. 
There are ways Munro depicts Mrs. Bird’s rudeness, but the lawn chair represents how she insults Edie personally.  When Edie returns from the kitchen with ice tea, she finds Mrs. Bird “had settled in [her] lawn chair” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 101).  Alice Kelling was invited to sit and wait with the family (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 96), not Mrs. Bird.  Bird takes it upon herself to sit in Edie’s empty chair leaving her on the steps (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 101) separate from the other adults.  As Edie observes Mrs. Bird’s behavior, she sees someone she does not want to become.
With Chris Watters, Munro uses visual symbols as well as personal interaction to nudge Edie into adulthood.  When Watters first appears in Edie’s life, he is flying a flashy red and silver plane (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 1) to the abandoned fairgrounds across the street from the Peebles.  According to Clugston (2010), the color red symbolizes passion and danger (sec. 7.2, table 7.1) the two things Edie encounters when she meets him in person.  The danger she experiences is when Watters catches her playing dress-up in Mrs. Peebles’ clothes.  Edie fears he will tell her secret and her job will be in jeopardy.  She also experiences passion when Watters compliments her beauty and kisses her.  During their first two encounters, she is unable to respond to his compliments with anything other than embarrassment (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 45) and nervousness showing her inexperience with men.  Edie wants to gain experience by kissing him, but she is still too naïve to understand where the kissing might lead.  Watters, on the other hand, realizes what could happen and takes the initiative to stop them from going further.
Watters’ plane also symbolizes the how easy it is for him to enter and leave Edie’s life, something she realizes later.  The plane suggests that he has flown into Edie’s life to bring some excitement, but it also represents his inability to settle down.  In fact, Watters admits this while talking to Mrs. Peebles.  He tells her “he couldn’t settle down to an ordinary life, [and] this is what he liked” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 86).  Edie is too naïve at this point in the story to realize Watters is only making promises he will never keep including the letter he will never send.
Later in the story, Edie sits by the mailbox every day as summer winds down waiting for the promised letter from Watters.  Munro uses the imagery of goldenrod and children returning to school (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 199) to show the physical changes in the seasons from summer to fall.  As the Earth changes, so does Edie’s hopes of receiving a letter from Watters, and in fact thinks, “No letter was ever going to come.”  (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 199) one day when the letter failed to arrive.  She realizes “there were women all through life waiting, and women busy and not waiting” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 200) and “knew which one [she] had to be” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 200).  It is in this moment that Edie takes a leap towards a mature adult and meets her husband.
As the reader finds out at the end of this story, Edie ironically meets her future husband, the mailman, while waiting for a letter from Watters.  Munro suggests through this part of the narrative that the mailman is far more dependable than Watters will ever be.  Edie claims the “mail came every day except Sunday, between one-thirty and two” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 198) showing how dependable he is.  He also enjoys seeing her and tells her “You’ve got the smile I’ve been waiting for all day!”  (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 198) showing his obvious interest in her.  Although Edie does not realize until he calls and asks her out that he is interested in her, she ends up marrying him.  She also lets him tell the story of how she chased him because “it makes [him] happy” (Clugston, 2010, ¶ 202).  This final line shows how Edie grew from a naïve young girl into a mature and caring woman by letting her husband think she was waiting for him—not a letter from another man.
Alice Munro shares a story of how Edie, a young hired girl, finds a husband.  In her journey from child to adult, several people help her along the way.  Some of these people she tries to emulate like Mrs. Peebles when she tries on the satin gown.  Others, like Mrs. Bird, are not the type of person wants to be.  One man, Chris Watters, helps Edie gain experience with situations that are more intimate.  His empty promise to send her a letter keeps her waiting by the mailbox for many weeks.  After weeks of waiting for a letter, Edie has a sudden moment of self-awareness.  This is the moment she decides what type of woman she wants to be, but she also opens herself to another possibility—finding her future husband.

Reference
Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint                       Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books