Prof. dr.

Monica Bottez
Germina

Gaga

Three Great Canadian Women Novelists

Spanish, group 4, III A

English-

(Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood,

Alice Munro)

Too Much Happiness

by Alice Munro
Some Women`s past recollections

"Some Women" is part of Alice Munro`s latest collection "Too much

happiness". It is a short story, in which the reader enters in the lives of the
Croziers .
The narrator, is an old woman, who is remembering the times she
was young and worked as a nurse for the Croziers. She looked after Mr.
Crozier, who was a fighter pilot in the war, but also a well-educated man,
he graduated from college, where he studied history. He was married to a
young woman, also a well-educated woman, Sylvia, who was supposed to
be a student of his in the past. Unfortunately, for him, he had leukemia,
and he was dying. This is how the story begins. The narrator enters the
reader in the world of the Croziers, presenting the members, their
occupation, appearance, and some of their qualities, flaws or moods.
In this short story, we find a first person narrator "I am amazed
sometimes to think how old I am." This is not an omniscient narrator, who
knows all about the characters, their thoughts, motivations and depths.
This is a third person limited narrator, who knows only what the characters
knows, or say. The narrator presents just a limited information, who
doesn`t know the feelings or thoughts of the characters. Not being an
omniscient narrator, increase the suspense and mystery towards the

Croziers, making the reader to desire finding out more about the depths of
this family past and relations.
The narrator is also a character in the story, a thirteen young girl that
can only talk from her experience in the story. Because she is a first
person narrator and a character in the story, she is a subjective narrator,
an unreliable one. The narrator is a participant and a witness too in the
action.
The events took place in the past, they are past recollections of the
narrator, but they are still fresh in her memory, although they are distant
memories, from when she was a young girl. The reader can assume that
those events happened many years ago, from her confession in the
beginning of the story : "I am amazed sometimes to think how old I am".
The characters are built in direct and indirect characterization too.
In the direct characterization the reader finds out that Mr Crozier " had
been a fighter pilot, had gone to college and studied history, and
graduated, and got married, and now he had leukemia", that young Mrs
Crozier was "a tall, thin, fair-haired woman with a variable complexion.
Sometimes there were patches of red on her cheeks as if she had
scratched them", "she had got an education". They were both well
educated.
Mr Crozier`s stepmother, old Mrs Crozier was : " A skinny streak of pale
flesh. It did not look as old as the parts of her that were daily exposed-her
brown-freckled dark-veined hands and forearms, her brown-blotched
cheeks. This usually covered length of her body was yellow-white, like
wood freshly stripped of its bark. "
The masseuse of the family, Roxanne is also characterized very well in
the direct characterization: "She was tanned this early in the summer, and
her pageboy hair had a copper sheen-something you could get easily
nowadays from a bottle, but that was unusual and enviable then. Brown
eyes, a dimple in one cheek, such smiling and teasing that you never got a

good-enough look at her to say whether she was really pretty, or how old
she was.", "Roxanne was surely an inferior person"
These characters are also presented in the indirect characterization,
where the reader can depict a trait of character, from what the character
does or say, from their environment and their external appearance or
names.
Mr Crozier is an educated man who likes to read books, but never
finishes them. He is also a brave and talented man because he was a pilot
fighter in the war. He has a cruel destiny, being sick of leukemia, a mortal
disease. He is presented in his death bead, in his last days of life, being
weak and in pain. He doesn`t want to continue this painful life, this being
understood from his wish of being locked up in his room, to let him die
alone and in peace.
His stepmother, old Mrs Crozier, seems a very cold and insensitive old
lady, that doesn`t care very much of the well being of her step son, this
being understood from her actions in the story, in which she doesn`t
accommodate a bed downstairs, where "he would be cooler." She is not
educated, she doesn`t like to read : " The reading part she appeared to let
go, as if such an activity was too foreign for her contemplation". She likes
to receive massages and relax. She is self-centered; she cares only about
her flower garden and herself.
Roxanne, is also presented in indirect characterization, from her way of
speaking, behaving and by her name. More about her personality is
revealed by her way of talking and behaving. The reader acknowledges
that she is a teasing woman, with a lot of charm: "The voice was a
womans or girls, and it was bold and teasing all at once, so that you
could almost feel this person was tickling you. She said with one of her
conspiratorial twinkles. Talking all the time, pure teasing and nonsense."
She wasn`t educated, she was inferior to Mr Crozier, she doesn`t know
much about literature or history. Her name Roxanne is the name of

Alexander the Great`s wife, but because of her poor education, she
doesn`t know this fact.
This short story, tells a part of the life of the Crozier`s family, in a dark
moment of their life, in which Mr Crozier is very sick and dying, young Mrs
Crozier is preocupied by her carrier as a teacher and old Mrs Crozier is only
occupied by herself. Roxanne is the only one who bring a little light and
amusement in the life of the Croziers. But unfortunately the story ends in a
sorrowful way, with the death of Mr Crozier.

Bibliography:
Munro, Alice. Too Much Happiness . Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2009
Character and Direct and Indirect Characterization from : Bottez, Monica.
Analyzing Narative Fiction, Bucharest, EUB, 2007.