| "The Albanian Virgin"
a short story by Alice Munro
"No toe-stubbing subtexts are hidden here. Munro's gender agenda is neatly buried in her quietly daring art. An Albanian Virgin, for example, spans half a century and half the globe to join vastly different lives. A Canadian tourist who changes her itinerary in the mountains of southeastern Europe is captured by tribal Ghegs and put to work. Village routines induce a hypnotic adjustment that virtually erases her former self. The ways of these isolated Christians are bloody and strict. A woman can dodge her tribal fate as breeder and toiler only by renouncing sex, living alone and dressing in men's clothing. In this way the captive Canadian avoids being sold into a Muslim marriage. The passivity of the character is barely credible, which is what Munro intends. The Gheg encounter, said to have occurred in the 1920s, is told to the narrator of a larger, more encompassing story by a woman whose reliability the reader is encouraged to suspect. Fact, fiction or a little of both, the exotic adventure mirrors changes in the life of the narrator, a Victoria, British Columbia, bookshop owner." |
About Alice Munro: |
The
second story in Alice Munro's collection Open Secrets, "The Albanian
Virgin" is a story of shifting times and truths.