Introduction

Abstract

In her short story Silence, Alice Munro tells us about a woman in British Columbia who loses her husband and her daughter. The husband, a fisherman, heads out one morning when the waters of the bay on which the family lived were hardly choppy. A storm strikes and, by the time the fury ends close to midnight, three boats have been lost, including the husband’s. All on board are drowned. Although Munro never gives us the reasons for the daughter’s disappearance, we learn that she is still alive and has become a mother. After her husband’s death, the wife, the story’s main character, moves from the small fishing town in coastal British Columbia to Vancouver. In a short passage, only loosely related to the general progress of the narrative, Munro describes her character’s thoughts on this move: