A solar allegory is shown to exist in Alice Munro's award-winning short story.

1. “A bounty not to be questioned”: Johanna as the Sun
and Edith as a Trickster in Alice Munro’s ‘Hateship,
Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage’ (revised
version)
Though published in 2001, the first line of “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship,
Marriage”, an important and revealing line, explains that the story is set “years ago, before the
trains stopped running on so many of the branch lines”. (Munro, 3) A few pages later we hear more
about these changes in transportation, which were, of course, wrought by the automobile: “The
town had changed, even in the time Johanna had been here. Trade was moving out to the highway,
where there was a new discount store and a Canadian Tire and a motel with a lounge and topless
dancers”. (Munro, 15) The human dimension of the change is expressed by a woman who runs
Milady’s, small clothing shop located in the town center, a space with older infrastructure based on
a less automobile-centered lifestyle, and this shop cannot compete with the new discount stores.
Speaking about the way that customers no longer come to Milady’s, the shop owner says, “They’ll
drive fifty miles, a hundred miles, never mind the gas, and tell themselves that way they get

2. something better than I’ve got here. And they haven’t. Not better quality, not better selection.
Nothing. Just that they’d be ashamed to say they bought their wedding outfits in town”. (Munro, 13)
Munro adds further troubling details about other new automobile-centered developments. The
newer housing, for example, is already looking “shabby”:
At one time there had been just three or four large houses on Exhibition Road. Across
from them were the fairgrounds, where the fall fair was held (officially called the
Agricultural Exhibition, hence the name), and in between were orchard trees, small
meadows. A dozen years ago or so that land had been sold off in regular lot sizes and
houses had been put up---small houses in alternating styles, one kind with an upstairs
and the other kind without. Some were already getting to look pretty shabby. (Munro,
16)
Information on the changes brought by the new focus on and supremacy of the automobile is
slipped in casually here and there in this story, especially in the beginning parts. It may be part of the
background narration or part of a digression-filled dialogue containing other elements and topics. But,
importantly, this information cannot be said to occupy the main stage of the story. The main stage is
reserved for narration detailing Johanna’s plans as she makes a journey to find and marry Ken
Boudreau. However, hilariously, and unbeknownst to her, Johanna’s love has been kindled by a
devious and audacious trick played on her by Edith, a friend of Sabitha, the granddaughter of
Johanna’s employer, and the daughter of Ken Boudreau.

3. The interesting critical task is to connect these two threads: the narrative of the girls’ trick and
the background detailing the rise of the car in the world. For it would be a huge mistake to think that
a writer as skillful as Alice Munro, awarded the Nobel Prize, had not intended a deep connection,
though she may have left it only implied.
In this case, imagery can be used to trace the hidden, but implicit, identity of Johanna: she has “a
frizz of reddish hair” (Munro, 3); she wears a “discreet ribbon of gold around her waist” (Munro, 11);
her face becomes “hotly flushed” (Munro, 12); her eyes “were soft and shining” (Munro, 11) and
soon again we read that her eyes were “shining in the mirror” (Munro, 12). This description of
Johanna, the first one from her point of view, discreetly reveals that she may have a cloaked identity
as the sun.
I say “may” because this conclusion is left up to the reader. The descriptions are innocent enough
to be taken at face value, so Alice Munro must be presenting the identity of Johanna as the sun in a
playful spirit, in the “now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t” way of someone sporting with us.
But why would she do such a thing?
We have to rely on empirical evidence in the text to understand Johanna’s role. Much of the
most important, climax-occurring narrative occurs when Johanna arrives in Gdaina and seeks out
Ken Boudreau. This is the climax because the whole narrative, a progression of preparations on the

4. part of Johanna and separately the events detailing the letters Edith wrote, has been leading up to it
and also because the devious trick of Edith and Sabitha has a chance of being suddenly uncovered,
now that Johanna and Ken are together in the same spot. Johanna’s role, in other words, unfolds very
clearly in the bankrupt hotel where she meets Ken Boudreau, a weak person, a drinker and a gambler,
who is suffering from bronchitis and is at first unable to speak or quiz Johanna or even to question
her presence. She is seen to be, above all, a person who steadily cures and helps the weak and sickly
and suffering. Little by little, she manages to feed him, clean the room, and provide some home
remedies for his bronchitis. Recognizing his own simple need for this helpful and steady presence,
Ken Boudreau, now on the mend, (and he does not know about Edith’s letters either) decides not
question Johanna about her mysterious and sudden presence in his life:
…..he turned over on the fresh sheet, which smelled of prairie wind and grass, and
went back to sleep, knowing for certain that she had only gone to buy milk and eggs
and butter and bread and other supplies---even cigarettes---that were necessary for a
decent life, and that she would come back and be busy downstairs and that the sound
of her activity would be like a net beneath him, heaven-sent, a bounty not to be
questioned. (Munro, 50)
Examining the passage above, a very key one since it effectively dismisses any possibility that
Ken Boudreau will quiz Johanna on her reasons for coming to join him in Gdaina, we can see once
again the presence of imagery that recalls the sun and nature: “prairie wind and grass”, “heaven-sent”,
“a bounty”. Since Ken Boudreau is the primary character acted upon by the sun figure, Johanna,

5. empirically, then he must probably be another character with a playful cosmic or allegorical identity
that is possible to be teased out of the imagery. It is not a stretch to link his suffering and desperate
state of affairs with the ‘shabbiness’ (“Some were already getting to look pretty shabby”) and “shame”
(‘Just that they’d be ashamed to say they bought their wedding outfits in town’) associated with the
infrastructure changes.
Ken Boudreau was once married to Marcelle (already dead at the time the story takes place). We
understand that as a teenager she was actively pursuing sexual activities in a rather loose way. She is
also depicted together with car images: as a teenager, she had “climbed out of the window and slid
down the verandah roof to be welcomed by carloads of boys”. (Munro, 23) Directly associated with
cars and the automobile-dependent infrastructure, Marcelle is the focus of her father’s regretful
ruminations in this passage:
He seemed to see in the fog the looming buildings of the old Exhibition
Grounds---homely, spacious buildings, like enormous barns. They had stood for
years and years unused---all through the war---and then he forgot what happened
to them in the end. Were they torn down or did they fall down? He abhorred the
races that took place now, the crowds and the loudspeaker and the illegal drinking
and the ruinous uproar of the summer Sundays. When he thought of that he
thought of his poor girl Marcelle, sitting on the verandah steps and calling out to
grown schoolmates who had got out of their parked cars and were hurrying to see
the races. (Munro, 22)

6. The word “cars” appears to be very off-hand and natural here, but I’ll argue that the association
of Marcelle with cars, so singularly emblematic of fossil fuel dependency, is not an accident. In fact,
in this story, Munro has already linked loose sexual morals with cars: “Trade was moving out to the
highway, where there was a new discount store and a Canadian Tire and a motel with a lounge and
topless dancers”. (Munro, 15)
Marcelle, since she is dead, therefore ominously links Ken Boudreau with the infrastructure
changes due to fossil fuel use and the concomitant problems with drinking, loose sexual habits and
short-term thinking.
It can be guessed that Ken Boudreau is “human beings” in general, in decline and living rather
dissipatedly in ruins (symbolized by the abandoned and derelict hotel in the rundown town). Munro
even, in a rather veiled way, describes the root of his problems in a manner that can refer to the
evolved traits humans have developed that made them vulnerable to fossil fuel dependency. Primarily,
these traits are built in to us through evolutionary processes. I will quote a long narrative passage
which is not presented as an interior monologue of Mr. McCauley, nor of Johanna, nor of Ken
Boudreau himself, nor any of the other characters, such as Edith. (All of these characters are allowed
to present narration through their thoughts at some point). However, this information about Ken

7. Boudreau’s character is presented by an independent narrator, an unidentified one, but very
perceptive:
Ken Boudreau was in the habit of lending money, as well as borrowing it. Much
of the trouble that had come upon him---or that he had got into, to put it another
way---had to do with not being able to say no to a friend. Loyalty. He had not been
drummed out of the peacetime Air Force, but had resigned out of loyalty to the friend
who had been hauled up for offering insults to the C.O. at a mess party. At a mess
party, where everything was supposed to be a joke and no offense taken---it was not
fair. And he had lost the job with the fertilizer company because he took a company
truck across the American border without permission, on a Sunday, to pick up a buddy
who had got into a fight and was afraid of being caught and charged.
Part and parcel of the loyalty to friends was the difficulty with bosses. He would
confess that he found it hard to knuckle under. “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” were not
ready words in his vocabulary. He had not been fired from the insurance company, but
he had been passed over so many times that it seemed they were daring him to quit,
and eventually he did.
Drink had played a part, you had to admit that. And the idea that life should be be
a more heroic enterprise than it ever seemed to be nowadays. (Munro 48-9)
Studying the above passage, we see there is the notable presence again of fossil fuel dependency
in the form of the image “truck”, associated here with risk, transgression, crime, fighting and
America, a country which as a matter of course heavily promoted the fossil fuel-dependent lifestyle
throughout the years spanning Munro’s career. Not surprisingly, the day Ken Boudreau committed
the transgression was “Sunday”, (the same day of the week associated with Marcelle: “…the illegal
drinking and the ruinous uproar of the summer Sundays” (Munro, 23)) (Sunday is not just a
significant day of the week for Christians, but also, as the day of the week with the word “sun” in it,

8. it reflects the cosmic importance of the sun.) It starts the week off and ends it also. Marcelle and Ken
Boudreau, through their thoughtless, dangerous, dissipated lifestyles have shown that they care not
for the “sun”. Naturally, Munro also plays with the idea that the violations occurring on Sunday are
pedestrian transgressions of traditional Christian social rules. Once again, like Johanna’s red frizz of
hair and golden circle of belt, the fact that two meanings are possible means that Munro is herself a
trickster of a sort.
Returning to the passage, it is interesting that Ken Boudreau’s biggest failing is identified as
“loyalty”, a term which can be vaguely indicating the evolutionary tendency of humans to group
together and replicate behaviors and lifestyles if there is a material pay-off or advantage to be had.
The line “he was in the habit of lending money, as well as borrowing it” surely points to the current
economic state of affairs of every fossil-fuel-dependent country: massive indebtedness and debt
crises.
I have mentioned that the author, Alice Munro, is a trickster of a sort here in this story; she
plays with the word “Sunday” or presents images of cars and infrastructure as significant----or
not. Not surprisingly, she encodes her own role as a trickster into the story in the form of Edith
Schultz, a smart girl from a poor background, and a devious trick-player who uses her writing

9. to play her tricks. Our very first glimpse of Edith occurs when Mr. McCauley goes in to
Herman Schultz’s shoe repair shop:
Mr. McCauley turned his head and saw Edith, the daughter, whom he hadn’t
noticed when he came in. A childishly thin girl with straight black hair, who kept
her back to him, rearranging the shoes. That was just the way she seemed to
slide in and out of sight when she came to his house as Sabitha’s friend. You
never got a good look at her face. (Munro,27)
Munro here playfully refers to her own role as a writer who conceals her subversive (against fossil
fuels) and solar-minded intentions under seemingly innocent references: “you never got a good look
at her face”.
This line “you never got a good look at her face” refers to the fact that Tricksters traditionally
wear disguises. Their disguises are part of their strategies: they are weak (either physically or in
social stature) but they make up for their weakness by their cunning and wits. By writing letters
signed “your friend, Ken Boudreau” (and addressed to “Dear Johanna”) and which steadily offer
more and more romantic professions of fondness, Edith, a high school student, accomplishes her ruse
well and Johanna, completely unaware of the trick, does indeed fall in love with Ken Boudreau.
Significantly, Johanna and Ken Boudreau, once together, head to “a job (in British Columbia)
managing orchards”. (Munro, 52) Visualizing his new life with Johanna, Ken Boudreau imagines
“the mild winters, the smell of evergreen forests and ripe apples. All we need to make a home.”

10. (Munro, 52). The unpleasant images based on fossil fuel dependency from the beginning of the story
(the discount store, the tire shop, the bar with dancers, etc. and the sense of dissatisfaction and
ruination and tawdriness that surround them ) have been banished and Ken Boudreau’s new job will
be around green trees. The sun has healed him.
Edith brings Johanna and Ken Boudreau together and, parallel to this, of course, Munro perhaps
hopes that her devious literary artistry will also somehow serve to bring people around to a more
solar-based lifestyle, or just make them more sensitive to its advantages and possibilities, perhaps.
Finally, I’d like to cover some elements that concern the religious aspect of Johanna as a
solar image. One passage is presented as the ruminations of the station agent who has helped
Johanna buy her train ticket:
The person (Johanna) really reminded him of was a plainclothes nun
he had seen on television, talking about the missionary work she did
somewhere in the jungle---probably she got out of her nuns’ clothes there
because it made it easier to clamber around. This nun had smiled once in a
while to show that her religion was supposed to make people happy, but most
of the time she looked out at her audience as if she believed that other people
were mainly in the world for her to boss around. (Munro, 7)
Knowing about the parallel structure of humans-sun-Munro taking place underneath the
Ken Boudreau-Johanna-Edith story, how are we to take this interesting passage? First of all, it is
above all, comically playful. Possible serious reverence for the sun (which Munro intends to hint

11. at) is masked by the fact that the nun is seen on television, a prosaic medium. She is wearing
ordinary clothes, not her nun’s outfit, a mischievous hint that characters may not be what they
seem in this story. This nun doesn’t seem charming or devious, just full of serious purpose. Is
Munro possibly advocating sun worship in a very indirect way? More likely is the possibility that
Munro is referencing the sun’s (nature’s) importance as an element to be revered and respected:
Munro may want to be showing her own serious conviction that the sun as a social or economic
force may be better in the long run than fossil fuels.
Another religious aspect of the sun, namely ‘hieros gamos’ or sacred marriage (a
religious rite in some pagan nature religions), is also conveyed, once again playfully and
mischievously, in the way that Edith, pretending to be Ken Boudreau, writes a delicate passage
to Johanna about the physical intimacy ‘he’ is imagining to be possible with Johanna: “I hate to
end this letter because it feels now as if I have my arms around you and I am talking to you
quietly in the dark privacy of our room….” (Munro, 40) The fiction that Edith invents becomes
true, of course, when Edith hears that Johanna has married Ken Boudreau and given birth to his
child. Tricksters are seen in mythology (religious myths) and literature, and Alice Munro tries to
situate the Trickster role within traditions where it arose by using religious references, disguised
as ordinary things: a television program or a romantic letter.

12. In this letter, the last one Edith writes pretending to be Ken Boudreau, there is another
marvelous and playful line in which Alice Munro, a ‘teasing’ Trickster, again challenges us to
look beyond the surface identity of Johanna:
I was in the boardinghouse and when I came to out of my fever, there was a lot
of teasing going on as to, who is this Johanna? (Munro, 40)
Yes, who is this Johanna?
Johanna is the sun.
Alice Munro. “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” (pages 3-54) in
Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage. Vintage Books. 2001. All page numbers
refer to this edition.