Half a Grapefruit by Alice Munro
"Half a Grapefruit" by Alice Munro is a poignant short story that delves into the complexities of identity, social class, and the struggle for self-definition. Set in the fictional town of Hanratty, the narrative follows Rose, a girl from a poor background, as she navigates the chasm between her impoverished upbringing in West Hanratty and the wealthier side of town. The story captures Rose's experiences at high school, where she grapples with feelings of inadequacy and the pressure to conform, particularly during a moment when she fabricates her breakfast to fit in with her peers.
Throughout the story, Rose contemplates her relationships with her family, including her crass stepmother Flo and her disillusioned father, who imposes traditional gender expectations on her. As she seeks to carve out a space for herself, Rose is often reminded of her origins through the taunts of classmates, highlighting the theme of social disparity. The narrative, though focused on a specific period of Rose's life, reflects her ongoing internal struggle and the lasting impact of her childhood experiences. Ultimately, "Half a Grapefruit" is a rich exploration of the tension between personal aspirations and societal expectations, making it a compelling read for those interested in themes of class, identity, and resilience.
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Subject Terms
Half a Grapefruit by Alice Munro
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1978 (collected in The Beggar Maid: Stories of Rose and Flo, 1979)
Type of work: Short story
The Work
“Half a Grapefruit” was first published in Redbook, then in the collection Who Do You Think You Are? in Canada, and the following year in the United States, with the volume being retitled The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose. It was thought that readers in the United States would not be familiar with the implication of the title’s question: a criticism of aiming above one’s origins. That is precisely one of the issues that “Half a Grapefruit” explores.
Even though the stories in Who Do You Think You Are? are each complete and self-contained, they can be read as a bildungsroman, chronicling the development of Rose as she grows up in poverty; spends a few years at a university; experiences marriage, rearing a family, and divorce; and finally reaches a measure of success as an actress and university professor. The stories are arranged chronologically, but each story is a blend of the past and the present. Thus, even though “Half a Grapefruit” focuses on Rose’s high school days, it concludes with a reference to Rose coming back to her hometown to make arrangements at a nursing home for her stepmother.
Rose, on her way to her high school, crosses the bridge that marks the boundary between her impoverished side of town, West Hanratty, and the more prosperous Hanratty. The only one from her West Hanratty grade-school class to attend high school, she keenly feels the difference between herself and the students from Hanratty. When the students are asked about their breakfasts, Rose lies, responding with “half a grapefruit” rather than “tea and porridge”—which would have marked her as a country girl. Her presumption is recognized, however, and for weeks, and even years, she hears, or imagines, people calling softly after her, “half a grapefruit.” It is the schoolmate’s equivalent of “Who do you think you are?”
Just who is Rose? She is not like her crass stepmother, Flo, who encourages the tales Rose brings home from school about lost Kotex or about one girl’s sexual encounters under a dark porch. Rose does not tell Flo about her own uncertainties or her dreams. Flo responds with tales about herself working in a glove factory at the age of fourteen. Nor is Rose entirely like her father. They share a love of books, but she lacks his discipline and ability to work with his hands. Worse, she is a “disgrace” to him because her bookish tendency does not correspond to her gender; in his eyes a woman “should be naïve intellectually, childlike, contemptuous of maps and long words and anything in books, full of charming jumbled notions, superstitions, traditional beliefs. Women’s minds are different,’” he tells Rose.
Rose will eventually leave this harsh life but will have to endure the taunts and insults of her classmates, her stepmother, her father, and the townspeople to do so. Insulating herself, she becomes an observer and a limited participant. She watches the decline of her father’s health with the detachment of a stranger; she is able to verbalize the word “cancer” when no other family member can. Yet she can never entirely leave her childhood behind. Before her father’s final trip to the hospital, “[S]he understood that he would never be with her more than at the present moment. The surprise to come was that he wouldn’t be with her less.” The past is always part of the present.
Bibliography
Blodgett, E. D. Alice Munro. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Carscallen, James. The Other Country: Patterns in the Writing of Alice Munro. Toronto: ECW Press. 1993.
Heble, Ajay. The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
“Munro, Alice.” In Canadian Writers Since 1960, First Series, edited by W. H. New. Volume 53 in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1986.
Rasporich, Beverly Jean. Dance of the Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1990.
Thacker, Robert. The Rest of the Story: Critical Essays on Alice Munro. Toronto: ECW Press, 1999.