Prue by Alice Munro
"Prue" is a short story by Alice Munro that explores the life of a woman named Prue, who transitions from being a dining room hostess in British Columbia to a clerk in Toronto. Now divorced with grown children, Prue becomes involved with Gordon, a wealthy neurologist. Their relationship is marked by its on-and-off nature, and when Gordon reveals he has a young lover, he expresses a desire to eventually return to Prue. While she initially responds with humor and shares the situation as a lighthearted tale with friends, Prue harbors deeper feelings of disillusionment. The story captures her complexity as she secretly takes one of Gordon's cufflinks, storing it among other personal mementos in a tobacco tin—a symbol of her hidden emotions and the intangible aspects of her life. Through her anecdotes and humor, Prue navigates the challenges of her relationships and the realities of her emotional landscape, painting a nuanced portrait of a woman faced with the intricacies of love and longing. This narrative invites readers to reflect on the ways individuals cope with their experiences and the things they choose to keep close to their hearts.
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Subject Terms
Prue by Alice Munro
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1981 (collected in The Moons of Jupiter, 1982)
Type of work: Short story
The Work
Only five pages long, “Prue” is a brief history of a pleasant, good-humored woman, once a dining room hostess in British Columbia and presently a Toronto clerk. Divorced and with grown children when she met Gordon, a wealthy neurologist, she lived with him off and on before he and his wife finally divorced. One evening Gordon admits he has acquired a jealous young lover with whom he is infatuated, but he wants to return to Prue in a few years and marry her. Prue treats this development as a good joke with which to regale her friends.
What she does not tell them is that the next morning she steals one of Gordon’s gold and amber cufflinks, which she stores secretly with other mementos in a tobacco tin which her children once gave her. Such souvenirs, which are neither expensive nor worthless, she simply takes, perhaps as something tangible to hold for herself. Prue reveals herself as a woman familiar with disillusion and empty relationships, which she deflects by anecdotes and humor even as she appears to move on. The unspoken truth of her emotions is withheld, concealed like the objects she keeps in the tin.
Bibliography
Franzen, Jonathan. “Alice’s Wonderland.” The New York Times Book Review, November 14, 2004, 1, 14-16.
Howells, Coral Ann. Alice Munro. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1998.
McCulloch, Jeanne, and Mona Simpson. “The Art of Fiction CXXXVII.” Paris Review 131 (Summer, 1994): 226-264.
Moore, Lorrie. “Leave Them and Love Them.” The Atlantic Monthly 294, no. 5 (December, 2004): 125.
Munro, Sheila. Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up with Alice Munro. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001.
Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. Alice Munro: A Double Life. Toronto: ECW Press, 1992.
Simpson, Mona. “A Quiet Genius.” The Atlantic Monthly 288, no. 5 (December, 2001): 126.