Royal Beatings by Alice Munro
"Royal Beatings" is a short story by Alice Munro that explores the complexities of family dynamics and emotional tensions in a small town in central Canada during the Great Depression. The narrative centers on a young girl named Rose, who lives with her father, a furniture restorer, her stepmother Flo, and her younger half-brother, Brian. Their cramped living conditions and the struggles associated with poverty create an environment fraught with psychic tension.
As Rose navigates her turbulent relationship with Flo, their conflicts often culminate in a dramatic ritual known as the "royal beating," a cathartic release for the family that paradoxically oscillates between violence and a sense of emotional relief. The story captures the volatile emotions and intricate rituals that characterize their lives, illustrating how the family copes with their frustrations in a tightly wound coexistence.
Years later, as an adult living in Toronto, Rose reflects on her past and her evolving understanding of Flo's behavior, contrasting her childhood animosity with a newfound sympathy. The narrative delves into themes of conflict, memory, and the search for identity, offering a poignant exploration of familial love amid strife.
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Royal Beatings by Alice Munro
First published: 1977
Type of plot: Domestic realism
Time of work: The 1930's
Locale: West Hanratty, Ontario, Canada
Principal Characters:
Rose , a girl on the threshold of adolescenceFlo , her stepmotherHer father , a furniture restorer
The Story
Rose, a girl nearing adolescence, lives with her father, her stepmother, and her younger half brother, Brian, in a small town in the Ottawa Valley of central Canada. Her father is a scrupulous furniture restorer who works in a shed behind the family's home and storefront. His earnings barely suffice to provide the most minimal of family needs. Their house in West Hanratty, a section of the town where the social structure "ran from factory workers and foundry workers down to large improvident families of casual bootleggers and prostitutes and unsuccessful thieves," is too cramped to provide any private space. The central action of the story takes place during the Depression, a period recalled as one of legendary poverty, when the clash between the aspirations of the members of Rose's family and the limits of their lives has created a condition of psychic tension that can be relieved only by an explosion of emotion that permits the family to temporarily overcome the frustrations inherent in their situation.
Rose's relationship with her stepmother has changed from a long initial truce to a continuously simmering conflict. Her father remains vaguely distant most of the time, an inward man whose poetic range of mind is not disclosed to Rose until after his death. Rose sees the inhabitants of Hanratty and West Hanratty as figures of foolishness, pretense, and casual violence; their antics are a means for Flo to support her own shaky sense of self-esteem through scornful dismissal. The absence of any satisfactory social relationships, the minimal resources available for even modest purchases, and the family's restricted living space compress Rose's family into a tightly wound, tension-ridden cluster of pulsating neuroses. Their anxieties and desires have been concentrated into a number of rituals devised to express their emotional needs and to alleviate the pressures of their deepest conflicts. The beating is prominent among these, a special event shaped into a dramatic exercise in which each person has an acknowledged role. In Rose's eyes, it has been exalted into an event that is both savage and splendid in an attempt to validate its importance and accept its unpleasant aspects.
Rose and Flo engage in an ongoing quarrel that escalates into a verbal battle in which each attacks areas of particular sensitivity. Goaded beyond endurance, Flo calls Rose's father, who enters the arena from his workshed. His arrival raises the struggle to another level, the anticipation of a physical encounter arousing both trepidation and a curious kind of anticipatory excitement in everyone. Rapid interchanges of dialogue intensify the mood. The direct application of physical force is rendered with vivid language in an immediate present tense as Rose and her father seem to be caught in a flux of passion and confusion. Rose is driven into a frenzy of recrimination, Flo flutters about expressing concern, and Rose's father justifies his actions before lapsing into silence. The aftermath of the royal beating is revealed as an extraordinary state of calm for Rose, in which things take on a lovely simplicity. Flo tries to comfort Rose, and the whole family gathers for a dinner feeling a "convalescent indolence, not far off satisfaction." The ethos of strife has been transformed through a kind of catharsis. Rose's father, in a rare moment of expansive ease, tells the family about a sighting of the planet Venus. Flo performs an acrobatic feat. Brian, previously a silent spectator, cheers her on. In an unforeseen, but compelling and convincing, reversal, the episode ends with a current of happiness in the room following the release of enclosed psychic poisons in a torrent of wrath.
The story shifts abruptly four decades or so into the future. Rose, now living in Toronto, hears a centenarian, Hat Nettleton, interviewed on the radio. She realizes that he is one of three men who horsewhipped a town outcast years before her birth. This was one of Flo's anecdotes, and Rose realizes that Flo would have enjoyed hearing the interview. Flo, however, has been living in the same nursing facility as Nettleton for several years, completely removed from all social contact or conversation. The story closes with Rose in a reflective mood, her affectionate sympathy for Flo a strong contrast with her earlier animosity. Rose's perspective has widened considerably, and she has developed a much better understanding of Flo's behavior, and of her own.
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.