âPostcardâ is a short story by Canadian author Alice Munro, first published in Dance of the Happy Shades, Munroâs first short story collection (1968). This oneâs about a player, and his unwitting bit-on-the-side who thinks heâll eventually marry her.
Alongside âThanks For The Rideâ, the far more recent âAxisâ and various other stories by Alice Munro, âPostcardâ encapsulates the no-win situation in which young women found themselves during a time of great social change, which had a sexual revolution at its heart.
But this short story remains relevant to contemporary audiences. The West is going through another sexual (and gender) revolution right now. But due to the sorry state of last centuryâs womenâs rights, Helen of Munroâs 1960s short story is left economically as well as socially unmoored when she realises, far too late, that sheâs put all her eggs in the wrong basket.
Munro uses the metaphor of a postcard because there were no words to describe modern dating phenomena such as ghosting, simmering, icing and pocketing. This story remains relevant because such practices have, unfortunately, become more normative. Marriage expectations have also changed.
Using this story, letâs take a look at how.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
- The first person narrator of âPostcardâ is called Helen. Sheâs a working class woman who works as a shop assistant at Kingâs Department Store. As usual, Alice Munro has carefully created a dynamic which avoids a simplistic, binary dynamic weâve all seen hundreds of times before: an innocent woman is wronged by a no-good man. Munro avoids this simplicity by showing us that Helen has her own mercenary reasons for her interest in Clare. Sex with Clare is a bartering process. She has also (mal)absorbed some toxic ideas around women and dating to the point where readers can almost understand why Clare reaches the point where he considers Helen unmarriageable.
- Helen Louise (as sheâs known only at home) lives with her Momma on the outskirts of Jubilee, a small fictional Ontario town based on two towns from Alice Munroâs own life. Momma knows whatâs what. She tells Helen that âweâre as good as them [the MacQuarries]â, which alerts readers to the reality that Helen and her Momma are not considered as good as the MacQuarries. Alice Munro also slips in that Momma and daughter are isolated in this townârelatives live in faraway Winnipeg.
- Clare MacQuarrie is the name of Helenâs boyfriend (readers may associate this name with femininity). His body is slightly rounded. His round, balding head makes him a perpetual baby. Helen even uses the phrase ânaked as a babyâ. Heâs not a good lover. He doesnât expect participation from Helen. Worthy of note: Alice Munro has given Clare typically feminine attributes (a feminine name plus a soft roundness) which would ordinarily devalue him in the marriage market. Helen may think this too, at her peril, because 1960s white men hold a different hand of cards. (Again with the cards.) In fact, heâs better described as the manfriend, as heâs a full twelve years older than Clare. This places him almost in the dating demographic of Helenâs mother, and partly explains the flirtatious thing theyâve got going on between them. Snagging a wealthy-enough husband isnât just a snag for Helen, of course. It would mean social security for her mother, since thereâs no economic security for old, unmarried women otherwise.
âAndrogynousâ names, which may be given to both boys and girls, do exist (current examples include âCameronâ and âTylerâ), but they are marginal. A study which tracked their use in the US state of Illinois between 1916 and 1995 found that they never accounted for more than about 2% of all names. One reason for this was their instability: over time they tend to lose their androgynous quality. In the early 20th century âDanaâ, âMarionâ, Stacyâ and âTracyâ were all androgynous; but as they became more popular with the parents of daughters, they fell out of favour with the parents of sons. As a result, they have all become girlsâ names. There are no examples of a name moving in the other direction, and this reflects the basic feminist insight that gender isnât just a difference, itâs a hierarchy.
feminist linguist
- Porky (Isabelle) is Clareâs sister. Helen thinks (readers understand, correctly) that Porky doesnât like her. Porky probably knows whatâs going on. Perhaps she despises loose women like Helen. Or perhaps itâs simply easier to despise Helen than to sit with the dissonance required of her: She knows her brother is cheating on Helen, so itâs easier just to despise Helen. Clare, of course, tells Helen that Helen is imagining the animosity. (Today we call this gaslighting, but the film gaslighting goes all the way back to 1944, and Iâm in no doubt that Alice Munro has long understood the dynamics of coercive control.)
- Porky has joined the normative lifestyle by marrying someone called Harold.
- Willa Montgomery is the woman who cares for old Mrs MacQuarrie, who is paralyzed down one side after a stroke. Blink and you miss it, but Helen tells us she cares for the old woman by day and for Clare by night.
- Ted Forgie is an old beau of Helenâs who wrote her love letters and worked as a radio announcer. The reader, like Helen, will be left wondering if she shouldâve married him instead of waiting around for Clare. The character of Ted exists to show that romantic opportunities were there, but have since narrowed down to just Clare.
- Alma Stonehouse is the friend who tells Helen what Clare has been up to in Florida. A school teacher at the local public school, sheâs wary of men after separating from a man who continues to write her nasty letters. She came equipped with tranquilizers, or barbiturates known as âMotherâs Little Helpersâ back then. Alma says theyâre not very strongâ, suggesting sheâs built up somewhat of a resistance.
WHAT HAPPENS IN âPOSTCARDâ
Thereâs another Helen in this collection: the girl in âDay of the Butterflyâ, slightly ostracised from her school community because sheâs rural. Is this the same Helen but grown? Impossible to say. She could be, but Alice Munro re-uses names. Take the name âFloraâ, which Munro uses a number of times across different stories, including once for a horse.
If this is the same Helen, sheâs grown from a quietly caring and observant girl into a more strident woman. Her friend in primary school died of leukemia and Helen felt helpless at the time, affected in a way other children didnât seem to be. Helen has since made other woman friends, but she remains on the outskirts of townâs, letâs say, clubbable members.
She must be in her early thirties by now. And still not married. Mm-ahh. A social no-no for women. All the Good Men were snapped up a decade ago. Donât you know that even if youâre lucky enough to attend a university, your main job as woman is securing a husband? You should have at least a couple of children by the time you hit the big three-oh. Your looks are on the downhill slide.
KINGâS DEPARTMENT STORE AS FORESHADOWING
Alice Munro opens with a surprisingly detailed description of Kingâs Department Store, where sheâs been working ever since she left school. On the surface, all of this detail may seem superfluous, but by describing the shift that was happening in the change from personalised grocery stores (with grocers who knew everybody) to impersonal stores owned by town-outsiders, she is telling the story of another cultural shift: the parallel shift that was happening in dating. Before, Clare wouldnât have got away with such poor behaviour in the small town of Jubilee, because everyone knew each other and had tabs on each other as well. But the culture has shifted. Itâs now possible for wealthy people to fly off to Florida and get away with all sorts, like the equivalent of a store owner who you never see.
Ironically, Helen works in the childrenâs section of this department store, selling clothes to mothers with no real prospect of ever becoming a mother herself.
Unironically, the clothing department is upstairs. Helen is soon revealed to have been Clareâs archetypal Woman Upstairs (or mad woman in the attic), and the story ends on a display of madnessâperceived as âcrazyâ because of her gender, but what is in reality a cathartic and necessary outworking of rage.
THE POST OF POSTCARD
Note that the âpostâ in âpostcardâ does double duty: Helen is past (post) the time she is expected to be settled down. The break-up tragedy of this story is more tragic given the era. This isnât your ordinary (contemporary) dumping.
âPostâ means âafterâ in a general sense, and so readers are encouraged to linger on what will happen to Helen after. Of course, sheâs already living in the âafter-timesâ, only now she knows it.
Helen has not missed the marriage memo. She knows full well that sheâs supposed to have snagged a steady man years ago. However, she kind of has? All through her twenties sheâs rested safe in the embrace of her man, who totally plans to marry her, but only once his old mum kicks the bucket.
HELEN THE GHOSTED GHOST
In the interim, Helen must stay on the down-low. She can visit Clare at his house (where he still lives with his elderly mother), but Helen must exist as a ghost. The mother canât know sheâs there. Note how Alice Munro has created a ghost of a character in line with modern parlance, which also uses the term âghostingâ to describe cutting someone off without communication.
WHY WOULD CLARE BUY THE COW?
Helenâs own mother isnât too happy with her daughterâs romantic arrangement. Mommaâs of the âwhy would he buy the cow when heâs getting all the milkâ variety.
âOnce a man loses his respect for a girl, he is apt to get tired of her.â
âWhat do you mean by that, Momma?â
âIf you donât know am I supposed to tell you?â
âPostcardâ by Alice Munro
Momma has internalised the misogyny, but is she wrong?
Turns out no! Momma was right about the guy, who does a despicable thing by any measure. While away on holiday in Florida Clare sends Helen a postcard telling her heâs having a wonderful time, when in fact heâs marrying some other woman.
Itâs almost worse that he sent her a postcard and still didnât tell her. Ghosting would be a mercy. This is some heavily extended breadcrumbing. (See below.)
Note that even Helenâs mother hasnât been straight with her own daughter. âAm I supposed to tell you?â All of these ârulesâ around dating and marriage are unwritten. The mother must have assumed Helen had absorbed them perfectly. In fact, Alice Munro gives readers enough to realise that Helen did not, in fact, understand the extent to which she was giving away more and more her good cards with every passing year.
Later, as the story draws to a close:
All the houses in darkness, the streets black, the yards pale with the last snow. It seemed to me that in every one of those houses lived people who knew something I didnât.
âPostcardâ by Alice Munro
What is the âsomethingâ Helen didnât know? Not just the fact that Clare was two-timing her. She didnât fully understand that her time was running out. She didnât understand that the rules are different for women, especially poor women.
Her other main flaw? Thinking herself too worthy. Ironically, the mother has been instilling in Helen that the pair of them are worthy. These conflicting messages having gotten Helen into this mess. Even worse? Years earlier, Momma warned Helen off a decent romantic prospect.
CLAREâS DESPICABLE ACT
Rather than tell Helen about his marriage to another random woman who Helenâs never met, Clare just lets her find out about it naturally, in the worst possible way: His marriage is announced in the local newspaper. Smalltown humiliation at its peak. Helenâs girlfriends know about the marriage before Helen does.
Then the entire town knows. Helen feels everybody is up in her business. It is a humiliation having to go to work, where she must face nosy customers. She feels their silent judgement, and also looks down her nose at an older woman who was jilted (just like she was), married late and was left once again. Helen is looking at her very own future when she looks at Mrs. Kress.
Her best friend rushes round to share the news and offer sisterly consolation.
Helen is, understandably, ropable. Sheâs been strung (roped?) along for a decade. For a man, to be at square one on the marriage market in oneâs early thirties is no big whoop. His virility lasts much longer. But for Helen, her newly single status means a completely different life trajectory. Sheâs now a spinster. Whatâs more, sheâs not even a virgin spinster. Plus she has no family money. Her prospects of leading a normative life as a wife and mother are next to nil.
Munro exhibits a tense preoccupation with women who are toyed with by men of meansââthose chosen first and then rejected for a more âsuitableâ mate, or subjected to seductive acts of courtship that never come to fruition. These women always face a world in which they have little power to direct their fates, but persist with a quiet strength that subvertsââsometimes successfully and sometimes notââthe tragedy of their cultural and economic relegation.
from a consumer review, subsequently mentioning âFriend of My Youthâ as an example
Hereâs an excerpt from a far more recent story, showing that this attitude regarding women and age-of-marriage is far from dead, even if we dare not speak of it out loud. The expectation hasnât died across all cultural groups:
My twenties were spent in school, and a girl in her twenties is said to be in her prime. After that decade, all is lost. They must mean looks, because what could a female brain be worth, and how long could one last?
Being in school often felt like a race. I was told to grab time and if I didnâtâÂthat is, reach out the window and pull time in like a messenger doveâÂsomeone else in another car would. The road was full of cars, limousines, and Priuses, but there were a limited number of doves. With this image in mind, I can no longer ride in a vehicle with the windows down. Inevitably I will look for the dove and offer my hand out to be cut off.
the opening to Joan Is Okay, a 2023 novel by Weike Wang
WHY DID CLARE DO WHAT HE DID?
The reader is left to conjecture why Clare would do such a thing to Helen. For that, an understanding social context is important.
Alice Munro has given us enough information to deduce that part of the reason he wonât marry Helen is fiscal. Sheâs of a lower class than him. Her willingness to have sex with Clare before marriage only proves his misogynistic point. The double standard applied to women is in fact a double bind, which means Helen canât win. Alice Munro reminds us of the double standard when Clare writes on his postcard, âBe a good girl,â which has more enraging resonance after some delayed decoding.
The double bind: Leaving aside the reality that most adult women require partnered sex as a fairly basic need, this man wouldnât be interested in âdatingâ Helen if she werenât having sex with him, and he isnât interested in marrying Helen precisely because she is.
Needless to say, thereâs also a strict mid-century gender hierarchy at play, in which men hold the cards. Ultimately, men do the choosing, especially after a gender imbalance exacerbated by postwar loss of soldiers, and the glorification of virile masculinity.
But the West was, at the same time, also going through a sexual revolution which encouraged disposability around sex:
[Dance of the Happy Shades] may at first glance appear to be out of step with its time. After all, this was the year of the May events in Paris, student uprisings across Europe, massive anti-Vietnam war protests on both sides of the Atlantic. In music, Jimi Hendrix spent months reworking Bob Dylanâs bleakly minimalist All Along the Watchtower into his stunning, apocalyptic version of the end of things, and everywhere Dylanâs prescient words about the overthrow of the old orderââin politics, culture, societyââseemed to be acquiring the force of prophecy. From Munroâs home country of Canada Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young were all emerging at this time.
a reader review at The Short Review
This âdisposabilityâ proved a massive problem when basic womenâs rights were yet to be won. Disposable sex partners ultimately meant disposable women. This is the social environment Alice Munro explores. If we read âThe Peace of Utrechtâ, another story in the same collection, the sister who returns from the big smoke to Alice Munroâs fictional small town of Jubilee is surprised to find that the adults who stayed in this rural backwater of a town have, surprisingly, adopted far more big city attitudes and fashions than the narrator had expected. We can deduce, therefore, that young adults of Jubilee, where Helen of this story also lives, are likewise influenced by the Swinging Sixties, more typically associated with cities.
Also, Clare was a man of his era. No excuse, just fact. Everyone in the postwar era, not just men, had been bombarded with war propaganda such as the following:
Sexually active women were a locus of disgust. Nay, any woman straight men found attractive could serve as a locus of disgust, whether she looked like the girl next door (above right), or like a winking, ostentatiously-hatted, hair-dyed vixen (above left). Women were disgusting even as men continued to feel attraction for them. In fact, disgust is oftentimes part of the attraction. Acculturation can make it so.
So that explains why Clare might find Helen disgusting and unworthy of marriage. He finds her attractive, plus sheâs having sex with him. But why wouldnât he at least tell Helen himself, about his marriage?
Again, we can easily find wartime propaganda which teaches that women, as a species, arenât really worthy of âtelling thingsâ. Whatever targeted messages were distributed during the warâostensibly regarding the specific type of woman known as honey trap spiesâworked a charm. Why would a man trust any woman, for that matter? Especially one who he finds sexually attractive. Any woman might be a âtrapâ, if not because sheâs a spy, then definitely because she might âget herselfâ pregnant. That would trap him into marriage. (Alice Munro explores the cultural forces around this in âThanks for the Rideâ. The mother of this story courts the eligible bachelor in the same way the mother of âThanks for the Rideâ courts the 18-year-old virgin.
If a man was having sex with a hot woman and they werenât married, posters such as the one below taught him well: he had carte blanche to TELL HER NOTHING!
Then thereâs the basic fact of Clareâs sexual entitlement. Heâs no doubt hoping to marry the other woman and keep Helen as his bit on the side. Importantly, he has never promised marriage to Helen. Helen feels simply that âit is understoodâ.
Helen has made a grave error: She perceives herself as a worthy woman, when the world does not perceive her that way.
Eventually, Clare does ask Helen to marry him, but in hindsight this feels like part of their game. Alice Munro may also be commenting on another ironic dark side of enforced chastity for women. Helen seems to have absorbed the cultural script that to secure a man you keep him chasing. But sheâs got it a tiny bit wrong. Keep him chasing you for sex. Donât give him the sex and keep him chasing you for marriage.
The other thing sheâs got a bit wrong: By waiting a few years before bringing the topic of marriage up again, sheâs already past her use-by date. This appears to be Munro commenting on the ridiculously tiny sliver which is the young womanâs marriageability window. Mess around at your peril.
There are numerous rules around ages, mostly unspoken. Momma was against Helen seeing Ted Forgie because he was too old for her at the age of 24. She does not apply this standard to Clare, we deduce, because a man of great means (someone who goes to an exotic place for vacation every year) can do what he likes whenever he likes.
THE ENDING
As the story ends, Helen is full of passion. Mostly rage. But the opposite of anger is indifference. Her attraction to Porky remains. Readers are left to wonder if Helen will choose to go along with Porkyâs plan, which is continued sexual access to loose-girl Helen while married to the future mother of his children.
Why does Alice Munro bring out the local policeman, to tell Helen off for being a public disturbance?
My take: The policeman serves as The Village Voice. This is exactly how people, in general, will feel about Helen, denied the right to anger because she made the Wrong Choice. She shouldâve stayed a virgin until marriage.
Itâs also significant that the policeman is younger than Helen. This reminds readers of Helenâs age. Sheâs older in years than the night constable who is taking on a patriarchal tone with her. Even his name, âBuddyâ, infantilizes him. To top it all off, sheâs being chastised by a kid she used to teach in Sunday school. (Even Buddyâs last name, Shields, feels symbolic. Buddy is the self-designated patriarch, shielding Helen from further humiliation.)
Remember how Clare, too, was infantilized, with his roundness, his baldness, his naked-as-a-baby-ness? Something significant is being said here about the perpetual right of men to remain in suspended childhood. Buddy the night constable, like Clare in his postcard, tells Helen to be a âgood girlâ. Men are at once afforded the privilege of remaining babies while simultaneously drawing down on their assumed authority, afforded by the gender hierarchy we call patriarchy.
In contrast, women age fast, faster than Helen ever realised because no one ever said the quiet part out loud. Yet old women garner none of the authority which come to men as men age. This was Helenâs realisation. This is why she rages. Reclaiming a final bit of girlhood, she tries to draw Clare out of his marital nest by yelling at him an old playground taunt, partly improvised:
Clare MacQuarrie for nuts-in-May If he don't come out we'll pull-him-away!
THE STORY WITHIN-A-STORY
Buddy the young night constable gets into Helenâs small car, gifted to her by Buddy two Christmases ago, and drives her home (without her permission). As they drive he tells her a story about another philandering couple who he helped out of a tight spot just recently. Comically, he gives Helen all the information she would need to know exactly who it is. This is a very small town, clearly, and everyone has been shown to be all up in everyone elseâs business. He means Helen to bury the shame of her dumping like everybody else.
So Helen has learnt something else: There are many sordid secrets in this small town, many snails under the leaf, or âmould under the linoleumâ, as may be more fitting for an Alice Munro story.
And so the story ends on a note of universality. This is the fictional town of Jubilee, but could apply to any community anywhere: Many private tragedies, happening behind closed doors, where people transgress the unwritten rules which somehow everyone is supposed to know the ins-and-outs of.
GHOSTING, SIMMERING AND ICING: A MODERN TAKE ON A VERY OLD DYNAMIC
The word âghostingâ is fairly well established in 2023, especially after well-known psychotherapist Esther Perel wrote about it. (On Perelâs website you can find a Relationship Accountability Spectrum.)
What about âsimmeringâ and âicingâ? These are slightly different out-workings of the same thing. Instead of cutting you off completely, someone keeps you in limbo:
SIMMERING: âIâm really busy, but letâs stay in touch. See how things go.â This way I can maintain the freedom of a single life, but I also donât have to bear the possibility of winding up completely alone. Iâm afraid of being alone, but also I donât have the guts to end things. I canât be with you, canât be without you.
ICING: âHey! Iâll be really busy (with work/family) for the next three months, but donât disappear on me! I really like you.â Stay in the background. That way, when the âiceâ melts, when the season changes I may come back. Or I may not. Iâm keeping my options open. Icing is also known as BENCHING, making use of sports terminology. Someone is keeping you âon the benchâ while they try out other dating options.
POCKETING: When a newish partner avoids introducing you to any of their friends and family, or announce your relationship on social media. This could mean a number of things. If they donât announce the relationship on social media, this could simply mean theyâre not much on social media, they are a private person in general, or they like to keep their private life offline. However, if theyâre also refusing to introduce you to the closest people in their life, this can be cause for concern. Australiaâs ABC dating podcast âThe Hookupâ has an episode on this, including what to do if you realise youâre being pocketed. Helen of âPostcardâ hasnât been pocketed. The entire town knew that she was Clareâs girl, or one of them. They ate together at the Queenâs Hotel and whatnot. Helen met his sister and brother-in-law.
BREADCRUMBING: Flirting with someone with no intention of starting any sort of committed relationship. Today breadcrumbing is very easy to do because we can just use our phones to do it. Importantly, you know youâre being simmered, iced or breadcrumbed because the unavailable person will make noises about meeting up âsometimeâ, but gives no specifics regarding date or time.
As Esther Perel explains, these âdating techniquesâ may feel fine for the person putting another on the simmer, or keeping them in their pocket, but for the object of (in)attention, any anticipation and excitement very soon morphs into horrible anxiety.
Perel has a phrase to describe this state of mind: stable ambiguity. Being on the receiving end of such behaviours is highly destabilising. We see this happen to the main character of âPostcardâ, as Alice Munro gives a woman a (very loud) emotional breakdown at the end, then leaves her in a state of ambiguity: She canât stand this guy, but also wants to be with him.
Stable ambiguity is just ambiguous enough that you end up becoming very destabilised, actually.
Esther Perel
The terms to describe such behaviours were coined after the proliferation of online dating. No coincidence there. As Alice Munroâs 1960s short story illuminates, simmering, icing and ghosting are as old as the hills, but there is now a jarring switch between, say, 250 text messages per day, to absolutely stone cold nothing.
Before technology allowed for constant and effortless communication, dating tended to progress much more slowly. Letâs go back quite a ways, and take an example from Jane Austenâs Pride and Prejudice. The dating rules of that social milieu were circumscribed, strict and widely understood:
- Your father visits the romantic prospect to say hello and let him know he has an eligible daughter (or several!)
- The romantic prospect returns the visit, staying no more than 15 minutes. (In Pride and Prejudice it means something that Mr Bennet spends only 10 minutes with Bingleyââhe has cut the visit short because he has no real interest in his daughtersâ economic/marriage stability.)
- Visits thereafter may happen in public such as at the local assembly hall.
- In private, the young women are chaperoned until such a time as the man proposes (and even then, your mother probably has her ear pressed to the door).
Pride and Prejudice does contain a famous literary example of ghosting. Bingley ghosts Jane. But of course it wasnât called that at the time, and wasnât usual. Most people married within their own local area, and disappearing forever wasnât even an option. Imagine how much worse it would have been for Jane if sheâd been getting 250 texts a day from Bingley. As she tells Lizzie in private, the pair of them didnât exactly have a contract. They barely spent any time together before Bingley left Longbourn at Darcyâs recommendation.
When Alice Munro published Postcard several hundred years later, there was still no widely-understood word to describe the phenomenon of âghostingâ, but I believe this entire story is about that. Munro uses a postcard as a metaphor for a type of (mis)communication in which one partner (often a woman) makes do with crumbsââas much as fits on the back of a postcard (in contrast to the deeper communication offered by, say, a letter inside an envelope). A postcard has no privacy. It can be read by anyone. Therefore, the postcard symbol also offers the illusion of transparency. The man who sent it is anything but transparent.
Ghosting, simmering and icing doesnât just happen within the context of romantic and sexual relationships, but is part of a wider cultural change in how we interact:
And then youâve got Gen X. They will have made the plans well in advance. And they would have also checked in a couple of days before, just to make sure the plans are definitely still happening. You see, Gen X are the forgotten generation. And theyâre so scarred by this title they would have assumed youâd forgotten, not only about the plans but about their very existence.
Millennials will have hoped the plans wouldâve been cancelled. Thereâs no reason a millennial will actually want to come to your house. They will arrive late, but they will text you to say theyâre on their way. Just, theyâre about to get into the shower. And a millennial will never knock on your door. Youâll just get a text saying either âhereâ or âoutsideâ. And thatâs your cue to go and let them in.
Similarly, Gen Z will never actually knock. But chances are they wonât have to. They wouldâve been documenting the entire journey from their house to yours, maybe even on Facetime using this angle [pans skyward] as they go along, for some reason. Either that or theyâll just send a picture of your front door or a selfie of them outside it. And again, just like the millennial, thatâs your cue to go and rescue them from the outside world.
Capstone > Cornerstone Model of Relationships
Ester Perel helpfully explains the cultural shift which was happening just as Alice Munro published âPostcardâ.
A cultural shift happened in romantic and married relationships between Baby Boomers and Gen X. This change happened during the late 1960s and continued gradually through the 1970s.
This change in dating happened in tandem with a move towards individualism, which is inextricably tied to capitalism. Capitalism is inextricably tied to choice and consumerism. When we are inundated with choice, happiness can start to feel like an elusive pursuit. How will we know when weâre happy enough? We apply this thinking to our (potential) partnerships.
In the West, for many decades leading up to the late 1960s, people believed that a marriage made you whole. But after this 1960s cultural change, Westerners started to believe that it was the individualâs responsibility to âbecome wholeâ before seeking out a romantic relationship.
This shift is known as the change from the Cornerstone Model to the Capstone Model.
THE OLD CORNERSTONE MODEL
- In the early 1960s, 80% of people in their twenties were in a long-term relationship, if not married. (Today itâs 20%.)
- If you meet someone in your late teens or early twenties, you must grow together to stay together.
- When crisis happens, you overcome it together. This is considered a crucial part of building a strong long-term relationship.
- This is a Western, individualistic way of thinking. In countries like Japan, the cornerstone model endures.
- Advantages: This way of thinking avoids the trap of believing thereâs someone better just around the corner because no one else in the world has built history and experiences with you.
- Disadvantages: If the relationship does dissolve, the people involved cannot draw on the experience of being alone as an adult. Simply being alone can be a terrifying thought.
THE NEW CAPSTONE MODEL
- According to a popular modern way of thinking about relationships, people plan to meet their longterm partner in their late 20s or early 30s.
- By this point, each partner will have already worked on building their identity. They know who they are and what they need from another person.
- Also, by working on themselves, they have made themselves worthy of love.
- When someone chooses you, that is considered a recognition of how well you have done.
- It is thought that when people meet in their late twenties, early thirties, they are meeting each other at their âmost authenticâ, which gives the partners more likelihood of being happy together long term.
- Dating is now an individualistic project.
- Now, relationships are not about growing together but about preserving the âauthenticâ self one brought into the relationship.
- Advantages: If a relationship does dissolve, each partner in a capstone model is better equipped to be alone outside a romantic partnership.
- Disadvantages: Partners can be less prepared to work things through. Used to working alone, on themselves, it can be easier to leave a relationship than to compromise. In fact, compromise may be avoided as itâs seen as a loss of âauthentic selfâ, which we idealise in this new model. And people who partner in their late twenties may have spent over a decade moving from one partner to the next. Thereâs this niggling feeling thereâs someone more suitable out there for you.
WHAT DID THIS SHIFT MEAN FOR WOMEN LIKE THIS?
Helen is scissored between two cultural shifts. The man sheâs been seeing has taken his sweet time partnering up, and is almost a caricature of a man who keeps his options open all through his 20s and early 30s until such time as he is no longer so marketable, and heâs about to move into a demographic which deems him less attractive to women of peak-fertile age.
Meanwhile, cultural attitudes towards women who have an equal amount of sex before marriageââi.e. towards grown-arse women in their twenties and early thirties who dare to have a partnered sex lifeââremain unchanged.
The shift from the Cornerstone Model to the Capstone Model happened before the shift in morality which allowed unmarried women to have sex without being labelled as dirty, disgusting and disposable.
If anyone continues to assert that Alice Munro is not a feminist writer, Iâll⌠I donât know what Iâll do. Write a sternly worded blog post, I suppose. Or maybe, like the woman in this story, a cathartic scream will suffice.
FURTHER RESOURCES
Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the Worldâs First Social Network
For this episode, I met historian and writer Dr. Lydia Pyne. She is author of Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the Worldâs First Social Network (Reaktion, 2021). Postcards is a global exploration of postcards as artifacts at the intersection of history, science, technology, art, and culture. Postcards are usually associated with banal holiday pleasantries, but they are made possible by sophisticated industries and institutions, from printers to postal services. When they were invented, postcards established what is now taken for granted in modern times: the ability to send and receive messages around the world easily and inexpensively.
Fundamentally they are about creating personal connectionsâlinks between people, places, and beliefs. Lydia Pyne examines postcards on a global scale, to understand them as artifacts that are at the intersection of history, science, technology, art, and culture. In doing so, she shows how postcards were the first global social network and also, here in the twenty-first century, how postcards are not yet extinct.
New Books Network
DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES (1968)
- âWalker Brothers Cowboyâ â A woman looks back at her 1930s childhood. Her family has 2 or 3 months earlier lost the family fox farm and moved to a small town on the edge of Lake Huron, where the father has started a new job as a door-to-door salesman. Meanwhile, the mother sinks into a depressive state. One day, the father takes the narrator and her younger brother on a ride, where he visits an old friend/lover. The daughter learns that her father had another sort of life once.
- âThe Shining Housesâ â In a new neighbourhood, many houses have been built next to an old one. The owner of the older house, Mrs. Fullerton, does not take care of her property to the extent that the owners of the new houses would like. They conspire to get rid of the old poultry-farming witch. Only our narrator seems conflicted.
- âImagesâ â A little girl is the narrator of this double character study: A second cousin who came to take care of the household while her own mother was sick, and a man with a psychotic mental illness who lived alone in the woods. After meeting the man in the woods, the little girl learns not to be afraid of the woman who has infiltrated the household to take care of them all.
- âThanks for the Rideâ â This story is written with the viewpoint character of a young man. He has just finished school and is out with his older cousin with the purpose of losing his virginity. Together they pick up some âlooseâ girls. The whole experience is perfunctory and defamiliarizing.
- âThe Officeâ â A housewife decides to improve her life by carving out some time for herself to pursue her passion of writing. So she rents a room above a hair salon and drugstore. But the landlord wonât leave her in peace, deeming her time his.
- âAn Ounce of Cureâ â A young teenager is pining after a boy who dumped her months ago for another girl. She can barely think of anything else. One night she is babysitting when she spies three bottles of liquor on the bench. She accidentally gets very drunk and very caught out. Her reputation is ruined. But as an older woman looking back on this time, she is glad it happened.
- âThe Time of Deathâ â A mother who lives in one of the squalid cottages on the edge of town has lost a child in a terrible accident. The village gathers round, but how genuine are they in their grief?
- âDay of the Butterflyâ â Two girls at a primary school are ostracised. One is the narrator, now grown, ostracised for being an out-of-towner who doesnât wear the right clothes. The other is more ostracised still, because her parents are immigrants, because she smells like rotting fruit, and because her brother needs her to accompany him to the toilet. When this girl is dying in hospital from child leukemia, the young narrator is filled with inexplicable grief. It is now too late to be a real friend to this outcast, and anything she does in kindness will feel empty and pointless.
- âBoys and Girlsâ â An outdoorsy farm girl loves helping her father on the fox farm but realises sheâll very soon be required to go indoors to help her mother with domestic work. In contrast, her younger brother, far less conscientious, will be allowed to stay outside and work with the animals, enfolded and welcomed into the masculine world.
- âPostcardâ
- âRed Dressâ1946â â A thirteen-year-old girlâs first ball. Her mother sews a red dress with a princess neckline. Suddenly she looks much older. She barely recognises herself in the mirror, and longs for childhood again. Almost all the girls around her are obsessively interested in boys. Everyone, that is, except one other girl who says she despises boys, and plans to support herself by working as a P.E. teacher. But by aligning herself with this queer girl, our thirteen-year-old risks much. What will she do? Will she take up the offer of friendship?
- âSunday Afternoonâ â Seventeen-year-old Alva has recently finished high school and started working as a maid for the mega-wealthy Gannetts. Today they are hosting a party at their mansion and Alva must navigate a delicate social situation: They want her to feel part of the family, but what does that mean, exactly, when youâre actually the paid help? Alva must also navigate the men who enter the house, several of whom express sexual interest in her. This isnât your run-of-the-mill, predictable young-woman-is-seduced storyline, but Alice Munro keeps readers in audience superior position as we watch with bated breath what happens to Alva in this big, lonely island of a house. Weâre left to deduce most of it.
- âA Trip to the Coastâ â An eleven-year-old girl called May lives with her mother and grandmother (mostly her grandmother) in a general store in a three-house township. Thereâs nothing to do in this one horse town. But today sheâs looking forward to same-age company. However, the âcompanyâ is a total let-down, and so her grandmother, for the first time ever, suggests the two of them take a trip to the coast. But then another visitor comes. A customer who declares himself an amateur hypnotist. This story ends on a cliff hanger, and I donât believe Munro has given us enough of a symbolic layer to fill in the gaps for ourselves. I believe weâre supposed to feel exactly as unmoored as eleven-year-old May, waiting out front of the store in the rain.
- âThe Peace of Utrechtâ â Numerous critics and scholars consider this story the jewel of the crown of Munroâs first collection. Considering that, itâs baffling why it doesnât make it into more Selected and Collection volumes. Itâs certainly the most overtly personal of Munroâs early stories, and she has said in interview that this one changed the way she wrote. Until writing âThe Peace of Utrechtâ sheâd written to be a writer. Now she wrote because she knew only she could write this story. The biographical relevancy: young Alice Munro cared for her mother over many years as her mother lived, then died, with Parkinsonâs disease.
- âDance of the Happy Shadesâ â An emotionally astute and very observant adolescent girl is required to accompany her mother to an embarrassing recital with the elderly, unfortunate-looking spinster teacher whose spinster sister is recently bedridden due to a stroke. The story is told via the slightly baffled viewpoint of the girl, who is required to recite a tune on the piano at these excruciating annual events.
REFERENCES
- Note To Self podcast: Ghosting, Simmering and Icing with Esther Perel