Lives of Girls and Women

Lives of Girls and Women is a short story cycle by Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson in 1971. All of the stories chronicle the life of a single character, Del Jordan, and the book has been characterized as a novel by some critics as a result. The cycle serves as a coming of age story for Del Jordan growing up first on the outskirts, and later in the centre, of the small, southern Ontario town of Jubilee. Del is portrayed as something of an outsider, unsatisfied with small town life though unwilling to acknowledge the similarities between herself and her mother who also seeks to expand her mind beyond the limited experiences of Jubilee. The cycle is often cited as concerning many feminist ideas and it is in this context that the text deals primarily with female characters, with only a few male figures playing important roles.




Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father's fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women-her mother, an agnostic, opinionted woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother's boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence.





Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro's unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.

Literatura Estrangeira