On reading The Bear Came Over the Mountain, by Alice Munro
Hopeful or cynical?
The Bear Came Over the Mountain was the story I had intended to write about last month in May, before I heard of Alice Munro’s passing. May is my birthday month and I thought it would be nice to mark that here in a small way by returning to writing about an Alice Munro story, since I had been focusing on other short story writers here for a while. And then of course, she passed away.
In the aftermath of her death, there have been countless news pieces, including lots of lists of the ‘best Alice Munro short stories.’ I have seen The Bear Came Over the Mountain in at least two of these such lists, and I suppose if you read Alice Munro anyway then you’ll also already know this story anyway because it is impossible not to, given it is so well known . But that’s not why I’m choosing it necessarily - I don’t know that I would say it’s my absolute favourite story she’d ever written, because I genuinely have to say, I don’t know which one is (and I have not read them all, I have a long way to go).
But I had wanted to share my thoughts on The Bear Came Over the Mountain because for some reason, several weeks before her death, I found myself reaching for it and reading it twice. The reason I reached for it was because for some months (several, long months) I have been struggling, with writing and self-comparison and lack of confidence and all of those things, and when I feel fragile and down on my luck like this, I find it very hard indeed to read anything at all super contemporary, such and such latest book that everyone is talking about because, yes, I suppose there is a little bit of me that is quite immature and wishes it were my latest book people were talking about instead.
When I feel like this, there’s really only one thing that I want to read, that makes me feel better, and that’s usually a Munro story, because each one is somehow so immersive, so transportive, so wise without being at all showy or experimental or overly fashionable, that when I am feeling down about my writing not being noticed or fan-girled about on social media, I am reminded that that is not at all what matters anyway. Her stories sort of speak to me in a trance, and also take me away some place, and they feel meditative, even when horrible or sad things happen in the plot line. I am so transfixed, and I believe in the stories so completely, that by the end, I no longer remember what it was that was troubling me and instead it is as if I have given myself over entirely to story, to language, to characters; and I feel what they feel. And when that feeling as a reader passes, I then think about myself as a writer, and rather than experiencing any sense of comparison (god forbid), I am simply left wanting to do better. To try and be a better writer. I am reminded to keep my head down, and do what I do best, without being distracted by what other people may or may not say.
And so it was with The Bear Came Over the Mountain. This story was a solace to me this spring and comforted me through a real patch of despair, even though it is weird to describe it as a comfort because it is desperately sad in many ways. It made me feel something deeply, and that sense of feeling, of being reminded that there is depth of emotion to be expressed, is a comfort to me, if that makes sense. I hope that by sharing my thoughts on it, no matter how unacademic, and showing how it made me feel, it might also be a solace of sorts to anyone else who is needing it, for whatever reason; anyone who also needs to remember what it is to feel.
You can find it in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (it is perhaps significantly the last story) and you can also read it online in the New Yorker.
First; a synopsis (or a refresher, if you have already read it):
This story introduces us to Grant and Fiona who have been married for years. In her youth Fiona was different to other young women who were all in sororities; she made fun, made light of things, zipped around in a little car. Fiona proposed to Grant on the beach one cold bright day. He said yes. ‘He wanted never to be away from her.’
And then, in true Munro style, we skip forward many decades and now both Grant and Fiona are in their 70s. Fiona has dementia and Grant is preparing to take her to Meadowlake, a residential home. It pains Grant to leave her there - ‘It was all he could do not to turn around and drive home’ - but he is told he can’t visit her for the first month, because she needs to settle in. It’s upsetting for Grant too. He stops answering the phone, hopes that people will think maybe they have gone on holiday.
When finally the month is up, he goes to visit Fiona and finds her dementia has worsened. ‘Does she even know who I am?’ Grant asks a nurse. Overtime, the nurses cut her hair and Fiona starts wearing other people’s clothes so that she doesn’t look at all like Fiona to him but she herself doesn’t seem to mind. And then he discovers that Fiona is in a sort of flirtation, a mild romance, with another inpatient, a man called Aubrey. Grant can’t stand Aubrey, but Aubrey is only here on temporary care so that his wife could take a holiday.
Then after showing Grant as this devoted husband, there is a flashback in which we learn Grant isn’t perhaps as devoted as he seems; he had many affairs throughout his marriage, one of which almost cost him his job as a professor at university.
Aubrey leaves Meadowlark, and Fiona stops eating. When Grant visits her, she sits there, crying. He is told that Fiona is losing weight and is on the decline. He thinks then of Aubrey’s wife, a woman called Marian, whom he had seen once in Meadowlake’s parking lot. He looks up her address in the phone book and turns up at her house, and asks her whether she would consider sending Aubrey back to Meadowlake, because Fiona is not doing well without him, but she refuses. He then considers what it might be like, to sleep with Marian, in the unspoken hope that sleeping with her, making her want him, might make it more likely that she’ll agree with his plan to send Aubrey back to Meadowlake. Sure enough, Marian leaves a flustered message for him on his answerphone and he calculatedly takes his time to call her back, leaving her hanging; when he does call back, he thinks of her face and neck and cleavage; ‘the practical sensuality of her cat’s tongue’, and from this, we can deduce in an unsettling glimpse how Grant might have been when he was younger, the affairs he had.
The story ends with Grant taking Aubrey back to Meadowlake and reintroducing him to Fiona. But Fiona doesn’t recognise Aubrey. Instead, she puts her arms around Grant and he rests his face against her hair.
This story; this story! It is so sad and so complicated and so ambiguous, and it’s just so true of life in that people are rarely one thing but that they, we, contain such multitudes. That it is, for instance, possible for Grant to at once be heartbroken and devoted to Fiona now in her old age, whilst also having cheated on her in their marriage. And that it’s also possible for him to love her so much that he’d stand aside in her new affection for Aubrey (although what else could he do?). And yet at the same time, he thinks nothing of (potentially) sleeping with Marian, and there is also something sinister and manipulative and cold in the way he treats her, not to mention his affairs in the past. We’re led to believe that he has sex with Marian and takes advantage of her, in order to be able to return Aubrey to Meadowlake (and though I have not seen it, I believe that this is what happens in the film version, but correct me if I am wrong) and of course there is irony in the fact that he does all this, but then Fiona doesn’t even remember Aubrey.
And yet! And yet… I don’t entirely hate Grant? Even though I have read discussions online in which he is very much hated (there’s a StoryGrid analysis in which Grant is totally annihilated). I am not excusing his affairs or his manipulation of Marian. But the reason I don’t absolutely hate him is because in spite of whatever did or did not happen with Marian, in spite of his past, in spite of all that, the story ends with tenderness. Grant, with his face against Fiona’s white hair. And that moment, it matters. I think that tenderness - I think it’s there for a reason - I think it’s love. I prefer not to think of it in a cynical way.
In a less specific way, when I read this story, I felt so contemplative and felt such a profound sadness for Fiona, for the passing of time, for growing older. I felt the immensity of what it means, to share a life with someone. And it’s hard not to feel a kind of deep sadness about what this story means, just thinking about the title which comes from that old children's song: ‘The bear went over the mountain, To see what he could see. But all that he could see… Was the other side of the mountain.’ Seen in this context of the song and the title, the story feels entirely hopeless; we grow old, life is full of disappointment, etc etc. But I can’t let go of that final image, of Grant with Fiona. She recognises him, her husband, not Aubrey. And he has not forsaken her. And I want to believe that that counts for something, it has to, surely? I want to believe that the story actually does end on hope, even the tiniest drop of it.
I don’t often read other people’s essays or commentaries on stories when I write these notes, because I’m just writing down my reaction and trying to make sense of what I feel and what I think has happened, but it’s almost impossible to avoid other people’s commentaries of The Bear Came Over the Mountain because it’s such a well known story. So many people have a different take on what the focus of this story should be, whether it’s a story about sacrifice or marriage or getting old; of whether Grant is good or bad. But it’s not about just one thing, to me, and it’s not as clear cut as Grant being morally wrong. It’s meant to be ambiguous, I think. I have had to read the ending multiple times before, to try and figure out which ‘he’ Fiona hugs - whether it’s Aubrey or Grant - and I think again that’s precisely the point. Alice Munro is making us think, playing with the ending. Making us doubt and second guess. Proving that not everything is clear cut.
I like to think of her having a little chortle, at all of us trying to figure it out.
Would love to know what you think, if you’ve read it. Let me know, and if you have any suggestions on what story to look at next month, please just go ahead and say in the comments!
ps Before I go, I also want to say thank you to the new paid subscribers who have joined in the last month, since I wrote this piece reflecting on Alice Munro’s stories and what they mean to me as a writer and reader, which I wrote after she passed away. I don’t really know how to ‘build’ my Substack and nor do I have any kind of longterm goal with it, other than I hope this space speaks to some of you and moves you. Because to move a reader, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my words.
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Thank you x
Such a thoughtful, insightful piece. As with so many things in life, I’m coming to Alice Munro’s work late. Is there a collection you would suggest for the first time Munro reader? Thank you.