The Three Endings of Alice Munro’s story “Corrie”

Like all good short-story writers, Alice Munro often makes revisions to her stories between the time they first appear in a journal or magazine and when they appear later in an anthology or in a collection under her own name.  She has twice made changes to the ending of her short story “Corrie,” which first appeared in the Oct. 11, 2010 issue of The New Yorker—first in The PEN/O. Henry Awards anthology and second in her latest collection, Dear Life.  She also changed the name of one of the characters in the Dear Life version of the story from Sadie to Lillian.

 The story focuses on Corrie’s affair with a married man named Howard Ritchie.  Howard tells Corrie that he and his wife have gone to a dinner party and saw the woman Sadie Wolfe (Lillian Wolfe in Dear Life), who once worked for Corrie. He says he later received a letter from this woman, threatening to tell his wife about his affair with Corrie.

Later in the story when Sadie/Lillian dies, Corrie goes to a reception following the funeral and meets a woman who Sadie/Lillian also worked for.  All who knew Sadie/Lillian agree that she was blessed, a rare person. Later that night, Corrie thinks about all this and realizes that Sadie/Lillian was not the kind of person to blackmail anyone.  (Maybe Munro changes her name from “Sadie” to “Lillian” because whereas a woman named Sadie might be a blackmailer, a woman named Lillian might not.)

One of the ambiguities of the story results from the point of view Munro uses when Howard tells Corrie about the blackmail threat. The dinner party encounter is described primarily not as if Howard is telling Corrie about it, but rather as if it actually happened, although all Corrie and the reader know about the blackmail threat comes from Ritchie’s account. Munro makes a minor change in the Dear Life version to remind us that Ritchie’s story is the only account we have:

New Yorker version:  “Howard did not tell Corrie about the dinner party right away, because he hoped it would become unimportant.”

Dear Life version: “Howard said that he had not told Corrie about the dinner party right away, because he hoped it would become unimportant.”

One clue in all three versions that Ritchie has invented the letter from Sadie/Lillian is Howard’s quote from the letter: “I would hate to have to break the heart of such a nice lady with a big silver-fox collar on her coat.”  To this, Corrie responds, “How would Sadie know a silver-fox collar from a hole in the ground…? Are you sure that’s what she said.”  When Ritchie replies, “I’m sure,” Corrie says, “She’s learned things then.”  A bit later, Corrie says that Sadie/Lillian was not this smart before. However, when Corrie goes to the funeral reception and hears what others have said about Sadie/Lillian before she died, she knows that Sadie/Lillian has not learned to be scheming. 

Now, let’s look at the changes Munro makes in the ending of the story:

The New Yorker Oct 11, 2010 version:

           She gets up and quickly dresses and walks through every room in the house, introducing the walls and the furniture to this new idea.  A cavity everywhere, most notably in her chest.  She makes coffee and doesn’t drink it.  She ends up in her bedroom once more, and finds that the introduction to the current reality has to be done all over again.
            But then there is a surprise.  She is capable, still of shaping up another possibility.
            If he doesn’t known that Sadie is dead he will just expect things to go on as usual.  And how would he know, unless he is told? And who would he be told by, unless by Corrie herself?
            She could say something that would destroy them, but she does not have to.
            What a time it has taken her, to figure this out.
            And after all, if what they had—what they have—demands payment, she is the one who can afford to pay.
            When she goes down to the kitchen again she goes gingerly, making everything fit into its proper place.

The Pen/O.Henry Awards version, published April 2012:

          She gets up and quickly dresses and walks through every room in the house, introducing the walls and the furniture to this new idea.  A cavity everywhere, most notably in her chest.  She makes coffee and doesn’t drink it.  She ends up in her bedroom once more, and finds that the introduction to the current reality has to be done all over again.
            But then there is a surprise.  She is capable, still of shaping up another possibility.
            If he doesn’t known that Sadie is dead he will just expect things to go on as usual.  And how would he know, unless he is told? And who would he be told by, unless by Corrie herself?
            She could say something that would destroy them, but she does not have to.
            What a time it has taken her, to figure this out.
             She could say right now, what does it matter? Whatever goes on will go on.  Someday, she supposes, there will have to be an end to it.  But in the meantime, if what they had—what they have—demands payment, she is the one who can afford to pay.
            When she goes down to the kitchen again she goes as if gingerly, making everything fit into a proper place.
            She has calmed down mightily. All right.            But in the middle of her toast and jam she thinks, No.            Fly away, why don’t you, right now? Fly away.            What rot.            Yes. Do it.

Dear Life version, published by Knopf, November 15, 2012.

(The Canadian version was published by Douglas Gibson Books on Oct. 13, 2012)

         She gets up and quickly dresses and walks through every room in the house, introducing the walls and the furniture to this new idea.  A cavity everywhere, most notably in her chest.  She makes coffee and doesn’t drink it.  She ends up in her bedroom once more, and finds that the introduction to the current reality has to be done all over again.
         The briefest note, the letter tossed.        ‘Lillian is dead, buried yesterday.’        She sends it to his office, it does not matter.  Special delivery, who cares?       She turns off the phone, so as not to suffer waiting.  The silence.  She may simply never hear again.        But soon a letter, hardly more to it than there was to hers.       ‘All well now, be glad. Soon.’       So that’s the way they’re going to leave it.  Too late to do another thing.  When there could have been worse, much worse.

The issue, of course, is whether Corrie will tell Ritchie that Sadie/Lillian is dead, and whether she will also tell him that she knows about his lie and his taking her money all these years. However, if she tells him she knows, she will have to end the relationship, and she does not want to do that.

In The New Yorker version, Corrie has not decided whither to tell him that Sadie/Lillian is dead, therefore allowing him to continue to take her money.

The PEN/O.Henry version emphasizes her vacillation between telling him what she knows and not telling him anything.

In the Dear Life version, Corrie has decided to tell Ritchie about Lillian’s death, but she has decided not to tell him that she knows of his lie and his money scheme. 

By telling Ritchie that Lillian is dead, Corrie effectively ends his taking more money from her, for now that she knows the money goes to Ritchie directly, she would feel as if she were paying for his company. The fact that Ritchie replies, “All well now, be glad.  Soon” means that the relationship can continue, for Corrie believes that Ritchie is not staying with her just for the money.

As far as I can determine, Munro has not made public why she made these changes to the ending of “Corrie.”  The Dear Life version may placate some readers who had no sympathy for Corrie’s reluctance in The New Yorker version to tell Ritchie about Sadie’s death.  But readers still may fault Corrie for not telling Ritchie that she knows about his secret. But how can she fault Ritchie for his secret about the money when she wants him to continue to maintain his secret about their relationship? 

I would be interested in hearing what my readers have to say about these three different endings to “Corrie.”

One More Word (I think) on Munro's "Corrie"

Well, my friends. Thank you so much for the invigorating discussion about Alice Munro’s “Corrie.” However, I have nothing new to add to what I have said in defense of Ms. Munro's tactic in the story. I think she supports the secrecy theme with the free indirect point of view very nicely indeed. I hope some others will weigh in on this little debate. However, I leave it, at least for the time being, with this little quote I have penciled in on a 3x5 card (Raymond Carver used to do this; remember him?) from a piece by Joyce Cary (remember him?) in the New York Times Book Review way back in 1950: (I was only nine at the time, but I was precocious.)

"Every professional artist has met the questioner who asks of some detail: ‘Why did you do it so clumsily like that, when you could have done it so neatly like this?’”

I used the quote as the heading for a piece I did several years ago on Hemingway’s story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” rebutting one critic’s claim that Hemingway had screwed up the dialogue designation in the story, thus creating reader confusion. As a result, Scribner’s actually changed the text in the next edition of Hemingway’s Collected Stories. I was outraged; I knew Hemingway was too damned careful to muck the story up and tried hard to show that he had a sound thematic reason for creating what that critic thought was a mistake. The last time I checked, Scribner’s had changed it back to the original. So it goes!

I always tried to convince my students that if they read a story and thought it was screwed up or just plan screwy, they should assume first of all that it was their fault and not the fault of the writer. I always assume, and tried to convince them to assume, that the writer knew what he or she was doing. However, if they read it several times and really gave themselves over to the work and still couldn’t come to terms with it, then, I was happy to listen to arguments. I have been happy to listen to arguments by Ed and Kseniya about “Corrie,” but I have read it again and again, and I still believe Ms. Munro has got it right here. I am not saying I can’t be convinced that Munro cheated (Heavens!) or that she did not know how to pull it off (Lord a’mercy!), just that at this point, my faith in her unerring ability at writing short stories has not been shaken. Keep those cards and letters coming!

In the meantime, serendipitously, I have been reading David Means’ new collection The Spot, which contains a story entitled “Reading Chekhov,” which is a version of Chekhov’s “Lady with the Pet Dog,” the greatest adultery story in Christendom, in my opinion. So I went back and read Chekhov's “Lady with the Pet Dog” again and was, as the young’uns like to say, “blown away.” I then looked up Joyce Carol Oates’ story, “Lady with the Pet Dog,” and was so underwhelmed that I dozed off twice.

So, since with Munro, we have been talking about adultery (we have been talking about adultery, haven’t we?), I thought I would post a blog comparing the Means with the Munro with the Chekhov with the Oates. I love to bad mouth Oates about as much as I love to praise David Means.

Oh, by the way, I just got the new edition of Best American Short Stories, 2010 and am reading it dutifully. I will have a post on my progress in a couple of weeks.

And there is a new David Means story in the recent issue of the New Yorker. I will comment on it in the next week also.

I appreciate my readers and look forward to more lively responses to my humble remarks.

Alice Munro's "Corrie": Secrecy and Point of View

There’s nothing I enjoy more since starting this blog than interacting with readers who are reading the same stories I am and have thoughtful things to say about them. Kseniya has a very insightful comment and query on Alice Munro’s “Corrie” that I think deserves a second blog entry on that story. Her question made me go back and read it twice more. So at the risk of sounding, at best, academic and, at worst, pedantic, I post the following post script to Munro’s story.

Kseniya points out that the point of view of the first part of the story seems to be that of an omniscient teller, although it stays within the perspective of Howard Ritchie. She says that when we learn about Sadie’s letter threatening blackmail, we believe the omniscient teller to be telling us the truth. Kseniya also says she takes the letter for a fact because Ritchie does not seem cunning enough to dream up this scheme. Furthermore, she says that if the letter is a lie, the reader begins to wonder what is and what is not fact in the story, thus raising the issue of an unreliable narrator. Moreover, Kseniya suggests that since we are given quite a bit of insight into Ritchie’s mind in the first part of the story, it seems manipulative of the narrator to withhold the fact that he keeps the money.

Here is my own take on the point of view issue in the story: First of all, I think that a writer of good short stories, such as Alice Munro, is very careful to make the technique of the story parallel the theme of the story. The key to the success of any affair is secrecy. And although “Corrie” embodies a complex of themes about infidelity--cheating, concealment, guilt, compensation, money, family, stasis--secrecy is the central theme. And to illuminate this theme, Munro must manipulate the point of view very carefully.

Because this is a short story concerned with the themes mentioned above, not a novel concerned with the particulars of the characters’ behavior and thoughts, what we know about Howard Ritchie in the first section of the story, even though we seem to be within his perspective, are only those things that contribute to the theme the story develops. We only need to know the following: that Ritchie is “equipped” with a “family”; that he is conservative; that he is somewhat awkward about how to respond to Corrie’s lameness; that he feels he has no time for anything but earning a living and caring for his family; and that he suspects that when Corrie goes to Egypt she will be snapped up by some creepy fortune hunter; that he finds her behavior verging on the tiresome; that he knows, from his own experience, that for some men money never becomes tiresome.

If we only seem to know a few facets of Ritchie’s feelings and thoughts, it is because we only require these to respond to the theme. And based on this knowledge, I would say there is nothing to suggest that Ritchie would not exploit Corrie for her money.

In the second section of the story, which introduces the blackmail letter from Sadie, the point of view is carefully controlled, as is the voice of the verbs. The information about Sadie working in a house in the city after leaving Corrie’s employ is revealed in passive voice. Noting that Sadie continues to do housework, the narrator says, “This was discovered on an occasion when Howard and his wife were invited to dinner, with others at the home of some rather important people in Kitchener.” Who discovers it? Ritchie, of course, since we are still within his perspective.

However the account seems to focus on this being Sadie’s discovery. This ostensible shift takes place very subtly in the following sentences: “There was Sadie waiting on tables, coming face to face with the man she had seen in Corrie’s house The man she had seen with his arm around Corrie when she came in to take the plates away or fix the fire. An unknown woman with him, who, the conversation soon made plain, was his wife. It was also made plain that his wife had not come recently into the picture. Her time had overlapped with Corrie.” This is not Sadie’s perspective, but what Sadie’s perspective might have been from Ritchie’s perspective.

There does not seem to be any question that Ritchie has actually seen Sadie at a party he and his wife attended. However, since we have been limited to Ritchie’s point of view and have no reason to think we have shifted into Sadie’s point of view, this seems clearly to be Ritchie’s account of the encounter, in which he assumes that Sadie knows that his affair with Corrie is illicit, but does not know what Sadie intends to do with the information. By the time Ritchie tells Corrie about all this, he has tentatively decided what he will do.

Ritchie has been brought up in a fiercely religious household and knows that someone must pay for breaking the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” He knows he cannot pay, for he has little money and has a family to support. And why should not Sadie pay, since she has no family responsibility, doesn’t care for money, and is crippled? This is all rather harsh when expressed so blatantly, which is one of the reasons that Munro keeps it secret. The only relationship in which we see Ritchie engage is with Corrie, and since the key to his relationship with Corrie is secrecy, what we know about Ritchie is only what Corrie knows.

When we read the line, “Sadie said that she had not gossiped about it all,” we know that this is something that Ritchie has told Corrie, not necessarily something that Sadie has told Ritchie. Ritchie’s account of the contents of the letter to Corrie is told in a coy way that, we later learn, does not sound like Sadie at all. “Would his wife be interested in getting this information?” is the way Ritchie says Sadie put it. Even more unlike Sadie is her ostensible remark, “I would hate to have to break the heart of such a nice lady with a big silver-fox collar on her coat.” Corrie wonders how Sadie would even know a silver-fox collar from “a hole in the ground,” asking Ritchie, “Are you sure that’s what she said.” The silver-fox collar, which Ritchie finds hypocritical of his wife to wear, given her left wing leanings, is a little detail of verisimilitude that Ritchie invents to make his story seem credible.

In this conversation, the point of view perspective subtly shifts to Corrie, for she wonders what if Ritchie rejects her offer to pay the blackmail, what if he thinks it is a sign that they should stop. “She was sure there’d be something like that in his voice and in his face. All that old sin stuff. Evil.” When Corrie says, “You’d feel you were taking it away from your family,” Ritchie’s face actually cleared, although Corrie fears she should never have said that word “family.” Ritchie then suddenly remembers something else from the letter—that the money has to be in bills. “He spoke without looking up, as if about a business deal. Bills were best for Corrie, too. They would not implicate her.” Ritchie is obviously thinking on his feet here. And indeed it is a business deal.

It is September when Corrie hears about the death of Sadie. She has given the money to Ritchie to deposit in Sadie’s box in August. Corrie knows that Ritchie has not heard about Sadie’s death, and she also knows that Sadie was not able to pick up the money this time because of her illness, so she wonders if Ritchie has checked to see if the money has been picked up; she thinks not since he has not contacted her.

When she wakes the next morning, “She knows something. She has found it in her sleep.” She realizes that the news of Sadie’s death that would have freed them from the blackmail and the “queasy feeling” she has always had of “the never-quite safeness of their affair is no news to Ritchie at all, because Sadie does not matter and never has. The “family” theme is echoed, as she thinks that the twice-yearly sum of money would have gone straight into his pocket, for he is a man with a family, children to educate, and bills to pay. What makes Corrie come to this realization? All the same things that have made the reader come to the realization: her knowledge of Ritchie, her knowledge of Sadie, Ritchie’s account of the nonexistent letter, his failure to contact her about the money in the mailbox.

We do not get inside the mind of Corrie in this section of the story any more than we get inside the mind of Ritchie in the first section. We have no particular information about her feelings. We only know she is trying to adjust to the realization she has come to and that she feels a sense of emptiness—“a cavity everywhere, most notably in her chest.” She then comes up with another possibility. She knows that Ritchie may never know of Sadie’s death since he has no connection with her and no connection with the family she has worked for. He will therefore expect things to go on just as they have—with Corrie giving him the money twice a year and him pocketing it.

Corrie could say something, but she knows that what they have demands payment, and she is the one who can afford to pay. And so, she will continue to pay, for what difference does it make if the money goes to Sadie or to Ritchie, for she has already made it clear that she is willing to pay. Of course, a day may arrive when Ritchie will find out that Sadie is dead. What will happen then? This just means that for Corrie, one sense of “never-quite safeness” has taken the place of another. Everything is in its proper place—in Corrie and Ritchie’s lives and in Alice Munro’s story.

Well, that’s how I read the story. I would love to hear other readings. Thanks, Kseniya, for sending me back to the story.