Oct 11, 2008

The Albanian Virgin | Characters

The short story from Munro's collection Open Secrets, "The Albanian Virgin," has three central characters, two of whom — Claire and Lottar — inhabit distinct and separate worlds in this story within a story, and a third — Charlotte — who may (or may not) "occupy" both worlds. The characters of Claire and Lottar are, in a sense, reconfigurations of female protagonists familiar from Munro's earlier fiction. Like Del Jordan (Lives of Girls and Women, 1971), they are women whose intelligence and temperament bring them into conflict with the expectations and norms of their...