28 pages • 56 minutes read
Alice MunroThe Bear Came over the Mountain
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Alice Munro and the Southern Ontario Gothic
Alice Munro is a Canadian author whose main body of work focuses on short stories. She is widely celebrated, having won the Nobel Prize for Literature (2013), The Booker International Prize (2009), The Roger Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (2004), and the Marian Engel Award (1996). Literary critics have praised Munro for challenging and reshaping how short stories are constructed. Munro writes complex characters who are neither sympathetic nor someone to hate completely. Her stories are character-centered and focus on the intricacies of the human experience, often ending in moral ambiguity.
Her stories are often set in the same place: Huron County, Ontario, in Canada. This consistent setting is part of why her work embodies the Southern Ontario Gothic genre and literary tradition. This is a subgenre of Southern Gothic in Canadian literature that navigates the realism of small towns and moral hypocrisy that can be attributed to many of Munro’s characters. For example, Grant is a morally hypocritical character throughout the narrative. He admits to the reader that he has cheated in the past and deceived Fiona, but because he never confessed, he never thought of leaving her. Since he was never caught and they created a new life by moving into her family home, he thinks he is not as bad as his colleagues who were embroiled in sex scandals. Likewise, despite his history of cheating, he feels betrayed and isolated when his wife develops an emotional bond with another patient at the nursing home. As the story progresses, Grant shows that he has not grown since his teaching days; he is still capable of cheating and feels more inclined to wander after watching Fiona and Aubrey together.
The collection to which “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” belongs exemplifies the trials, hypocrisies, and strangeness of love, life, and marriage. It is widely considered Alice Munro’s best work, receiving both critical praise and awards. The collection was republished four times, and in 2006, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” was adapted into a film under the title Away From Her (2006).
Medical Context: Alzheimer’s Disease
It is characteristic of the Southern Ontario Gothic genre to have one or more characters experiencing mental illness. In “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” Fiona is beginning to develop Alzheimer’s disease. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s is a brain disorder that “affects memory, thinking, and behavior. Symptoms eventually grow severe enough to interfere with daily tasks” (“What is Alzheimer's Disease?”). There is no cure for Alzheimer’s or dementia, and it accounts for 60-80% of severe memory loss cases. In the text, Fiona experiences landmark Alzheimer’s symptoms, such as getting lost on the way home and wandering away from Grant in a store.
Munro uses Fiona’s Alzheimer’s disease as a lens for exploring Grant’s character and Fiona and Grant’s relationship. As Fiona loses more of her memories, Grant can’t stop fixating on his past and wrestles with his history of infidelity. When he feels hypocritical for feeling jealous of Fiona’s budding relationship with Aubrey, he also suspects that she is faking her condition altogether. However, Fiona’s behaviors are changing. She wears clothes that might not be hers; she gains weight, looking chubbier in the cheeks; and she cuts her hair and doesn’t miss it being long, even though she’s always worn it that way. Above all, she does not remember Grant, and she flirts with another man in front of him, something she would never do before. Her behaviors are changing drastically due to her condition, not due to a prank or dark joke that Grant believes she must be playing to get back at him for a confession he never made. Because Grant is clouded by guilt, he cannot see that Fiona is truly sick, which adds a sad and disappointed tone to the story.
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