Abstract
The theme of happiness in the short fiction of Alice Munro evokes four contexts of signification. Contemporary North American popular culture holds happiness as a realizable but elusive ideal. In the generic conventions of fiction, happiness functions as a goal and as a sign of closure; stories end when the characters get married and live happily ever after. Thomas Jefferson (1776/1962) declared the pursuit of happiness, together with life and liberty, to be unalienable, God-given rights; modern commentators hold that the difference between “peace, order, and good government” and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” encapsulates a key distinction between the cultures of Canada and the United States. Religious and philosophical traditions identify happiness with faith and the highest good. This essay considers how these four contexts of happiness operate within Alice Munro’s fiction, using her story “White Dump” from the collection The Progress of Love as an example.
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