The (im)materiality of the life plot: Alice Munro’s Juliet triptych

This article concerns itself with the ‘Juliet Triptych’ from collection, Runaway , and its metaliterary narration. It diagnoses the interplay between Juliet as a protagonist and Juliet as a narrator. The former, with her scholarly ambitions and romance plot, has all the trappings of a protagonist in a realist novel. The latter, with her scorn for the material world, shuns the stylistic framework of realism in favour of that of the short story. By objecting to the materiality of novels, Juliet also objects to the novelistic life plot, set up at the start of the triptych. As she ages, she relaxes out of her tendency to control her life according to a narrative, which prohibits totality in the triptych, setting it in the short story mould. The article also engages with the stories in context of Munro’s youngest daughter’s 2024 account of sexual abuse in the family home and her mother’s refusal to advocate for her. It concludes that Munro’s biography sheds new light on the impulse to control one’s life via literary narration.