Last year, I was rummaging through a used bookstore to see what titles would catch my eye. Somewhere among the endless titles was the author Alice Munro, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning anthology “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You” was staring back at me. With curiosity, I bought it with intent on seeing if there was something about her prose that spoke to me. With phenomenal blurbs on the back, I’ve taken up the challenge of working my way through these pages to see if I have found a new favorite. Given that she has a fascination with time and interpersonal relationships, I’m sure this will be a fulfilling journey. The only way to find out is to dive right in.
After “Marrakesh” left the reader with an ambiguous view of a woman struggling to be an active member of her own life, it’s interesting to see Munro explore similar themes in “The Spanish Lady.” While there are no robberies from a foreign nation, there’s still this struggle to feel like one is satisfied with their past. An affair riles up the narrator, a woman who is coming to terms with an affair that her husband has. It’s not unfamiliar territory, especially in stories like “Material,” though this approach finds her dabbling a bit more with the spiritual cosmos, finding new ways to meditate on the themes of mortality and fate. Was this ultimately the path that she was destined to take? Is all of the failures upon her husband, or is there some compensation to make her sound better than she is?
If read more literally, it’s easy to paint husband Hugh as the villain of the piece. While he’s only spoken of, he’s not exactly given the most flattering of portraits. Munro opens the story with two letters that she intends for Hugh and the betrothed Margaret. There’s an opposing nature to these essays, quickly helping to reveal how the narrator sees these two characters. It starts well enough as she suggests that monogamy is not a natural condition. However, she quickly unravels it in the second where she lets her frustrations loose. Hugh hasn’t done enough to be a good lover and this is one of the worst things that he’s done.
The fact that they’re crumpled up within the next paragraph shows how nervous she is about sharing the news of this failure. It will make her look bad that she couldn’t work things out. Also, it could incriminate her and stir up drama that others probably believe has been settled. The frustration that she lives with is plausible, but efforts to express herself in a meaningful manner are difficult. She’ll have to stay quiet. Her passiveness may not be what’s intended, but it’s what she has to go with. Much like Hugh, she has to keep her true feelings secret. Unlike Hugh, there is no substantial reward for it. Even as she finds strangers on a train whom she considers flirting with, the ultimate decision is that she is disinterested in another affair. The suggestion of there being multiple pokes holes in her purity, though it’s far from what’s essential about the remaining tale.
She is en route to see them. There’s no awareness of what she’s going to do when she gets there. The story ends before Hugh shows up. What is there at the end is the manipulation of a text, an effort to replace the complicated emotions with an entertaining recounting of her time on the train. The abstraction shows how they may be floating apart, talking to each other indirectly with a vagueness that may not have any substance at all. In this case, she sees an old man who has died, potentially, of a heart attack. It’s a horrid sight, but given his age, it’s not all that surprising. Given that the narrator is older as well, there is a sense of her best years being behind her. If the metaphorical indirectness is to suggest anything, it was her time on the train. The man’s death in itself represents a marital death, a summation of her happiness with Hugh.
To back up a little bit, “The Spanish Lady” being placed after “Marrakesh” presents an interesting mirroring. In both cases, there’s subtext that doesn’t exactly connect to the grander narrative. However, it may still say something about how each of the characters sees the world around them. Unlike “Marrakesh,” the chance of The Spanish Lady existing seems a lot less plausible… that is unless you believe in cosmology and find meaning in differentiating Leos and Aries. If you believe there’s some greater truth out in the stars that unite us all throughout the generations and centuries, then there’s a good chance that “The Spanish Lady” is much more provocative than it is.
To start with, the journey between the opening letters and the heart attack takes place predominantly on a train. With the bookends, I think it’s easy to see everything as symbolizing the in-between. As the old expression goes, life is what happens while we’re busy making plans. A train can be a docile place, where life is in perpetual motion towards a conclusive state. It’s often difficult to do anything of use while stationary, looking out the window at the world moving around them. There’s been endless poetic imagery written about this phenomenon and Munro adds a hefty amount to the ledger. I think positing this train ride as the interim between discovering Hugh’s affair and the presumed death, allows for a meditation on things that reveal something more meaningful about the narrator. Why should we care about her? Without directly talking about much, Munro finds the perfect conversation to answer that question.
A man named The Rosicrucian enters the picture. As mentioned earlier, there is some attempt for them to form an affair of their own. After some flirting, they consider their actions before the narrator accepts her fate. This isn’t going to happen. It starts with the idea of a Leo recognizing an Aries. By 21st century standards, this isn’t the most absurd thing to consider, but helps to set up The Rosicrucian as having a less physical view of the world. He’s mesmerizing for how he sees the invisible, creating a new form of thought that could be alluring. Romance itself is an interpretive act, and there’s a chance he’s mostly doing this to find a partner. Still, the fact that the narrator refuses to go along suggests many things. There’s the reality that in a moment where she could start fresh she chooses not to. It also raises the question… is she really that loyal if she’s had affairs before? Maybe unlike Hugh, she’s matured into a woman of moral substance. She is loyal and notices the value of intimacy.
And yet she humors The Rosicrucian because he is one of Munro’s most entertaining characters. Along with his astrology conversation, he turns to more Buddhistic teachings surrounding the idea of past lives. He believes that they had met before many generations ago. He was a conquistador and she a Spanish lady. It’s the idea of chivalry and knighthood, of a fantasy that’s more glamorous in literature than reality. Still, it’s an idea that could hook the right person who believes in fate. It’s a way to vicarioulys call her strong and fair, or even suggest that he’s there to rescue her. Given that Spanish is also a love language, it’s easy to read this as a symbol of passion in ways that divert from how she sees Hugh. Maybe Hugh was always too vanilla and couldn’t be bothered to see love in complicated ways. Maybe the narrator couldn’t either.
What makes the story work is how the train functions. Because we know that they’ll reach their destination and likely never see each other again, these precious moments allow for an encounter to feel heightened and more meaningful. The sparseness could reflect how her affairs throughout life were handled. There’s a discreetness, a coded language that connects them to a time and place. Once the doors open and Hugh is there again, it’s done. She’s not like Margaret who will always be there. The Rosicrucian is likely to fade into obscurity, his whereabouts to remain unknown.
Though if this lothario is to be believed, it does open some interesting subtext about what the narrator’s life could actually symbolize. Maybe she was the Spanish lady and has been reincarnated throughout the centuries into different figures, meeting new people and forming new bonds. Hugh will eventually fade into irrelevance and her next life will start. Her unwillingness to have an affair could also mean she’s tired of this legacy and longs for it to end. Because of how this works, she is stuck having to find new ways to wander, experiencing similar heartache over and over, feeling loneliness and disappointment. She has given up and wants to settle. It is why she eventually sees The Rosicrucian as more of a story to share with Hugh than an actual person to admire. To get a bit too in the weeds, maybe the parallel here is that Margaret is simply a story Hugh shares with the narrator, proving the lengths they’ll go to avoid each other.
But the inevitable must happen. The narrator must return to Hugh. The fact she will at all suggests a loyalty and respect that he may or may not reciprocate. That is why the final sight, even as a metaphor, is so essential. The fact that it’s a heart attack also connects to themes of mortality and love. Romance is often seen as coming from that organ, and thus having it attacked allows for a sense of numbness. The marriage is old, ready to pass away and have everyone start anew. Maybe they will be happier this way. Even if the old man has nothing to do with the narrator otherwise, it's the type of brilliant symbolism that allows the conclusion to have more meaning. It’s the reality that every life is finite. Whether or not one believes in reincarnation will help determine the level of tragedy on display. For the narrator, there’s a good chance that even in her willingness to fly solo, she’s about to experience something new.
What I love about “The Spanish Lady” is how it finds the author fading out of literal explorations of failing relationships and venturing into metaphorical and even spiritual ones. It allows for more inexplicable emotions to arise, allowing for certain truths to emerge. Life is a complicated mess and certain things cannot be expressed. Maybe the failure of this relationship has no greater meaning, or it is a grand gesture symbolizing one life passing into the next. Did the Spanish lady even exist? How much one is willing to believe in any of this can be found in how much they believe in fate and forces beyond our control. It’s evaluating the concept of love after the fact. Can one really start anew, or is there only so much passion one can give? Like the opening letters, any effort to express this in clear and direct language will be difficult. Sometimes it’s best to throw the correspondence away and just hope for the best.
Coming Up Next: “Winter Wind"
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