Maturity

How I Met My Husband by Alice Munro

In Munro's short story, How I Met My Husband, the main character, Edie, is quite an immature, naive little girl. However, her foolish thoughts and actions are all admitted and corrected by the narrator, Edie's older and more mature self. In the story, Edie is as naive and innocent as a girl can be. By her decisions such as pursuing Mr. Watters by bringing the cake to his tent while the rest of the household was gone, one can tell she still lacks the foresight to avoid such bad decisions. Her more mature self reprimands her past self for her silly actions and admits that if she had the same experience now, things would be different. For example, when referencing her deceiving of Mr. Watter's fiance she says, "Women should stick together and not do things like that. I see that now, but didn't then" (Munro 143). The presence of Edie's older narration contrasts Edie's whimsical romantic story, and the actual story of how she eventually met her husband. This further shows that love is not always a sappy romantic novel.