Establishing an Identity: The Lover and How I Met My Husband

Establishing an identity is a life changing event that all people go through at some point. This event is present in the two stories The Lover, by Marguerite Duras and How I Met My Husband, by Alice Munro.

Though Duras’ story is nonfiction, the two main characters in each both go through a similar awakening of creating their identities. Yet the way they come to establish themselves are much different due to the differences in many aspects of their lives. Education can be an important component of creating one’s identity. The reasoning to even mention education is that one’s education level can dictate the emotional and life decisions they make. It also affects the way a person comprehends a situation. These two characters have vastly different levels of education and intelligence. Edie is not the smartest girl considering her poor academic achievement. She mentioned that, “At the end of the year the averages were published in the paper, and mine came out at the very bottom, 37 per cent”. Having that low average has the ability to impact Edie mentally. But for the most part this does not affect her as deeply since in the area and time she had grown up in women did not always achieve higher levels of education. There was a much different story for Duras. Duras was much more educated and incredibly smart. So much in fact that the headmaster of her school mentioned to her mother, “... your daughter’s head of the class in French…”. This education drives Duras to achieve more and helps her realize a lot of things in life. She began to understand that her family was very toxic and abnormal. She began to break away and it was her education that allowed her to do so. She is also fiercely independent due to her education. She feels that she is smart enough to be this independent and that she is capable of functioning as an adult. This is a crucial part of her identity this independence, it is the driving force of her entire story. Without it, Duras would not have been able to break away from her mother’s toxicity and become the women she was meant to be. That is where these two characters contrast.

Duras’ high level of education made her much more of an independent person than Edie. Edie was a home body, more domesticated and innocent because she was not as educated. These differing levels of education defined pieces of these characters’ identities. Identity is also influenced by other factors, especially the environment one is raised in. These two stories take place in extremely different locations at different points in history, one being 1920s Saigon the other in an unspecified rural town sometime after World War II. In Saigon, or any city of that matter, there is a lot of cross cultural occurrences that shape the social environment. This influenced Duras’ identity to take on more independence. This is evident in the public transportation she has no problem with taking alone. Also her ability to converse with strangers is much stronger. Also during this time in many countries women were beginning to have more of a voice in society and culture. Her voice came through the clothes she wore. The men’s hat she wore was a symbol of her being able to show her confidence and that she felt as if she could wear what she pleased without caring what other people thought. This location is what also brought upon her meeting her much older lover who would change her entire life.

This sense of meeting a lover because of location was also exemplified in How I Met My Husband. Living in a rural area can really limit on the experiences that one can have in life. This is what happened to Edie. She was living in a rural area of a state or country with little change happening. With this little change came a routine of life. This was all turned upside down by Chris flying in on his plane. This event was a big one with it changing the entire social scene of the area. This is where Edie’s identity flaw of being susceptible is shown. Chris flying in on his plane represented a sense of adventure that was never experienced by Edie before. She saw him as a way out of the mundane life she had at home, he could take her away to somewhere more exciting. In the end he would leave and forget her even though he promised to write her. She waited outside at her mailbox for years only to never really have that letter come in. She was easily swooned by him just because of the area she had lived in all her life. She didn’t have the knowledge or experience that people can disappoint her and lie. That is the sheer power that location has over one’s developing identity. Still there is a greater force that impacts these two character’s identities. Family is an important cornerstone in any person’s life and has the power to shape them as a whole. These two characters’ families had an enormous impact on their identities. Duras did not have an easy childhood that was short lived. Her father was addicted to gambling and died when she was young. Her mother was a toxic psychopath that seemed to be jealous of her own daughter’s intelligence and punished her so. Her mother also put the burden of her own faults of depression and dependency on the children. Her older brother encourages her mother’s behavior while also being a dangerous psychopath, constantly beating the younger brother severely. All of this molded Duras into a somewhat cold person. It made her more independent but also less feeling of a person. When her and her lover split she had mixed emotions, but overall she seemed not to care. She had the mentality of a mature woman even though she was very young at the time given that she could move on from her lover in the way she did. Maturity is a trait that really helps to define a person’s identity. This trait was found in both of these characters.

Maturity is the first step in developing and identity. It is when a person first defines themselves and breaks away from adolescence. The narrator from The Lover had little trouble with gaining her maturity given her life situation. This girl was incredibly independent with her life since she was able to travel and live her life so freely without any supervision. This provides a good environment for her to become more of herself. A city environment can really accelerate the development of a person’s maturity since they are so exposed to all types of situations, events, people, and hard truths about life. This gave the narrator a different outlook on her family situation. It allowed her to see that the way her mother acted toward her was wrong from the narrator’s own view as well as a view as a mother as she constantly recalls as to how her mother was so unfit. This was the development of the narrator’s hindsight which was crucial to this story. Without her level of maturity she may have never thought twice about the events that took place in her life and never truly realized how it made her the person she was. The level of maturity the narrator had in The Lover was in contrast of Edie’s. Edie had a much different life than the narrator did since she lived in an entirely different place. In the rural town she lived in there was no rush to become mature. Life in rural areas is less hectic than life in the city and there are not as many opportunities for a teenager to do anything independently. There is also this aspect that people in such rural areas shelter their children from certain truths of adult life. This especially goes for young girls growing up like Edie. This notion was exemplified when Alice and the other woman confronted Edie about her visit with Chris. When Edie confessed that her and Chris were “intimate” she misunderstood what that truly meant. Edie became hysterical because she thought she was being accused of having sex with Chris who was an engaged man. Mrs Pebbles calmed down Edie and asked her, “What did you think I meant?”. Edie responded that they only kissed. That was her idea of intimacy, kissing. This was a clear example of the lack of maturity Edie had since she was sheltered. Still, later on in her life she would gain this maturity. She reflected back on the same argument and how she lied for Chris and tried to give him more time to escape from Alice. She then said, “women should stick together and not do things like that. I see that now but didn’t then”. Edie realizing this truth show that in time she gained the maturity to realize that lying for Chris did not help her get closer to him as as lover, rather it just helped him continue his toxic behavior of wooing the women in each place he visited. It was a moment that she realized that women need to stick together rather than go against each other in the interest of one man. That having a lover was not worth making enemies out of another person. She formed the part of her identity that made her who she is. But there was always an insight she had that really helped her become one with herself.

Edie for a long time kept going out to her mailbox to check for the letter Chris promised to send to her. It would never come, as one would expect from Chris, still she waited. Day after day she would retrieve the mail from the mailman and smile at him endlessly. But it was one day when she realized what was happening to her. She then thought, “I imagined me making the journey day after day and year after year, and my hair starting to get gray…”. Edie began to realize that Chris was not a man of his word and she was not about to live her life waiting for him to care about her, so she decided to put herself first instead. She did not want to wait anymore even though that life may be more mundane, she could find her own happiness. Edie having that revelation defined her as a person. She would start living her life according to herself and not dictating her decisions based on Chris’ actions and what her did or failed to do. She would establish her own identity.