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Previous entries in this series introduced the monomyth, focused on the three-part structure of separation—initiation—return, and viewed James Joyce's "Araby" through the monomythic lens. This entry does something similar with an Alice Munro story.

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In Alice Munro's story "The Lives of Girls and Women," a young girl Del confronts the organizing principles of the people in the Canadian small town of Jubilee. Religion, neighbors, sex, marriages, gender, love, social mores—all these throw obstacles in the way of Del as she seeks to grow into womanhood. The story begins with Del's search for glory in her small town, and that search for glory becomes connected to sex, as she finds a "sex" book belonging to Del's friend Naomi's mother. Mr. Chamberlain, a male friend of a boarder in Del's house, gropes Del, leading to further encounters with Mr. Chamberlain. Del returns from these encounters, that journey into chaos, with a new understanding of sex, of men, of the type of woman Fern desires to become.

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In this short story, Del tells us early on her desire. "It was glory I was after, walking the streets of Jubilee like an exile or spy, not sure from which direction fame would strike, or when, only convinced from my bones out that it had to. In this conviction my mother had shared, she had been my ally, but now I would no longer discuss it with her; she was indiscreet, and her expectations took too blatant a form" (158).

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The separation from her old world has begun. It's an internal one—a restlessness with the previous modes of behavior and being. This is the way desire functions, wanting something, trying to get it, failing, ultimately finding some resolution. With her friend Naomi as a guide and ally, Del begins to confront the nature of sex, through a book found in Naomi's mother's hope chest, leading to their own sex discussions—"ribald, scornful, fanatically curious" (162). The relationship between the unmarried Fern, Del's boarder, and Mr. Chamberlain evokes images of the sex Fern and Mr. Chamberlain must engage in, the nature of his penis, the transformation that occurs to people during and after the sex act. As Campbell asserted, the separation leading to initiation supercharges the environment, so that what the character must confront pervades each page. Here, sex hangs in the air. Naomi's father babbles insanely about his prudish Biblical ideas of sex and chastity. The town brothel attracts Del's and Naomi's attention—especially how ordinary, so lacking glory, the women appear as they read the newspapers on their porch. Even the peacocks of a neighbor shriek about sex. In Del's entry room, Mr. Chamberlain sits with Fern and Del's mom and tells stories of Italy, of fathers trying to sell their daughters to Mr. Chamberlain.

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All of this leads Del to a new way of thinking of the world and her self. She imagines herself as one of the Italian women. "The thought of whoredom," she tells us, "not my fault, bore me outward for a moment; a restful, alluring thought, because it was so final, and did away with ambition and anxiety" (169). Glory now equals sexual excitement.

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Then, with Fern's back to Mr. Chamberlain and Del's mother's face hidden, Mr. Chamberlain "did something nobody could see. He rubbed against the damp underarm of [Del's] blouse and then inside the loose armhole of the jumper [she] was wearing. He rubbed quick, hard against the cotton over [her] breast. So hard he pushed the yielding flesh up, flattened it. And at once withdrew" (177). Del views that hand as a "signal, given where it [would] be understood" (178). At their next encounter, in a hallway entrance space, he goes "straight for breasts, the buttocks, the upper thighs, brutal as lightning" (178).

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At this moment of separation into initiation, there often occurs a clear passage that shows the loss of the old world. Here, Del says, "I had discarded those ideas of love, consolation, and tenderness…; all that now seemed pale and extraordinarily childish. In the secret violence of sex would be recognition, going way beyond kindness, beyond good will or persons" (178). Next, Del must confront Mr. Chamberlain as he picks her up in his car a half-block from school. Rather than the "next stroke of lightning," he provides her with a task: Sneak into Fern's room and see if Fern has kept any of the letters he had written her some time ago. To be sure Del finds the correct letters, he gives her a sample of his handwriting, a piece of paper upon which he scribbles Del is a bad girl.

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The task and the note attached to the task leads Del to confront its message, that Mr. Chamberlain "assumed without any trouble at all that there was treachery in [her], as well as criminal sensuality, waiting to be used" (180). As all initiation rites proceed, the tasks become more challenging, each successive obstacle forcing the initiate to delve deeper into the Self to gain an understanding of what she must do to fulfill the demands of the task. "Could he have hit upon my true Self?" Del wonders.

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In the room, as she searches for the letters, what do you think she finds? Remember that magical transformation of the world into the character's very own obstacle course. She discovers a bundle of illustrations of male and female anatomy, instructions for different devices, the proper terms for things such as condoms, tampons, all of which were new to Del. Also, she discovers ribald verses with words like fuck in them, a word that before Del had "not been able to contemplate before its thrust of brutality, hypnotic swagger" (184).

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A second car ride arrives as part of Del's initiation rites. "Excitement," Del says, "owing something to Fern's dirty verses, got the upper hand of me, entirely." She goes into that car without "second thoughts about going with him, and doing whatever it was he had in mind to do." The Monomyth moves inexorably to the center of the crisis, closer and closer to the heart of the issue, here to the sex act itself. Except it's perverted, a walk to the creek, Mr. Chamberlain unzipping himself and taking out his erect penis that, to Del, looks "blunt and stupid," "like a mushroom," "not at all like marble David's" (186). Mr. Chamberlain proceeds to masturbate, shoots "the real whitish stuff" onto himself and the hem of Del's skirt.

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The world afterwards, in the car ride back home, is "distant and meaningless" (187). Mr. Chamberlain leaves town. Del's friend Naomi recovers from a sickness and discovers "a whole new outlook on life," one devoid of the "grosser aspects of sex" (190). Del has no way to transform the event into something else. She does "not know what to do with it." A new understanding has begun to emerge. Del says, "My faith in simple depravity had weakened. Perhaps nowhere but in daydreams did the trap door open so sweetly and easily, plunging bodies altogether free of thought, free of personality, into self-indulgence, mad bad license. Instead of that, Mr. Chamberlain had shown me, people take along a good deal—flesh that is not overcome but has to be thumped into ecstasy, all the stubborn puzzle and dark turns of themselves" (191).

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Such understandings mark the ebbing of that desire initially aroused at the story's beginning. The revelations gained through the initiation transform the world into something else—although the world in truth has not changed. But for the character it has. Now the advice given to women, "advice that assumed being female made you damageable, that a certain amount of carefulness and solemn fuss and self-protection were called for" ring with an untruth. Instead, Del returns with a fresh, enlightened vision–one that contains within it the possibilities for new life to be injected into the wasted, dead patterns she has left behind. The story ends with a new world for Del—and for women everywhere—a choice that before women could not even think about, "to go out and take on all kinds of experiences and shuck off what they didn't want and come back proud" (194).