Al Frida By Alice Munro

Alice Munro’s implementation of a prepubescent protagonist who by time strives to become the women she once used to ridicule acts as the chief force driving the short-story. I believe the entirety of the story is driven by the coming of age theme and the way the protagonist slowly but surely develops.

Right at the very beginning of the short-story, the protagonist is portrayed to reminisce her dad's nonconformist first cousin (Alfrida) who worked as a newspaper columnist in the city, Alfrida is strongly tied with the the main character’s family as her mother died of severe burns after an exploding coal-lamp and her father as a result of this abandoned Alfrida, so she lived with the protagonist’s grandfather up until she went to college and

After overlooking the dinner invitations for two years she decides to finally take up Alfrida on her invitation and go meet her because her two-year scholarship at the university has ended. The dinner, however, does make one lasting impression. Alfrida recalls how her mother died of severe burns caused by an exploding lamp. She had wanted to see her mother but was denied by relatives; Alfrida responded by saying that her mother would have wanted to see her if their places were reversed. She receives no more information about Alfrida until Alfrida's illegitimate daughter appears at the funeral of the narrator's father. her daughter tells the narrator that Alfrida grudgingly admired the narrator's writing, although Alfrida thought that the narrator wasn't as smart as she thought she was. This revelation causes the narrator to return to the evening of her last dinner with her father's cousin. Afterward she had gone to a coffee shop where, drinking the coffee and watching the middle-class men and women around her, the narrator had thought that this was what she truly wanted out of life. So essentially the protagonist went back on her words and became the women she never sought out to become “City Girl” and a middle class women living amongst other middle class citizens just like Alfrida. This is an effect of irony well implemented into the story with