Analysis Of Alice Munro's Wild Swans

In Alice Munro’s story “Wild Swans”, Rose is imagining things that may confuse people into thinking that she is being sexually harassed. Rose is a young girl who rides on a train for the first time and is seated next to an old man. She feels the old man 's hand on her leg in a disrespectful manner but it is all in her head. It is proven that Rose was only imagining the old man’s hand on her leg in a sexual manner in the since of: her own desire of wanting pleasure, the old man 's kindness and age shows that he is blameless, and lastly pressure shows that what she was feeling was a ten dollar in her pocket not a hand. Rose wants to be “Pounded, pleasured, reduced, exhausted”. Her desire of wanting to feel pleasure influences her to think of being touched in inappropriate ways. Her want for

Rose imagines her French teacher touching her in a sexual way. “She has a considerable longing to be somebody’s object” (Munro 153). It is no wonder why she imagines the old man’s hand on her. Her imagination of being touched has happened more than once. She is so eager to have a man in her life she imagines to have pleasure with any man including the old man. When she thought of the old man’s hand on her, “She thought of flesh: lumps of flesh, pink snouts, fat roungues”(Munro 154). It is obvious that she is imagining being pounded by him. The people on the train would have kicked them out. If rose is able to imagine being pounded by any man ,then she is able to imagine being sexually harassed by the old man. Her French teacher was much younger than the old man which is