Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship
Alice Munro Paints a Different Kind of Love
The character Johanna, in the story, “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” by Alice Munro, developed her love in a different way. Her love affair arose through a series of letters with who she thought was Ken Boudreau.
The Art Of Letter Writing
The custom of letter writing has nimbly traversed the boundaries between the private lives of people since the dawn of written communication. The letter’s written in Munro’s, “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship Marriage” honored this tradition of relationships in written form. Though the letters were not truly between Johanna and a lover, unbeknownst to her, so it doesn’t devalue the love that Johanna developed through her correspondence. The letters were actually between Johanna and Sabitha/Edith, but they helped to influence the outcome of the story regardless. Though they were written as some part of a cruel joke on the parts of Sabitha/Edith, they were ultimately the cause of Johanna’s “happily ever after.”
A Written Love Affair
The correspondence between Johanna and Ken Boudreau did begin as a cruel joke on the parts of Ken’s daughter Sabitha and her devious and overzealous friend Edith. They intercepted a letter that Johanna had written to Ken (Munro 29). The children, suspecting Johanna’s crush on Ken decided to write back in his stead. So, they write the first of a series of letters to Johanna (Munro 33).
This letter was very simple in it’s intent, but with each letter the amount of harmfulness increases. Their little joke has the possibility of misfiring and ruining Johanna’s entire life, but being vindictive little girls, they don’t really care.
The friendship that was developing between the fictional Ken Boudreau and the very real Johanna Parry progressed from being this candid written friendship to being an illicit love affair. The declarations of friendship turn into smutty letters about Ken imagining Johanna in her nightie (Munro 40).
Taking a chance on the man from the other side of her letters, Johanna takes the furniture that Mr. McCauley is storing, and she ships it to Ken. She also ships herself. She leaves behind the job she had been working for countless years with almost no notice and no regret.
She trades in everything she has worked for to take a chance on meeting and being loved by the man from her letters. This is the point in the story where you would expect everything to fall apart. The reader expects Ken to reject Johanna because he knows nothing of the silly letters and fantasies she has had her head filled with, but this isn’t what happens.
Ken comes to the conclusion that a nice stable woman like Johanna would probably bring some regularity to his otherwise chaotic existence. Was it love? Probably not, at least on Ken’s part, but Johanna’s dreams weren’t shattered. Theirs was a different kind of love. Johanna was dewy eyed over Ken and Ken grew to appreciate Johanna for all she had given him and perhaps even began to love her.
Johanna's Happily Ever After
This is the proverbial kick in the butt to the two girls; their cruel trick had backfired on them. Johanna had gotten the guy. I suppose it was a relationship of convenience at the start, probably for both Johanna and Ken, but it was also a relationship where the company was appreciated. It was a “learn to love” sort of relationship, which is more than Johanna had ever dreamt of. So, Johanna’s fate couldn’t have happened without the aid of Sabitha and Edith’s cruel trick. If Johanna hadn’t received a response from Ken, then nothing in her life would have changed.
In retrospect, Johanna was saved from a life of loneliness and Ken was saved from the downward spiral he was so insistent on participating in all by a cruel joke gone awry. So, thanks to the time old tradition of letter writing and the time-honored tradition of rotten children, Johanna received her happily ever after.
Works Cited
Munro, Alice. “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship Marriage.” Hateship,
Friendship, Courtship, Loveship Marriage. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.
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