Friend of My Youth

The house where the Grieves sisters live is divided in half; Flora lives in one half, and Ellie and her husband Robert live in the other, larger half. This is an arrangement that is known to nearby townspeople, as are the reasons for the arrangement. To the casual observer, however, the house looks unified and whole, as if one family occupies all of it. The divided house symbolizes the hidden interior lives of Flora and the narrator’s mother, as well as the philosophical divides between characters of different generations and beliefs.

Once Ellie dies and Robert remarries, the house’s division becomes more extreme and apparent. Robert’s new wife, a bossy, materialistic woman, modernizes her and Robert’s half of the house, while Flora leaves her half of the house unaltered. Now the house does look strange and lopsided from the outside, and it is not the new wife who is blamed for this, but Flora. In this way, Munro literalizes the shifting public perception of Flora in town. By not allowing Audrey Atkinson to modernize her half of the house as well, she is failing to keep up appearances. The townspeople will tolerate stubbornness and eccentricity in their neighbors, as long as these qualities are not made public.