“Now I no longer believe that people’s secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.”

–Alice Munro

Last week, Alice Munro’s daughter Andrea Skinner went public with her story of sexual abuse by her stepfather, and her mother’s subsequent decision to stay with him and protect him from the consequences of his actions.

Although Munro’s work often left me cold, I admired her technical mastery and appreciated her insight into her characters. She was one of the few writers to deal with girlhood in a respectful and complex way. And now that we know about her decision to sacrifice her daughter to her relationship with her husband, it’s hard not to feel betrayed.

For me, part of the problem is that Munro wrote about the many situations that hurt and stifle women with such anger and contempt. It’s hard to believe that when confronted with such a situation in real life, she took the side of the perpetrator.

But really, why am I surprised? So much of her work was about secrets and shame. Why was it such a surprise that she was keeping her own? Or that she, like so many women, was feminist in the abstract but failed to live up to those ideals in real life? It’s shockingly common for a mother to blame her own daughter in situations like this, apparently. There can be many reasons, ranging from victim-blaming to financial dependence and emotional weakness, and none of them are good enough.

We need to talk about the systems of power that benefit from these decision to ignore or condone abuse. We need to pay attention to the violence that occurs in real life. Andrea Skinner, like so many survivors  of all kinds of abuse, deserves to tell her story and to heal. Whether anyone still wants to read Munro’s stories is beside the point.