Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro was published in 1971 and is composed of eight interlinked short stories. Munro examines the everyday life of a young girl, Del Jordan, as she comes of age in a small, Canadian town during the 1940s, against the backdrop of World War II. Inspired by Munro’s childhood, the narrator explores the setting, including local wildlife and the town’s inhabitants, and focuses on themes surrounding coming of age, the relationships between mothers and daughters, female empowerment, and the disparities between social classes. The stories adhere to the realism genre due to Munro’s attention to detail and exploration of mundane, ordinary lives, while also employing gothic images relating to the natural world. Lives of Girls and Women was adapted into a Canadian television movie in 1994.

This study guide refers to the Vintage Books paperback edition published in 2001.

Content Warning: The source text contains references to murder, death by suicide and suicidal ideation, and sexual abuse, including sexual interactions between an adult and a young teenager. The source text also includes outdated and offensive language surrounding race and mental health conditions that are reproduced only via quotations.

Plot Summaries

Lives of Girls and Women follows Del Jordan as she grows up in rural Jubilee, Ontario, in the 1940s. Del explores the natural landscape and attempts to understand the people around her, such as her parents and close neighbors. Each story chronicles a key moment in Del’s life as she develops from childhood to adulthood.

In “The Flats Road,” Del narrates as a young girl around the age of nine, who watches as her neighbor and family friend, Uncle Benny, marries a teenaged single mother he connected with through a newspaper advertisement. Del spends the summer before the fourth grade exploring the natural landscape of Flats Road, including the river that runs through her father’s silver fox farm; she focuses on the people who live down Flats Road, like Uncle Benny and his new wife, who ends up leaving her new husband after abusing both him and her baby.

The second story, “Heirs of the Living Body,” explores new characters, such as Del’s Uncle Craig and her aunts, as Del’s world expands beyond Jubilee and Flats Road. She spends much time with Craig, who is a clerk for the town he lives in, and she must navigate his death as she develops a passion for knowledge and writing. In this story, she also spends time with her cousin, Mary Agnes.

“Princess Ida” follows Del’s mother, Ada, as she begins a job selling encyclopedias door to door. Del goes on the road with her mother, and they spend a lot of time in the center of Jubilee, which causes Del to develop a love-hate relationship with the town. Ada shares her own experience with sexual abuse at the hands of Del’s uncle, Bill. When Bill comes to visit the family, Del develops a new perspective on the people around her because of the secrets they keep.

In “Age of Faith,” Del grapples with questioning religion after attending church. Del views the church as a social gathering just as much as a religious one, and she notices how it helps categorize people in town, such as those deemed outcasts for not attending the church’s service. Del attends various churches to find meaning and understanding in religious beliefs.

“Changes and Ceremonies” focuses on Del’s developing sexuality through her first crush, Frank Wales. Throughout school, Del navigates her development into young adulthood around classmates her age, such as her friendship with Naomi. However, after her teacher, Miss Farris, dies via drowning, Del recognizes that the town of Jubilee hides many secrets and begins to view her environment with distrust, which takes her focus away from her crush.

In the titular story, “Lives of Girls and Women,” Del meets Art Chamberlain, who works at the local radio station and is in a relationship with Fern Dogherty, the boarder who lives with Ada. Art makes sexual advances toward Del, though she has just started high school, and skips town after exposing himself to her.

Del meets two new romantic partners in “Baptizing”: Jerry Storey, an intelligent but eccentric classmate, and Garnet French, who lives on a farm and was previously jailed for a drunken brawl. After she and Garnet decide to marry, he insists that she must be baptized first and nearly drowns her attempting to do so in the river. Del never sees him again after walking home alone. Her relationship with Naomi has fizzled out, but the pair come back together before they broach into adulthood.

In “Epilogue: The Photographer,” Del is a budding writer. She retells how she creates her story and ponders the craft of storytelling as she develops an idea for a novel based on Jubilee and its inhabitants, but she doesn’t write it down, claiming that writing it down would cause it to lose its beauty.