The other girl, Miss McKillop, is of a more durable constitution though of lean frame and not so good a complexion. The matron doesn’t seem shocked by this and gives him some recommendations as if they were products, even if she can say that it is for the girs’ own good: “a marriage to a likely man would probably be preferred to a lifetime of such work.” Here’s what Simon Herron learns of Annie: She is responding to an inquiry from a Simon Herron, a young man making his way in the rugged frontier, who apparently wants a wife and thought of the orphanage as a kind of shop. Our first glimpse of Annie is in a letter written by a woman who runs a girl’s orphanage in Toronto (the entire story is told through letters or other primary documents). This woman is Annie Herron, née McKillop. Still, by that time we recognize this rich, sympathetic character, even if her own accounts are contradictory. Here Alice Munro goes out into the wilderness of Canada in 1852 and shows us the survival of a woman who, at first, sits on the periphery of other narratives, unable to speak for herself until the end of the story. This is one of my favorite Alice Munro stories.
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