28 pages • 56 minutes read
Alice MunroThe Bear Came over the Mountain
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Enduring Effects of Infidelity and Guilt
One of the most significant themes in “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” is the theme of infidelity and its ongoing influence on one’s actions, reactions, and thought processes. Because the story follows Grant and his memories for most of the narrative, readers are privy to his thought processes and rationales for his infidelity. He minimizes these indiscretions, telling himself that he wasn’t “as bad” as his colleagues because he didn’t have “half as many conquests or complications” (296). He says he was “pushed out” just in time by “the feminists and perhaps the sad silly girl herself and his cowardly so-called friends” (298), thus allowing him to keep his marriage to Fiona. He reasons that because he always went back to Fiona, he was a dutiful husband. He blames “the times” for his getting swept up in a “contagion” that people were running toward. Grant doesn’t take accountability and blames outside forces for his infidelity. His image was more important than his vows, revealing the selfishness of both infidelity and Grant as a person.
Grant’s guilt, shame, and recognition of his hypocrisy are present throughout the narrative. He projects his own experiences and assumptions onto Fiona, clouding his ability to empathize with his wife and understand her relationship with Aubrey. When Grant starts to suspect that Fiona and Aubrey are in a romantic relationship, his first instinct is to believe Fiona is pulling a prank or cheating: “He could not decide. She could have been playing a joke. It would not be unlike her” (302). In the same breath, he realizes that “she thought perhaps he was a new resident” (302). The sentences stumble over each other, as if Grant is wrestling with how it could be possible that Fiona cheats on him in a nursing home of all places. Grant exhibits this with his turmoil and third wheeling during Fiona’s time with Aubrey, selfishly getting jealous and questioning Fiona’s condition.
Despite his discomfort with Aubrey’s and Fiona’s relationship and the emphasis on his infidelity being a thing of the past, his tendencies endure through the end of the narrative. This is evident when he meets Marian and cannot stop himself from objectifying her and thinking of her as another potential love interest.
The Limits of Selfish Love
In “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” love is complex and complicated. While Grant and Fiona have been married for 50 years, Grant’s past infidelity—and his new interest in Marian—highlight the selfishness underlying his love for his wife. Grant continuously emphasizes his duties as a husband, reassuring himself that he has fulfilled them despite straying during their marriage, as a means of assuaging his guilt. Grant clearly loves Fiona, but his efforts to show it after she moves to Meadowlake are clumsy and centered on his needs. When he brings her flowers, a romantic gesture he’s never offered before, she barely notices. He visits when it’s less crowded and is convenient for him. He expresses frustration with Fiona’s memory loss, unable to fully accept that she isn’t tricking him.
When Grant finds that Fiona has found new love, he is initially unable to access empathy for Fiona or her needs, focusing instead on his discomfort. Fiona’s and Aubrey’s relationship is dreamlike in a way that feels like an exaggeration to Grant at first. He notices that she uses flowery language like “honey” and “dear heart.” When playing bridge with Aubrey, “Fiona shuffle[s] and deal[s] for him and sometimes move[s] quickly to straighten a card that seemed to be slipping from his grasp” (305). She pushes Aubrey’s wheelchair or walks with him, arm-in-arm, with Grant stalking behind. During a particularly emotional scene just before Aubrey departs Meadowlake, Grant finds Aubrey and Fiona “hanging onto each other’s hands” in Fiona’s room (316), saying goodbye before Aubrey departs. In this moment, Fiona requests Grant's help, asking him to use his "influence" with the administrators so Aubrey can stay. Grant refuses, thinking it “improper” to help, and is so put off by Fiona's and Aubrey's embrace that he simply leaves. His love for Fiona, and his ability to ease her pain in this moment, is limited by his selfishness.
This traumatic goodbye, which leads to Fiona becoming sick and beginning to decline, is a turning point in the narrative. Only after seeing his wife face true heartbreak and sorrow is Grant moved to make a sacrifice for her. Her grief motivates Grant to ask Marian if Aubrey can visit Fiona. However, his request is complicated by his budding feelings for Marian, whom he views as potential love interest for himself. He might be able to atone for his past by helping his hurt wife see her new love, but there is still something in it for him—Marian.
The Impacts of Class on Relationships
Munro depicts the impacts of socioeconomic class on relationships throughout the narrative, as wealth plays a role in how relationships are held together and tested. The impacts of class differences are evident in Fiona’s and Grant’s relationship, but also in the ways their financial situation contrasts with that of Marian and Aubrey.
Fiona and Grant come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Fiona’s father is described as “an important cardiologist, revered around the hospital” (286). In contrast, Grant is from a single-parent household, his mother “a small-town widow who worked as a doctor’s receptionist” (287). What’s more, they live in Fiona’s family home, which has been paid off and renovated. Fiona has always been taken care of financially, and Grant still lives in that home when Fiona is moved to Meadowlake. On both their retirement funds, Grant can afford to live in their large farmhouse and pay for Fiona’s treatment without issue.
In contrast, Aubrey and Marian are not well-off, demonstrating the impact wealth—or a lack of it—has when making decisions about one’s quality of life. Marian tells Grant she can’t afford to have Aubrey stay in Meadowlake for an extended period; she would have to sell her house, the only thing they own outright. Their finances are limited because the company Aubrey worked for “left [them] high and dry” (327), shoving Aubrey out without much money to cover his workplace injury. They lack wealth while Grant and Fiona do not, and it leaves in quiet context all the ups and downs of having to take care of an aging partner all on your own. Wealth makes it difficult to get proper care if there’s not enough money, and wealth forces too much change if there’s not enough of it. Wealth can make things run smoothly, like with Fiona and Grant, or it can cause issues, like with Aubrey and Marian. Showing these differences in financial situations illustrates that life and quality aren’t always affordable. As Marian says to Grant, “You can’t beat life” (327).
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By Alice Munro
