Alice Munro didn't write "whodunnits" in the way Agatha Christie did. She wrote "who are we" stories. When people pick up The Love of a Good Woman, they often expect a cozy Canadian mystery or a straightforward period piece. What they get instead is a cold bucket of water to the face. It’s a long story—nearly a novella—and it starts with a dead optometrist in a submerged car.
If you’ve never read it, or if you’re revisiting it because you can’t stop thinking about that ending, you’re in good company. Munro won the Nobel Prize for a reason. She takes the mundane lives of rural Ontario folks and injects them with a level of psychological dread that most horror writers would envy. The Love of a Good Woman is arguably her masterpiece because it refuses to give the reader an easy out. It’s messy. It’s slightly gross in places. Honestly, it’s a bit mean. But it is profoundly true to how secrets actually function in small towns.
The Optometrist in the River
The story begins with a group of boys. They’re just kids, really, out for a wander in the 1950s. They find a car in the river. Inside is Mr. Willens, the local optometrist. Now, in a normal story, these boys would run screaming for the police. But Munro knows people better than that. These boys have their own lives, their own fears of their parents, and a strange, detached curiosity. They don't report it right away. They go home. They eat dinner. They live with the secret for a while.
This sets the stage for everything that follows. The car in the river is a physical manifestation of the things we submerge. Whether it's a body, a crime, or a feeling, we think if we keep it under the surface, it’s gone. But the water is clear. People can see through it if they look hard enough.
Mr. Willens wasn't just a victim of an accident. As the narrative shifts—suddenly and somewhat jarringly—to Enid, a practical nurse, we start to see the cracks in the "good woman" facade. Enid is the titular character, or at least the one we associate with the phrase. She’s "good" by every societal metric. She cares for the dying. She’s patient. She’s chaste. But "goodness" in a Munro story is rarely a virtue; it’s often a cage or a weapon.
The Dying Secret of Mrs. Quinn
The heart of the narrative beats in a cramped, sweaty house where Enid is caring for Jeanette Quinn. Mrs. Quinn is dying of kidney failure. She’s not a "nice" patient. She’s bitter, foul-mouthed, and resents Enid’s polished morality. It’s a clash of classes and temperaments.
Then comes the bombshell.
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Mrs. Quinn tells Enid that her husband, Rupert, killed Mr. Willens. She claims the optometrist was "poking around" where he shouldn't have been—specifically, that he was making advances or performing some kind of inappropriate exam on her—and Rupert caught him. Rupert killed him, and they sank the car together.
Is it true?
That is the question that drives the rest of The Love of a Good Woman. Mrs. Quinn is dying; her brain might be clouded by uremia. She might just want to spite Enid by dumping a horrific secret into her lap. After all, if Enid knows, she has to choose between her moral duty to the law and her "goodness" as a caretaker for Rupert, whom she is starting to fancy.
Why the "Good Woman" Title is Sarcastic
People often miss the irony. In the mid-20th century, a "good woman" was someone who kept the peace. Someone who cleaned up the messes—physical and metaphorical. Enid represents the domestic force that allows society to function by ignoring the rot underneath.
Think about the stakes for Enid. She has spent her life being the pillar of the community. If she reports Rupert, she destroys a family. If she doesn't, she’s an accessory to murder. Munro captures this tension with incredible precision. There’s a specific scene where Enid is cleaning the Quinn house, and the way Munro describes the grime and the smell of the sickroom makes you feel the weight of the secret. It’s heavy. It’s sticky.
Some critics, like Margaret Atwood or the late Harold Bloom, have pointed out that Munro’s women are often complicit in their own repression. Enid wants to be with Rupert. She wants a life. To get that life, she might have to step over a literal dead body. Is she still a good woman then? Or is the "goodness" just a performance she gives to keep her own world from collapsing?
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The Ending Everyone Argues About
The final sequence of the story is a masterclass in ambiguity. Enid and Rupert are by the river. The very river where Mr. Willens was found. Enid has decided she needs to know. She thinks she can judge him. She thinks she can save him, or perhaps save herself from him.
She asks him to take her out on the water in a boat.
She decides that if he takes her out and doesn't kill her, or if he confesses, she will know how to proceed. It’s a bizarre, high-stakes gamble. She is literally putting her life in the hands of a potential murderer to settle her conscience.
And then... the story ends.
Munro doesn't tell us if Rupert is a killer. She doesn't tell us if Enid lives or dies. She leaves us on the bank of the river, staring at the water.
This drives some readers crazy. We want closure. We want the "detective" to reveal the truth. But Munro’s point is that in real life, especially in the tight-knit social circles of the 1950s, truth was often secondary to survival. The secret stays in the river. Whether Rupert did it or not almost doesn't matter as much as the fact that Enid is willing to live with the doubt in exchange for a chance at a normal life.
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Key Themes to Remember
- Social Class: The boys at the beginning, the Quinns, and Enid all occupy different rungs of the ladder. Their proximity to the "truth" is often dictated by their social standing.
- The Physicality of Death: Munro doesn't shy away from the gross stuff. The description of Mrs. Quinn’s illness is visceral. It grounds the "lofty" themes of love and morality in the reality of failing bodies.
- Repression: This is the big one. The whole town is built on things not being said.
- Female Agency: Enid is active, but her actions are all within the bounds of what a woman "should" do. Her rebellion is quiet, internal, and potentially dangerous.
Common Misconceptions About the Story
I've seen people online arguing that the story is a "pro-feminist" anthem. It’s more complicated than that. Enid isn't exactly a hero. She’s a person navigating a very narrow hallway of options.
Another mistake is assuming Mrs. Quinn was definitely lying. There is a lot of evidence—the way Rupert acts, the specific details of the "accident"—that suggests she was telling the truth. But Munro deliberately leaves out the "smoking gun." She wants you to feel Enid’s uncertainty. If you are certain one way or the other, you’ve missed the psychological tension Munro worked so hard to build.
How to Approach Reading It (or Rereading It)
If you’re tackling this for a book club or a class, don't rush the first section with the boys. It feels disconnected at first, but it’s the anchor for the whole piece. It establishes the "eyes" of the town.
Pay attention to the objects. The red box of the optometrist. The linoleum in the kitchen. The water in the Cowalder River. In The Love of a Good Woman, objects hold the memories that people are too afraid to carry.
Actionable Insights for Fans of Alice Munro
If this story hit you hard, there are a few things you should do to deepen your appreciation for this style of "domestic gothic" literature:
- Read "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage": It’s another long-form Munro story that deals with the unintended consequences of "good" intentions and small-town cruelty.
- Look into the Southern Ontario Gothic tradition: Munro belongs to a specific literary movement (alongside Robertson Davies and Margaret Laurence) that explores the dark underbelly of seemingly polite, rural Canadian life.
- Journal on the "Silence": Think about a secret in your own family or town. Not necessarily a murder, but a "known unknown." How does that silence change the way people talk to each other? That’s the space Munro lives in.
- Watch "Away from Her": This is a film adaptation of another Munro story ("The Bear Came Over the Mountain"). It captures her tone perfectly—the mix of tenderness and absolute, chilling clarity about human nature.
Alice Munro passed away recently, leaving behind a body of work that basically redefined the short story. The Love of a Good Woman remains her most potent exploration of how we lie to ourselves just so we can keep waking up in the morning. It’s not a "feel-good" read, but it’s a "feel-everything" read.
Take a moment to sit with that ending again. Don't try to solve it. Just feel the weight of the boat on the water. That’s where the real story is.