Academics grapple with how to teach Alice Munro’s work in wake of daughter’s sexual assault revelations

Academics across Canada are rethinking how to teach one of the country’s most acclaimed authors in the wake of revelations that Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro had known about the sexual abuse her second husband, Gerald Fremlin, had inflicted on her daughter.

Ms. Munro has been a mainstay of English class curriculums for decades and some universities have dedicated entire courses to her work.

Her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner revealed the details of her stepfather’s abuse in an undated blog post, and then in an essay in the Toronto Star, sending shock waves through Canada’s literary and academic worlds.

“This will, without a doubt, affect the way we teach and write about Munro’s work,” Lorraine York, distinguished university professor at McMaster University and an expert in Canadian literature and celebrity culture, said in an e-mail.

“I now need to teach her work with this painful reckoning in mind. I see it as a responsibility to do so.”

Prof. York said that since the news broke she and her colleagues have been revisiting certain passages, particularly one at the end of Ms. Munro’s final book, Dear Life: “We say of some things that they can’t be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do – we do it all the time.”

“I need to sit with those sentences for a long while,” Prof. York said.

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In her account, Ms. Skinner wrote that in 1976, when she was 9, Mr. Fremlin “climbed into my bed and sexually assaulted me.” She added that her stepfather later openly discussed his sex life with her when she was a child, exposed himself to her on car rides and discussed “little girls in the neighbourhood he liked.”

Though Ms. Skinner said she disclosed Mr. Fremlin’s behaviour to Ms. Munro in the 1990s, the author chose to remain with Mr. Fremlin – who was convicted of indecent assault in 2005 – until his death in 2013. Ms. Munro died in May at the age of 92.

Ms. Skinner wrote that she felt “left alone” by her parents after her experience.

Prof. York said in the coming days academics and others will be asking “how to account for the way in which both Munro and Canadian literature as a field allowed for this silencing.”

“People in the industry knew and decisions were made that prolonged the silence and the harm that was done. That is what we need to reckon with,” Prof. York said.

Shelley Hulan, a University of Waterloo English professor who has taught Ms. Munro’s work, said future classes will take on an additional complexity because people in the literary community appeared to have been aware of the abuse before it was made public. Not only will Ms. Skinner’s story fit into her course instruction, she said, but it raises questions “about Canadian literary power, the CanLit canon, and Canadian literary celebrity that will demand discussion in Canadian literature classrooms.”

Douglas Gibson, the former president and publisher of McClelland & Stewart, said, “As Alice’s Canadian editor and publisher I was aware that Alice and Andrea were estranged for a number of years. In 2005 it became clear what the issue was, with Gerry Fremlin’s full shameful role revealed, but I have nothing to add to this tragic family story, and wish the family a continued recovery.”

Neil Besner, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Winnipeg, said he had no previous inkling of the situation revealed in the piece by Ms. Skinner this weekend.

He said there are two schools of thought about artists and their work: one sees the work, or the art, as separate from the life of the writer; the other sees private life as very much a part of the artist’s work.

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“I taught a seminar at one point devoted to Munro at the University of Winnipeg, and I would do so again. Except it would be a very different kind of seminar now,” Prof. Besner said.

Although he can’t condone what she did, Prof. Besner said he also can’t imagine not reading or teaching the work of an author who has been called Canada’s Chekhov.

“She certainly understands a hell of a lot and writes about it in a way that very few people can,” he said. “It’s a difficult question, and I’m not about to preach to anyone about what one should do about it.”

Sherrill Grace, professor emerita of literature at the University of British Columbia, said she was “absolutely floored” by the news. Almost immediately, she said, she thought it explained some things in Ms. Munro’s work.

She also said she hoped it wouldn’t tarnish the author’s reputation and achievements, and cautioned against a rush to judgment.

“I would hope that most literary scholars would just take a step back and say, ‘Wait a minute, we need more information, we need to reflect. And we need to try to understand the circumstances,’” Prof. Grace said.

As a biographer herself, Prof. Grace said she imagines another biography of Ms. Munro will emerge in time.

“I think it’s a sad day. And I think that sadness is deeply embedded in some of Alice’s stories, and maybe there needs to be more human compassion and understanding here.”