"Rose thought of her own family as straddling the river, belonging nowhere, but that was not true. " Throughout the stories, throughout her entire life, Alice Munro's main character, Rose, in Who Do You Think You Are? struggles to grasp her identity. In many ways, Rose defines herself as a contrast to her stepmother, Flo. Rose, who's voice we hear and whose life we follow throughout this collection of stories, is described as ever changing, growing as her dreams enlarge and changing as she moves across the country, Flo's identity is static.
[...] The relationship between Flo and Rose is also a very valuable tool with which we can analyze their names. While the reader is not given information on Rose's birth mother, Rose is clear, from the outset, that Flo is not Rose's real mother. Rose never considers her a mother; Flo is only a mother-like figure. Even while Flo is the parental figure who protects Rose the most, Flo attempts to stop Rose's father from beating Rose, Rose never views her as a protector. [...]
[...] Rose a dreamer, Flo a realist. As badly as Rose wants to escape her past, she cannot. Rose believes herself to be an outsider. While she claims that she does not like wealth such as Patrick's, she desperately wants to feel as though she fits. Even later in her life as she has established herself, independently, these feelings linger. At a party she believes the other guests “were giving her quick, despising looks. Or so she thought .Establishment,” and later, wanted to plead with them, so they would forgive her and love her and take her on their We are led to believe it is not her choice to be an outsider. [...]
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