Love is Blind

Love is Blind

Do you remember your first kiss? If you’re like most people, you would describe it as a magical occasion. Were you so certain you loved that person that you wouldn’t listen to anyone who said that you didn’t know the true feeling of love? This is what happened to Edie, the main character and narrator of Alice Munro’s “How I Met My Husband”. [."] After her first kiss, her eyes were so filled with love they didn’t see the pitfalls, twists, and turns ahead. The theme of the story is because love is blind, it can take you on a journey full of unexpected turns.

Like Edie, Alice Kelling, Chris Watter’s fiancee, doesn’t recognize that her love life is falling apart. Her characterization seems of a high society type because of her nice clothes- “a pair of brown of brown [Ouch] and white checked slacks and a yellow top” (775). However, Alice is also described as being “Nothing in the least pretty or even young-looking about her”(775). Blinded by her feelings for Chris, Alice is quick to judge before she knows all the facts. For instance when she gets upset at Edie for being intimate with Chris Watters. [Frag -1] (Edie of course doesn’t realize what being intimate includes.) “Girls like you are just nothing, they’re just public conveniences, just filthy little rags” (779). To any objective observer, the lack of love would be clear when after a night out, “ Chris got out of the car on one side and she got on the other and they walked off separately…” (777). Obviously though, Alice’s judgement was also clouded over with love’s blindness. Even though Edie and Alice were two very different people, they both succumbed to love’s blindness.

Since the story is a recollection of Edie’s life, it only makes sense that she is telling the story from her point-of view as a major character. The audience learns of the narrator’s identity in the following conversation: “Would you Edie?, Heather said. I said I didn’t know” (770). [They don't know this from the title?] Because Edie is telling the story, the audience is able to gather important subjective emotions and thoughts such as how she felt when she received her first kiss “…those little kisses, so soft…”(778) and when the letter from Chris Watters didn’t come.