Front Burner - Grappling with Alice Munro’s dark family secret

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

The late Canadian author Alice Munro remains one of the best-known fiction writers in the English language. She won a Nobel prize for her work, and was celebrated for her intimate portrayals of the lives of women and girls. But for decades, Munro hid a dark secret: her husband had sexually abused her youngest daughter when she was a child, and Munro stuck by him — even after her daughter stopped speaking to her, and even after her husband was convicted of sexual assault.Now, Munro’s daughter, Andrea Robin Skinner, has published an explosive essay in the Toronto Star, detailing the abuse and the ways that her mother — and the rest of the family — kept silent about it. Today we’re going to unpack what all of this means with Zoe Whittall, a TV and fiction writer whose books include Wild Failure, The Best Kind of People, The Spectacular, and others.If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, and you’re looking for support, you can find a list of local sexual assault centres, crisis lines and other resources across Canada at https://endingviolencecanada.org/sexual-assault-centres-crisis-lines-and-support-services/. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. A warning before we get started here, we talk about child sexual abuse in this episode. The details are graphic and it could be hard to listen to. Please do so with care. The late Alice Munro wasn't just one of Canada's most masterful storytellers. She was and remains one of the most famous fiction writers in the world.

She's a Nobel laureate and credited with, as the New York Times once put it, revolutionizing the architecture of the short story. And one of the things that she is most celebrated for is her intimate explorations of the lives of women and girls. All of these things are true about Alice Monroe. Here's something else that is true. In 2005, Monroe's husband, Gerald Fremlin, pled guilty to sexually assaulting Monroe's youngest daughter, Andrea Robin Skinner, when she was a child. Monroe had known about it for years, but she stayed with him.

Andrea was nine years old when the abuse started. She would spend the school years in Victoria with her father, and in the summers, she would stay with her mother and her stepfather in rural Ontario. That's where Andrea was assaulted by Jerry, when Alice Monroe was away. He crawled into her bed and rubbed her genitals and made her hold his penis. Jerry told her that if her mother knew, it would kill her. He continued to abuse his stepdaughter in the summers that followed, Andrea says, exposing himself to her, at times masturbating in front of her, propositioning her for sex, until she was a teenager. In 1992, when Andrea was 25, she told her mom about the abuse. But Monroe eventually

decided to stick with her husband, even after Andrea stopped speaking to her, even after the conviction. And as Monroe continued her rise as one of the most famous fiction writers in the English language, this story remained hidden. Until now. On Sunday, the Toronto Star published an explosive essay by Andrea detailing the abuse and the ways that Monroe and the rest of the family kept silent about it for decades. The star also published a companion piece of reporting in which Andrea's siblings come forward about her abuse. Today, I'm going to unpack what all of this means with Zoe Whittle. She's a TV and fiction writer whose books include

Wild Failure, The Best Kind of People, The Spectacular, and others. Zoe, thank you so much for coming onto the show and for doing this with me today. Thank you for having me. So I want to start in 1992. Andrea Robin Skinner was 25 then, and she wrote a letter to her mother telling her about the abuse. She wrote that, quote, I have been afraid all my life that you would blame me for what happened. And how did Alice Monroe react to those revelations? Was she sympathetic to her daughter? She wasn't sympathetic. She, in fact, reacted by feeling like a victim herself. It's not that she didn't believe her, but she didn't support her. And she chose her husband over her daughter. Yeah. I mean, it's striking to me that, as Andrea tells it, Monroe, as you

mentioned, seemed to make this about herself, about her being betrayed, about a quote-unquote infidelity, according to Andrea, rather than her child being sexually abused. That must have been just so excruciating, so difficult for this young woman to have gone through. It must have been extraordinarily difficult. And I think that she's so brave and coming forward with the details now because, you know, over and over and over again from the time she was a child, she did tell the truth and was not supported by her. Like she had so many adults around her in a parenting role who did not support her and who kept quiet. Though I had told most of my family about the abuse when I was 10 years old, no action was taken to protect me,

and I was sent back to my stepfather's house. Unfortunately, nobody did anything to stop it or help me heal at that time. And the effects of that were that I felt really devalued and even dehumanized by not just my abuser, but all of the significant people of my life. You know, when she told her father and her stepmother, right after the abuse occurred, they all decided to keep it from Alice Monroe, from her mother. And, you know, in fact, she didn't tell her until she was 25. And I think, you know, Alice's reaction was to say that they did this on purpose to humiliate her.

was to say that they did this on purpose to humiliate her. Right, that the father did. And that, you know, it seemed like every piece of information that she learned, she reacted very selfishly. I cannot imagine the toll that that takes. And I think that she's very brave for coming forward now. And I just want to note that, you know, Andrea writes that her mother had told her about other children that Fremlin had quote unquote friendships with, again, emphasizing her own sense that she personally had been betrayed. that Jerry had exposed himself to their 14-year-old daughter. So it does sound like this was not the only incident of her husband sexually abusing a child that Monroe was aware of. Absolutely. She does detail that in the essay.

And also, you know, it shows and illustrates that over and over, she did not think of the victims of Jerry as being children, of being innocent, of not, you know, she thought of them as equals and of people that she was competing with in some ways for his attention. You know, when Monroe initially found out about the abuse, she left for her condo in B.C., but after some months, she did come back. And her husband, Jerry, didn't deny the abuse. Andrea writes that he told Monroe he would kill Andrea if she went to police.

He wrote letters to Andrea's family blaming her for the abuse. Actually, he described her as a Lolita and said that she, quote, invaded my bedroom for sexual adventure. But in spite of the threats, yeah, in spite of the letters, in spite of these other apparent instances of her husband possibly abusing other children. Alice, as I said, went back to her husband. And I think a lot of people have learned about this and are completely and totally shocked by it. And does that surprise you? You know, there are certain details about this case that does surprise me and shock me in terms of how much she knew and the incredible amount of detail that she was able to just be in denial about and push aside. I think that that is startling for any person and also specifically for somebody who wrote about silence and this kind of issue over

and over in her work. So in that way, I was surprised. But in another way, I felt like this is a common and can be a common reaction for wives of abusers. And it really made me think about the character of Joan from my novel, The Best Kind of People, who does at the end of the book, spoiler alert, decide to stay with her husband despite knowing everything she knows. And, you know, I think that there are a variety of reasons why women do this. I think that a lot of women do this because of financial dependence. But I also think, you know, in this case, that doesn't apply to Alice Munro. She was obviously the breadwinner for everyone around her in her family. And, you know, so then

you think, what would the reasons be other than selfishness and narcissism, codependence, or an inability to live without a man or, you know, a kind of weakness of character, which is kind of hard to square with the Monroe we think we know, because, you know, of course, we always think, especially a writer as studied and with such a long and storied career as Alice Monroe we begin to think in artists like this our relationships with them that we actually know who they are and of course of course we can never know I want to come back to that in a few minutes um But just to clarify, you talked about your book, The Best Kind of People, which is one of the reasons why we actually wanted to have you

on the show today, because you spend so much time kind of thinking about these issues. And just for people who might not know, the storyline there is that it's the father, he's like a beloved teacher, he's charged with sexual assault. So also a crime that a lot of people would think is unforgivable that the wife, as you mentioned, chooses in the end to stay with him. But before we grapple more with the legacy of Alice Monroe, I just I do also want to talk about one more detail that, you know, I found really casually cruel. Like, I don't know how else to describe it. So after she tells her mother and she's essentially kind of rebuffed, right? Andrea does try to keep up a relationship with her mother and her siblings. And, you know, the whole family really sweeps this under the rug.

And then she becomes a mother herself and she gives birth to twins and she tells her mother that Jerry can't be around her children. And just tell me a little bit about how Monroe responds to that and what kind of reaction you had when you read that response. I was particularly revolted by this response because I think it lays bare the incredible narcissism and the victim blaming that she responded with for years and years and years. You know, her reaction was to say that this would be difficult for her because she doesn't drive and, you know, Jerry does the driving. And like how, like it just so out to lunch and so narcissistic to say that about visiting her own grandchildren was just shocking to me. And I think it really, you know, after that happened, Andrea does sever her relationship with her mother and they don't, it never was reconciled. And that is just so heartbreaking. And it is just continually

heartbreaking to see a pattern of how Alice really made herself the child in that scenario. And she never gave her daughter the dignity and the respect and what every child needs, which is to be acknowledged as a child and to be cared for and protected. And that is a particularly heartbreaking detail about this story. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples,

I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. One thing that struck me is that this kind of denial is something you do often see from partners of abusers in these situations because if they stopped denying it they'd have to admit to others and maybe more importantly to themselves that they were complicit in it and like I wonder what you think about that I think that that's absolutely accurate and I think that uh often when women are in this much denial or partners I should say are in this much denial or partners, I should say, are in this much denial of their significant other's abuse, to reckon with what they actually did, they would have to also turn the mirror toward themselves and to, you know, really admit the gut feelings they may have had,

the confusion they may have had, and then also to realize that they made mistakes by not supporting the victim by not loving their own children or people in their lives. Because I think that there's also something to be said, you know, and one of the reasons why I wrote the character of Joan the way I did and what with the way I framed the best kind of people was that I was particularly interested in the complexity of the emotional experience of being a bystander. And in particularly, like, when you find something out that's monstrous about someone you love, you don't necessarily and I think most people do not stop loving that person. And then you're left with this very confusing position and people around you will tell you exactly what you need

to feel and what is expected of you. But often, I think the urge to be in denial and to not look at it is probably very strong. And I also think that it's very, it's condoned by our culture and certainly was in the 70s, 80s, 90s, to really try to pretend that everything was fine when it wasn't. And that is, you know, the bread and butter of the milieu, like the communities that Alice Minow writes about. And yet, like, you know, the bread and butter of the milieu, like the communities that Alice Minow writes about. And yet, like, you know, you hear about how the family really never talked about it. And yet I do wonder how much she was in denial internally because there's one particular story that she wrote called Vandals, right? And it was published two years after Andrea first told her mother about the abuse. And it has to do with a man who sexually abused his neighbors when they

were children and how his wife may or may not have known. And there's a line in it where one of those now grown children wonders if the wife B, quote, had forgiven Ladner after all or made a bargain not to remember. I wonder if that suggests to you that she was fully aware of the impacts of this kind of abuse on these children and the impacts of someone denying it, you know, also plausibly, that she actually consciously made a choice to treat her daughter the way that she did. to treat her daughter the way that she did. I think that, you know, and I reread Vandals yesterday, and I had this eerie feeling. Reading it made me realize or made me think or confirmed a feeling I had

that she knew exactly what she was doing and was using her fiction to work through the awfulness of those feelings. And I think that a lot of times writers will put on the page in disguise the emotional problems that they're having and the intense experiences that they're having, and they can have full control of what the characters are thinking or feeling or doing the way that they don't have in real life. And I think that in real life, certainly a lot of writers are not as good at communicating or as good at doing the right thing. And I think it would be inescapable, I would imagine, to not write about it given how much you would have to

think about it knowing the guilt that you must carry. She must have had a lot of guilt and shame over her decisions. I mean, assuming that she wasn't a true narcissist in that sense, despite having done a very narcissistic thing. I haven't read the entirety of her work, but there is a darkness to it, right? I'm thinking of the one-story child's play where two friends murder a disabled child at a summer camp and they never tell anybody. And then in Dimensions, which might be kind of more well-known, the father murders his three children and the wife still visits him in prison. It's grim, right? Like so much of her work touched on the cruelty of humanity.

And, you know, just kind of picking up on what you were saying, like I think it raises the question now, was she always showing us this part of her? page, like all of her poetic obsessions, so to speak, you know, the themes repeat and repeat and repeat of, you know, silence and sexuality and dealing with men's violence and condoning men's violence and all of that. They're really present in almost everything she writes. And so in some ways, it's not a surprise, but in other ways, this is part of the shock, you know, that someone can be so eloquent and so thoughtful and work through the complexities of these issues on the page, but not in real life. You're a big fan of Alison's work. You have been a big fan of her work for a very long time and like how are you grappling with what all of this means now like how are you looking at her

work now well i think that reading her work for me feels different i think it doesn't change for me what i think of the quality of her work or it doesn't shift my memory of how much it's been important to me, but it does make me feel all sorts of conflicting things about what to do with that shock and disappointment and how I feel about her artwork. And the more I think about it, the more I think about it's not necessarily that important to be definitive or to have the same opinion as everyone else around the separation between art and artist. And it's more important for us to, you know, publicly support Andrea and her story. And also it's important to, you know, use this example to shine a light on the issue of

familial scapegoating and the isolation of abuse victims in our community, like the real people who exist in real life and not just on the page. Yeah. And I think I'll just put a point on what you just said, like just how courageous it was for Andrea to tell her story. And I just think of all the good that she will do by doing so. Though, one thing I did want to talk to you about is how long it has taken for this to come out, right? So, you know, after the conversation about Alice not being able to drive, Andrea cuts contact with her mother. You know, she ends up taking Jerry's letters to the police and reporting his abuse. And he actually pleads guilty, right? Like he's convicted, he's sentenced to two years probation. And like there is a paper record of this. So this happened in 2005. And it is absolutely crazy to me

that we didn't all find out about this then 20 years ago. You know, we're talking about a public record. And, you know, how is it possible that something like this could remain hidden for so long? And I just want to add to that, that she had reached out to journalists and other people that she wanted to tell this story earlier. So I just find this just shocking that this is just information that we're learning about now. I think it's absolutely extraordinary how many people protected Alice Monroe. And I think that it's a very sad feature of Andrea's journey trying to get her story told. You know, there's been a tremendous shift in how the publishing industry protects or doesn't protect its financial investments.

And I think that, you know, when I was first starting out in publishing, there were a lot of rumors about how mostly men were protected from scrutiny because, you know, they were these kinds of figures. And now it's almost the opposite. For example, you know, I had a sensitivity reader look over a novel a couple of years ago and tell me that I can't use the word dyke in my own fiction, even though that's how I identify. And so, you know, now publishers are putting in a lot of money into trying to prevent scandal, so to speak. And I think that Alice Munro is so unique in terms of her positionality in the industry as someone who has been the only author beside that would to transcend our borders, and also to be held up as a kind of intellectual figure for people around the world. And I think that

her quietness in the public eye and her whiteness and her positionality worked to kind of enshroud her and protect her from any kind of scrutiny. Andrea writes in her own essay, you know, my mother's fame meant the silence continued. I've been thinking a lot about that, like how all of these people around a famous person like Alice Munro, her biographer who has since said that he did know about this around the time that the book was published in 2005, but, you know, essentially didn't want to make things worse. You know, her other children, her ex-husband who she remained friends with, right? And who still had, like,

you know, meals with her, you know, they would all benefit from the positive reputation of a famous person, right? Like, whether it's financial or status. So, you know, in theory, like a publisher or, you know, other people, even journalists, like, in her orbit, like they would all have something to lose by letting this get out into the open. They absolutely would all have something to lose. And also it's one of those situations where I think in some ways a reading public or a fandom is often really eager to push people off pedestals and likes to see a downfall story, but not for Alice Munro. I think it confuses me in terms of like how many people knew and how it still didn't manage to get out. I think that there would have to be such lack of curiosity on the part of, you know, literary reporters and people on this beat in

particular. But I think, you know, what probably had a lot to do with it was, you know, the guilt and shame that the family felt, and also the people around her making those kinds of decisions, based on a real old way of thinking about protecting the family and it not being their place, etc. Zoe, before we go today, I just, I wonder, maybe I could end on like a very open-ended question for you. You know, as someone who has tackled this kind of subject matter, what else have we not talked about yet that you would want people to take away from this story? And from Andrew's story in particular, like what kind of conversations do you hope people have about this? Well, you know, I think that where we shine the spotlight in these kinds of discussions is not often useful. And I think that it would really help if we were to talk about the systems of power that benefit from the way we continually ignore or condone familial violence and domestic violence, because there's a bit of a, you know, a banality

to like, the level of casual acceptance we have of this type of violence and of sexual violence against children, that really does no one any favors. And I think like, at the same time, we have this sort of right wing moral panic about quote, unquote, pedophilia, that is really about homophobia and transphobia, et cetera. And so like, there's really not a lot of will to really reckon with the fact that most sexual violence happens in the home or happens with people that families know. And there is still like a real machine that keeps this all in the shadows, despite the advances that we've come to think

of in the last few years. So, you know, I really hope that Andrea's story shines a light and helps other people who have been through this and who have these kinds of silences in their family. It helps people feel like they're not alone and that we should all be focusing on our community's response to familial violence. Okay. I think that that's a perfect place for us to end. Zoe, thank you so much for this. Thank you so much. Okay, that is all for today.

You can find a list of local sexual assault centers, crisis lines, That is all for today. You can find a list of local sexual assault centers, crisis lines, and other resources across Canada at the website endingviolencecanada.org. We are also going to put this link in our show notes. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.