Alice Munro's “Fits”: Secrets, Mystery, and Marital Relations

In Alice Munro's heralded compilation, Selected Stories , the short story “Fits” (originally published in The Progress of Love, ), presents a challenge to interpretation in its provocative, disturbing portrayal of human behavior, specifically the behavior of individuals involved in committed heterosexual relationships. Certain crucial actions of these characters are, on the surface, baffling; however, when they are appraised from a psychodynamic perspective, they become fathomable.

The principal conundrum in the story is posed by the motive or motives behind the deception promulgated by Peg Kuiper on her husband Robert, whose point of view is the central focus of the story. By chance, Peg is the first to discover die bodies of middle-aged neighbors, Nora and Walter Weeble, Nora murdered by her husband, who has then killed himself. Mystifyingly, Peg lies to Robert about the nature of her first sight when she approached the bedroom door; she says she observed Mr. Weeble's leg with the foot in its shoe, but Robert knows this allegation is a falsehood since earlier that day, at a diner, Robert has run into the constable who investigated the deaths, and his description of the scene contradicts Peg's in one significant detail: What Peg first witnessed was not a clothed leg but rather what was left of Mr. Weeble's head, blown off by die force of the shotgun whose trigger he manipulated with his toe after slaying his wife.

Peg's deception, in its connection with a lethal level of domestic violence occurring between an affluent, apparently congenial, long-married older couple, invites scrutiny not only of