Setting
Setting is where the story takes place. Not only is the setting the physical locations, but also the context. When analyzing short stories it is important to look at the historical context or the time period where it took place in order to gain a better understanding of the content. You can also look at whether the events of the story happen in order (chronologically) or jump back and forth over a period of time.
Physical Setting
Mrs. Fullerton's House
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"The house and its surroundings were so self-sufficient, with their complicated and seemingly unalterable layout of vegetables and flower beds, apple and cherry trees, wired chicken-run, berry patch and wooden walks, woodpile, a great many roughly built dark little sheds, for hens or rabbits or a goat. Here was no straightforward plan, no order that an outsider could understand; yet what was haphazard time had made final. (Munro p. 66)" Mrs. Fullerton's house has been there for 50 years and represents a more traditional way of life. When a new subdivision is built up around her the new neighbours see her house as an eye-sore in their perfect, tidy community.
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Garden Place
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"The new, white and shining houses, set side by side in long rows in the wound of the earth." Garden Place is the new subdivision that was built up around Mrs. Fullerton's house. The roads are named after flowers, and everything about it is fresh, new and modern, including the people who live their. The subdivision represents the new society and compared to it, Mrs. Fullerton's house stands out like a sore thumb.
"But houses like Mrs. Fullerton's had been separated from each other by uncut forest and a jungle of wild blackberry and salmonberry bushes; these surviving houses, with thick smoke coming out of their chimneys, walls unpainted and patched and showing different degrees of age and darkening, rough sheds and stacked wood and compost heaps and grey board fences around them - these appeared every so often among the large new houses of Mimosa and Marigold and Heather Drive - dark, enclosed, expressing something like savagery in their disorder and the steep, unmatched angles of roofs and lean-tos; not possible on these streets, but there." (Munro p. 68) |
Context
From the mention of women showing up to parties in dresses and gloves, along with some of the diction, it can be assumed that this story takes place some time during the 1950's. This was also a time of drastic social change, which is seen as a main theme in this story. It can also be assumed, based on the author's writing style and from her previous works, that the story takes place somewhere in Western Ontario. By identifying this context, it makes it easier to understand the outlooks of the characters and the problems that they are facing. Knowing the context also makes it easier to make connections to the text.