Remy is a freelance writer in Pensacola, Florida. In the following essay, Remy examines the narrative use of stereotype in "Meneseteung."

Like many other Alice Munro stories, "Meneseteung" explores the biases and obstacles an independent woman must face while living within a provincial culture. Almeda Joynt Roth, the story's protagonist, is a poet, the author of "ballads, couplets, [and] reflections" that are often sentimental, if not morose, in tone. In piecing together the many facets of Roth's biography, the narrator takes a view of the poet that is no different from that of her contemporaries during the latter half of the nineteenth century, a perspective that eventually leads to questions regarding the story's content. At first glance, Roth appears to fit the stereotype of the mad, tormented artist, the bohemian who lives her life with blatant disregard for convention. Relying upon a single volume of published poems...