The Shining houses -Marxist Literary Criticism

The Shining Houses by Alice Munro portrays an interesting concept of the values of Marxism. At first glance it appears that Mrs. Fullerton is a greater victim than Mary, but this is not completely accurate. The roles in this story are reversed roles of the Marxist’s concept of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Although the owners of the shining houses initially appear to be the bourgeoisie, through further analysis, it becomes clear that they are the oppressed proletariat class. The White Houses were not built for high-class individuals but lower income class families with higher expectations: “People who would live in them came out and tramped around in the mud on Sundays. They were for people like Mary and her husband and their child, with not much money but expectations of more”(29). It is also apparent that Mrs. Fullerton is not in financial trouble. She shows this from her repeal at the thought of babysitting for the owners of the White Houses: “this baby-sitting. All the time one or the other is asking me about baby-sitting. I tell them I got my own house to sit in and I raised my share of children”(28). She has also effectively lived on her own for 12 years. There is also a correlation between the removal of Mrs. Fullerton's property and the value increase of her neighborhood. This creates an interesting point as there would be a redistribution of wealth that is a common factor in communist revolutions. By interpreting the text this way, one could say Mrs. Fullerton’s house is oppressing the needed wealth of her neighbors.

Mary also suffers from an inability to effectively display her point of view to her neighbors, as displayed in this quotation, “Mary knew what they were talking about. Her neighbors' conversation, otherwise not troubling, might at any moment snag itself on this subject... causing her to look despairingly out of windows, or down into her lap, trying to find some... word to bring it to a stop; she did not succeed”(31). This further supports the idea that Mary is the greater victim in this story as she lacks the ability to express her feelings on the same level as her neighbors. Displayed in the starting of the story, Mary also has a personal relationship with Mrs. Fullerton, and along with this she is subjected to the badgering of Mrs. Fullerton by fellow neighbors about the poor state of her house.


“ ‘I thought I might offer my black cherries for sale next summer,’ Mrs. Fullerton said. ‘Come and pick your own and they're fifty cents a box’...‘That's too much,’ Mary said, smiling. ‘They're cheaper than that at the supermarket’ ”(28). This quote displays a final point about why Mary is more of a victim than Mrs. Fullerton. Mrs. Fullerton lacks knowledge of the changing society she lives in and this essentially protects her from knowing what’s going on around her. We the reader, do not even know if Mrs. Fullerton even knows that her neighbors are displeased with the state of her house. Overall, it's quite clear that Mary shows more characteristics of a victim than Mrs. Fullerton.