Marxist Criticism In The Shining Houses By Alice Munro

In “The Shining Houses” written by Alice Munro, there were many elements of Marxist Literary Criticism that were shown. The idea of class, false consciousness and ideologies help develop the idea that every individual has contrasting preferences, there is no particular “right answer” when it comes to taste, it's all opinionated.

The concept of class was plainly shown throughout the short story. The bulk amount of people in the neighborhood were apart of the same middle class. Their opinions, and ideals are very similar and they're always anxious to change anything about their life/lifestyle to make sure that they're the same as everybody else. Any sort of divergence is not accepted and is actually looked down upon. In this neighborhood,
Mrs. Fullerton has always seemed like she is very lonely but she's never been mournful about it. She is perfectly happy with where she currently is. In the communities perspective, they believe that destroying Mrs. Fullerton's home would be the best thing to do. They say this because not only do they want her “different” house down, they want to get rid of her too. They don't bluntly say it in the novel but it is implied several times. This is because Mrs. Fullerton is not considered to be apart of this “community” due to the fact that she doesn't share their common ideals. She's content with her life and wouldn't change it to please someone else and that is the main reason as to why the other neighbors want to get rid of her; because they care about what society is viewing them as where Mrs. Fullerton couldn't care less. Now, the community believes that if they destroy her house, their problems will magically disappear, which is very false. All they're doing is temporarily masking their problems until another person comes in and shows them that it wasn't Mrs. Fulerton that was the issue. It was their underlying conflict that they are trying to become someone who they're