Epiphany of a Middle-Aged Woman: An Analysis of Alice Munro’s “Nettles” from the Perspective of an Initiation Story

<p>“Nettles” is a short story by the famous contemporary Canadian female writer Alice Munro. It is a multi-thematic story since many scholars have done research on its themes from such angles as love and marriage, the perplexity about life and feminism, etc. Nevertheless, few critics have studied it as an initiation story. Thus, by employing textual analysis as the research approach, this article studies “Nettles” from the perspective of an initiation story in terms of its content, characters and structure. Finally, the research draws the conclusion that “Nettles” is a typical initiation story about a middle-aged woman, depicting how she turns from a spiritually immature woman into a mature one.</p>