The Canadian literary world has been thrown into a tailspin by the revelation that Alice Munro — one of Canada’s most venerated writers — stayed with her second husband after she learned that he had sexually abused her daughter. It has reignited a debate over to what extent an artist can be, or indeed should be, separated from their body of work. Fans and admirers of various media have struggled with that debate, from those who venerate predatory rock stars, comedians or indie musicians, to those who still find escape in the writing of child abusers.
In an essay for Toronto Star, Andrea Robin Skinner writes that, in 1976, she was visiting her mother and stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, when he sexually assaulted her for the first time. She was nine years old and he c ontinued to harass and abuse her until she was a teenager, she wrote. Skinner is the daughter of Munro and her first husband, James Munro.
When, 16 years later, Skinner told her mother about the abuse, Munro left Fremlin and flew to Comox, B.C., to stay with Skinner’s sister, Sheila Munro, who’s now an author herself.
“I visited her there and was overwhelmed by her sense of injury to herself,” writes Skinner. “Did she realize she was speaking to a victim, and that I was her child? If she did, I couldn’t feel it. When I tried to tell her how her husband’s abuse had hurt me, she was incredulous.
‘But you were such a happy child,’ she said.” Munro eventually returned to Fremlin, and remained wit.
