Many of us were shaken this week, Andrea Robin Skinner, (ARS), revealed in a first-person piece in the Toronto Star, that she had been sexually abused as a nine-year-old when visiting her mother and stepfather, Alice Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin in 1976. And worse, when ARS told her parents, she received no support.
I wondered what was up when Munro Books in Victoria (started by Jim Munro in 1963, but with independent owners since 2014) cancelled an Alice Munro celebration in support of ARS. You can read their statement here.
In 2005, when ARS was in her thirties, Gerald Fremlin was charged with indecent assault and received two years probation in a court ruling in Clinton, Ontario.
After decades of isolation from her family in her late forties, after her divorce, ARS began therapy with The Gatehouse, a therapeutic centre for victims of childhood sexual abuse, in Etobicoke. The Gatehouse’s vision is “a future where those impacted by childhood sexual abuse can heal and reclaim their voices. Her piece survivor’s story from Oct 22nd, Andrea: To heal is truth and peace can be found here. There is also a video, So Let’s Talk About This, by ARS, crediting her sister Jenny Munro with production and Rebecca Garrett, who runs a media company, for camera, editing and direction. Subsequently, The Toronto Star published her story on July 7th. This article and several others by Deborah Dundas, Betsy Powel, Heather Mallick, Stephan Marche of the Star and Marsha Lederman of The Globe and Mail are behind paywalls.
The Writing versus the Writer
Learning that AM did not act to protect her daughter is a bitter pill to swallow. Can and should one separate the writer’s morality from the greatness of their work?
While it would be a tragedy to erase her work from literary study, it is appropriate to examine what she wrote in light of this new knowledge—A mother who failed to protect her daughter and who remained married to the man who was abusing her youngest daughter. A mother, living with the knowledge that she failed to protect her daughter. A mother, whose actions led to her estrangement from her daughter.
But why was Andrea not protected?
We can only speculate as to why AM made these choices. Fear? Fear of damage to her reputation and career? Fear of Financial loss? Fear of rejection or abuse by her husband?
Blame? Her daughter’s behaviour and not her husband’s. Blame the victim.
Shame? And thus denial of the implications of the abuse?
Impotence? A sense that she was powerless to change the situation?
We don’t know AM’s story. Was she a victim of abuse? Is this an intergenerational story?
We can only speculate on the complicity of the CanLit world in protecting AM’s reputation. Who knew this secret but did nothing to help Andrea or AM?
Family matters—Fear, denial, diminishment, and impotence to justify doing nothing.
The literary community is re-examining her work, particularly the last story “Vandals”, published in her 1994 collection, Open Secrets. See Laura Miller’s piece, “The Writer and the Brute” in The Slate where she examines the story as possible atonement by AM.
Are there connections between the stories and the timeline of Andrea’s story? Are there clues as to why AM refused or could not help or protect her youngest daughter?
Our LIterary Heroines are not Saints
Sadly our literary heroines are not saints. We needily and blithely project our needs and wants onto them to be so. There is a crushing sense of loss, betrayal and disappointment when they are found out to be fallible, flawed and messy like the rest of us.
I have deep compassion for Andrea Robin Skinner and her recovery journey after the immoral and unambiguous denial of her needs and safety by her family and society. I wish her, her siblings and her family all the best in their recovery journey.
And many thanks to my friends who forwarded me the various articles over the last few days.
A Letter to My Daughters
In 2013 after AM was awarded the Nobel Prize, I wrote a short piece about unexpected moral frailty. I’m sharing it below. Of course, it would have been different, if I knew then what I know now!