Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro

Published 1968 · 209 pages · 77,182 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Short Fiction

How hard is Dance of the Happy Shades to read?

Dance of the Happy Shades scores 52 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
Munro writes in clear, precise Canadian English. Her vocabulary is that of small-town Ontario—accessible and exact.
Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
Elegant sentences that track the movements of consciousness. Munro is syntax is subtle rather than difficult.
Abstraction: 50 out of 100
Grounded in the particulars of southwestern Ontario—the houses, the weather, the social codes. Abstract themes emerge through lived experience.
Information density: 50 out of 100
Each story creates its world efficiently. Munro is economy is impressive—she accomplishes much in small space.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
Munro often approaches her subjects slantwise. What matters may be glimpsed rather than stated directly.
Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
Munro is symbols are unobtrusive—ordinary objects and places that accumulate meaning through attention.
Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
Munro observes her characters with knowing compassion. She sees their limitations and longings clearly.
Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
Stories often end in moments of recognition rather than resolution. Munro trusts the reader to complete the picture.
Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
Individual stories follow various structures—some linear, some moving through time. The collection showcases Munro is emerging mastery.

How Dance of the Happy Shades is regarded

Dance of the Happy Shades holds a literary regard score of 83 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where Dance of the Happy Shades sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (142 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Dance of the Happy Shades scores 66 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.15. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
my mother has no time for the national calamity, only ours.
Symbol: Formal
It is something fragile, courtly and gay, that carries with it the freedom of a great unemotional happiness.
Mythos: Irony and Satire iv (Tragic Pathos) (irony iv)
There is nothing you can do at present but put your hands in your pockets and keep a disaffected heart.
Genre: Novel + Confession
I have been at home now for three weeks and it has not been a success.

Where the story of Dance of the Happy Shades takes place

  • Small-town Ontario (Jubilee, Tuppertown, Wawanash County), 1930s-1950s (1930 to 1955), the main setting
  • Tuppertown and Lake Huron back roads, Depression 1930s (1930 to 1939)
  • Rural high school and Christmas dance, 1946

6 things that are true of Dance of the Happy Shades, with the passage for each

  1. In 'Walker Brothers Cowboy' the father's sample cases hold cough medicine, iron tonic, corn plasters and rat poison, among other things.

    He sells cough medicine, iron tonic, corn plasters, laxatives, pills for female disorders, mouth wash, shampoo, liniment, salves

  2. A chamberpot is emptied from an upstairs window of a silent farmhouse as the salesman stands below.

    a white pot appears on the sill, is tilted over and its contents splash down the outside wall.

  3. The toddler Benny in 'The Time of Death' is eighteen months old and knows only two words.

    Benny was eighteen months old and the only words he knew how to say were Bow-wow and Bram.

  4. The girl in 'Boys and Girls' is dismissed by her father with the words that end the story.

    “She’s only a girl,” he said.

  5. Helen in 'Postcard' learns of her lover's marriage from the newspaper, which prints the wedding in Coral Gables, Florida.

    A quiet ceremony in Coral Gables, Florida, uniting in marriage Clare Alexander MacQuarrie, of Jubilee

  6. The title piece the girl plays at Miss Marsalles's party is named at the close of the story.

    “The Dance of the Happy Shades,” says Miss Marsalles.

Scenes in Dance of the Happy Shades that Frye would name

43 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
I feel my father’s life flowing back from our car in the last of the afternoon, darkening and turning strange The daughter recognises that her father has a life beyond the family.
Anagnorisis, untitled
I felt that I had had a glimpse of the shameless, marvellous, shattering absurdity with which the plots of life, though not of fiction, are improvised. The humiliated girl discovers life's absurdity and is cured of her love.
Sparagmos, untitled
it looked like parts of his skin were coming away too Benny's scalded body, torn skin and animal noise.
Pathos, untitled
He did so die, he did so! Benny's death is announced as the sacrificial centre of the story.
Pharmakos, untitled
Hel-lo Myra, Hello My-ra! The class ritually torments Myra, the foreigner kept in the back porch.
Lyric, untitled
They’re down in the water, in Lake Huron water, The father improvises comic ballads, overheard song set inside the prose.

Books that share these scenes with Dance of the Happy Shades

About the author

Alice Munro