SOURCE: Carrington, Ildikó de Papp. “Recasting the Orpheus Myth: Alice Munro's ‘The Children Stay’ and Jean Anouilh's Eurydice.” In The Rest of the Story: Critical Essays on Alice Munro, edited by Robert Thacker, pp. 191-203. Toronto: ECW Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Carrington considers the role of Anouilh's play Eurydice in Alice Munro's short story “The Children Stay.”

The classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice tells the story of the young lovers' marriage, Eurydice's accidental death, and Orpheus's grief-stricken descent into the underworld to bring his beloved wife back into the world of the living. A poet and a musician, Orpheus sings so beautifully that he charms Hades into allowing him to take her back. But the Lord of the Dead imposes one condition: Orpheus must not look at her until they have completed their ascent to the upper world. Just as they reach it, however, he turns...