As she had done in such earlier stories as "Boys and Girls" and "The Office" (Dance of the Happy Shades, 1968), Munro continues in Lives of Girls and Women to explore how ideas of the feminine are defined and inscribed in the modern world, in this case as reflected in the small town .of Jubilee.

Through the experiences and insights of Del Jordan, readers come to recognize the matrix of ideologies and cultural forces that shape the lives of the girls and women in this rural town, notably the powerful influences of economics, history, language, religion, and sex. At times, these forces provide the means by which women can move beyond the traditional system of domestic labor in which they feel trapped, as when Del's mother leaves her kitchen to "go on the road" selling encyclopedias. More often, they are forces which are at once liberating and...