How I Met My Husband- by Alice Munro

When reading, "How I met my husband," by Alice Munro, the reader begins to ponder on Edie's life as a hired girl and as a married woman. Edie's status did not seem to change from childhood to womanhood. Instead, she continued to live the ordinary, mundane life, which she was expected to live.

Edie was hired to help at the home of Dr. Peeble when she was fifteen years old. Edie said the Peebles "like to feel you don't notice things, that you don't think or wonder about anything but what they liked to eat and how they liked things ironed, and so on." She learned her place, which was to be out of the way and basically ignorant of everything else that went beyond her duties as a hired girl.

Edie's attempt at nonconformity is similar to Sammy's solution in John Updike's "A&P". Sammy tried to break the mold he was being shaped into by quitting his job. Edie tried to break her mold by waiting for the pilot's letter. As hard as it was, Edie realized that "no letter was ever going to come" from the pilot. So, she accepted her fate and married someone of her own class.

At the end of the story, Edie tells how she was courted for two years, engaged for another year, and then married to the mailman. Although she didn't seem unhappy, there was no mention of love or excitement. She said that she wanted to make her husband happy and did so by allowing him to tell the stories about how "she went after him by sitting at the mailbox every day." However, there was a lack of feeling or emotion expressed by Edie, showing that she accepted her fate to live an ordinary, mundane life.