Canadian literary legend Alice Munro died this week at the age of 92. In the following excerpt from his 2020 book, “A Life in Paragraphs,” longtime National Post columnist Robert Fulford explains how Munro’s archetypal female character documented the ambition, ignorance and yearning of a generation.

Robin lived just 50 kilometres from Stratford, Ont., but she had never heard of anybody from her town going to see one of the Shakespeare plays. It was not something they did. It was beyond the circumference of their imagination. Robin’s neighbour, Willard, was afraid of being looked down on by the other people in the audience, and afraid he wouldn’t be able to follow the language. Joanne, Robin’s older sister, was sure that no one, ever, really liked Shakespeare. If anybody from their town went to one of the plays it would be because they wanted to mix with the higher-ups who were not enjoying it themselves but were only letting on they were.