"The Ticket"

by Alice Munro

 "The Ticket" appeared as a story in the collection  The View from Castle Rock (2006) which is Alice Munro's latest collection of short stories.
The book includes the following stories:

• Part One / No Advantages
  • "No Advantages"
  • "The View from Castle Rock"
  • "Illinois"
  • "The Wilds of Morris Township"
  • "Working for a Living"
• Part Two / Home
  • "Fathers"
  • "Lying Under the Apple Tree"
  • "Hired Girl"
  • "The Ticket"
  • "Home"
  • "What Do You Want to Know For?"
• Epilogue
  • "Messenger"

  Story Summary

The narrator is a young girl which was getting married with a young, rich, polite and good looking guy who lived in Vancouver. She tells us a story that happened around 1951, when her grandmother and her great-aunt were still alive.

His name was Michael. She was the type of girl who had to take care of the house because her mother couldn’t, due to her sickness. While preparing all of her stuff (wedding gifts, clothes…) to move in Vancouver and get married, she analyzed the marriages of her family’s closest members. Mostly the marriage of her grandma: Selina and her great-aunt: Charlie.

Selina’s marriage turned out not to be one full of love and romance. She was a very conservative woman. Selina have always been in love with a man named Leo, but she married the grand-father of the narrator. Leo mad a girl pregnant, so he had to make the good decision, to marry the future mother of his child. Charlie’s marriage was really successful. They were really in love with each other. You could tell it!

The family of the narrator told her that she shall hold on to Michael because she might not find someone better… So she did. After the two trunks were full of stuff, Charlie put the final touches to the wedding dress. Discretely, she told her great-niece, while giving her 200 dollars, that if she wanted to change her mind and not get married; she would need some money to get away. Maybe, meaning the wedding was not the ‘’the good ticket for her’’…