Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

¶ … Stone Diaries

In the novel The Stone Diaries by author Carol Shields, a young woman deals with the pressures of being expected to conform to gender binaries in western civilization. The theme of the story is shown early in the text when Shields writes, "Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us" (36). Daisy's life is a reflection of how she is seen more than how she sees herself it seems which is odd given that her entire existence is a figment of imagination. In the story that Daisy tells, her own mother died during the process of giving birth to the infant Daisy, which may serve as a psychological basis for why death is such an all-consuming passion in her life. The birth was marked by death and so the two, at least for Daisy, are forever intertwined. Daisy is then abandoned by her father and forced to live with neighbor, Catherine Flett until that woman dies eleven years later. Just over a decade has passed in the child's life and she has already lost a birth mother and the only parent she had known. When Mrs. Flett dies, Daisy is reunited with her father although by this time the young girl has faced too much disharmony and dysfunction to have a hope of a normal upbringing. As an adult, Daisy becomes a popular gardening columnist which in a way also shows how death has affected her because in the garden, thing continually die and are reborn. The final chapter of the novel, entitled "Death" is comprised of a series of observations which concern Daisy's death. "Death" serves as the culmination not only of the book but of the fictional life of the woman at the heart of the story's narrative.

In the final chapter of The Stone Diaries, the author states that there were multiple death notices in the various newspapers which told the population of the town about Daisy's passing away. This is an important aspect because it brings the larger world around the grieving family into the process of mourning. For some people, the death of a family member is a very private thing and they may choose to have a closed memorial service which only family members and close friends may be invited to attend. There are also services which are only attended by immediate family members. Still others choose not to have a memorial service or a funeral at all, but instead may mourn privately without the pomp and circumstance of ceremony. Printing an obituary or death notice in newspapers is a way to ensure that as many people as possible know that a loved one has died. It is therefore unlikely to have a private ceremony or for people both within and without one's circle of acquaintance to be ignorant of the passing of the individual in question. It ensures that the death is noted and printing in more than one paper spreads that information out to a larger audience. By printing the death notice, Daisy's death becomes an event.

In addition to the notices, each of the people in Daisy's life is allowed to react to her passing, including the ability to provide a possible grave inscription for Daisy Goodwill Flett. This allows the reader to see the many facets of Daisy's identity in terms of how other people viewed her. Often, people are many things to many people and this real life factor is seen in the work of fiction. To her children, Daisy is mother and provider; a nurturer but the identification is also colored by their experiences with her in old age. To the people who knew her through gardening, she was an authority figure. Yet, to none of these people does it seem like the death is really felt so violently. Instead, most of those quoted explain that her death was a blessing and that she was now out of pain. One character, Warren Flett, explains without emotion, "My mother's quality of life had been hovering at sub-zero for some time" (Shields 345). The tone of this statement is clearly light as he uses the term "sub-zero." It is a sarcastic tone without any real discernible affection and this is similar to the quotes of all her family members. They describe her as variously amusing, crazy, a fashion enigma, and evasive which is linked to aggression, a side of Daisy that is never seen and so the testimony of her survivors can only be taken as the rest of the story is taken, with the knowledge that appearances and the characters reality might be very far removed from one another. Like her real-life counterparts, Daisy Flett is a multifaceted personality with many different components to her character. Her description by those who knew and loved her makes her more complex and more three dimensional in the novel.

The chapter functions as a kind of death notice itself although a highly detailed one; it provides a far more intimate look at the woman whose story the book has tried to tell. Besides the common information provided in most death notices, i.e. birth date, date of death, surviving family members, accomplishments and organizations to which she belonged, and perhaps cause of death, there is a plethora of intimate details about the woman's life. Firstly, the chapter lists the various addresses which he had once called home, which serves to make her story somehow more real. Daisy has a life history which was more than just what the words on the page showed to the reader. There were homes that the reader never saw her live in, each with experiences and memories which were not shared. The chapter also lists which recipes she preferred to cook and the grocery lists she had made and also provides a list her bridal lingerie, and quite interestingly the books she had collected throughout her lifetime. Each of these components helps to further the fallacy that this was a living, breathing woman who had once lived and has now passed away. This woman is more than the singular perspective of a rather dour and depressing lady. She, like many women who came to adulthood during the middle of the twentieth century was a housewife and mother first. Women of the 1950s and 1960s were defined by their domestic pursuits to a great degree. Following World War II, the men were expected to work hard, achieve success, and find fulfillment according to the traditions and promises of the American dream. Their wives were to be supportive and encouraging as their husbands strived for success, cooking, cleaning, and functioning as a means of sexual release without enjoying the sexual activity themselves. This was after all the era of June Cleaver and wearing pearls, high heels, and an apron while vacuuming the floor. One of the lists of the chapter concerns Daisy's "bridal lingerie" which is a hint to a sexual nature which every woman has but which women of the 1950s and '60s were taught to repress. It must be noted that it is strictly "bridal" lingerie, indicating the dual truth that only with her husband was Daisy allowed by society to have sexual intercourse or interaction with and secondly that only as a bride, that is to say only during the course of the rite of losing virginity could she indulge is something pretty and delicate as lingerie. After the wedding night, even though married, Daisy was damaged and no longer a virgin; thus she was no longer deserving of beauty and delicacy. This list may very well be the last time in her life in which Daisy got a new wardrobe or any finery to speak of and that is why she retained the list among her possessions for life (Shields 349). This is a reflection of the hypocrisy of post-war society in the United States and much of the western world. Recipes and cooking were a singular means of self-expression in a world where such chances were highly limited. Her recipes and grocery lists reflect this side of Daisy's life. Even the children ponder if Daisy might have had a more fulfilling and less desperate life had she been born a man (Shields 353). All women of the era had to deal with the dominance of the alpha-male culture and the oppression of their society which demanded a woman be ever subservient to her spouse, even if his own personality did not demand such blind obedience. As a woman, there was little to which Daisy could aspire and in this highly demanding social setting, she flourished in pretending that wifedom and motherhood was all she really wanted out of life. One of the characters remarks upon her passing:

Now there's a woman who made a terrific meatloaf, who knew how to repot a drooping rubber plant, who bid a smart no-trump hand, who wore a hat well, who looked after her personal hygiene, who wrote her thank-you notes promptly, who kept up, who went down, went down and down, who missed the point, the point of it all, but was, nevertheless, almost unfailingly courteous to others (Shields 354).

These are not the adjectives one would use to describe someone who changed the world, but they are the exact words to describe a perfectly bland housewife who sought nothing beyond the washing of her front windows. However, unlike the fictional versions of housewives on television, real-world women did not often take to the role of domesticity and the Cult of Consumerism with docility and without hesitation or reservation. She harbored other interests which could only be expressed inside of the home; that is until she achieved a level of success in the world of gardening. Daisy read books which means she had a mind and a brain that begged to be allowed to be freed from her mundane existence and to be nourished through the obtaining of knowledge.

One of the most interesting and telling components of the chapter is a chronological listing of all the illnesses and ailments that Daisy has had to deal with during her lifetime. Daisy was born consumed by the concept of death. Her mother died during childbirth and this left an indelible impression on the newborn that death was ever present and could strike at any time. Throughout the story, Daisy has had to deal with scores of illnesses and various losses, each one making her somehow darker and more distressed than the one before; each instance enumerated in the final chapter. The list reads:

Colic, chicken pox, measles, bronchial pneumonia, allergies, influenza, menstrual cramps, eczema, cystitis, childbirth, blood pressure, menopause, depression, angina, blocked arteries, broken bones, coronary bypass, kidney failure, cancer, bladder infection, stroke, bed sores, ulcerated leg, incontinence, stroke, memory loss, failing eyesight, inappropriate response, speech deficiency, depression, stroke, stroke (Shields 357).

This listing shows exactly what the woman has had to deal with physically and emotionally within her own body and the psychological toll it had taken as well. It is also interesting that although most people would not include menstrual cramps or childbirth as medical illnesses or injuries, Daisy certainly does. Even natural processes involving the body are to her associated with pain, illness, and subsequently with death.

For years, Daisy had lingered on despite steadily declining health, having been diagnosed with heart disease, is made to be bedridden and this has ironically granted her a new and more honest perspective of the realities of life and of all human existence. Her entire life had been closely associated with death and it seems that only through living within a close proximity of her own demise can she truly live and indeed reflect on how little she had lived. In the final chapter, Shields writes:

Flett, Daisy (nee Goodwill), who, due to historical accident, due to carelessness, due to ignorance, due to lack of opportunity and courage, never once in her many years of life experienced the excitement and challenge of oil painting, skiing, sailing, nude bathing, emerald jewelry, cigarettes, oral sex, pierced ears, Swedish clogs, water beds, science fiction, pornographic movies, religious ecstasy, truffles, Kirsch, jalapeno peppers, Peking duck, Vienna, Moscow, Madrid, group therapy, body massage, hunger, distinguished honors, outraged condemnation, who never drove a car, never bought a lottery ticket, never, never (on the other hand) was struck on the face or body by another being, never once perched her reading glasses (with a sigh) in the crown of her hair, never (for fear of ridicule) investigated the possibilities of plastic surgery or yoga, never gave herself over to the kind of magazine article that tells you to be good to yourself, to believe in yourself and do things for yourself. Nor, though she knew she had been loved in her life, did she ever hear the words "I love you, Daisy" uttered aloud (such a simple phrase), and only during the long, thin, uneventful sleep that preceded her death did she have the wit (and leisure) to ponder the injustice of this" (344-45).

Throughout her long life, encompassing some eighty years up to the point of this passage, Daisy has not really lived. She has accomplished nothing of substance according to her own system of values. She has experienced nothing of extreme joy nor had she felt physical abuse. There have not been enough moments of pleasure and breaking of social taboos to overcome the misery of her birth and upbringing. In the time near death, Daisy realizes that she has allowed the deaths of the women in her life to completely dominate her existence and now it is too late to seek out joy of any kind. The woman had correctly predicted that she would live in misery as her health slowly left her body, but she did not anticipate the way such living would affect her. As an invalid, she had spent many years in a semiconscious state, not really alert or awake and not quite unconscious either. However, this existing in between states furthers her ability to see life clearly.