In Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries, we are presented with the life of Daisy Stone Goodwill Hoad Flett. Daisy is also the narrator of her life, at times remembering herself with the reader but at other times rendering us as objective, detached spectators to the mundane and magnificent events of her existence from birth to death. Daisy’s life is basically divided into youth, middle-age, and mature phases. The first period is marked by death and sudden loss. The second is marked by a mundane, conventional life as wife and mother. The final phase includes fulfillment as Daisy finds excitement in a career as a garden columnist. The story of Daisy presents us with many questions about her own as well as our own existence. Was she happy or sad? Was her life mundane or exciting? How much do we know Daisy from this portrait? How much do we know our own loved ones, ourselves?
The style used by Shields helps us recreate pieces of reality in the existence of a human being. A continual stream of consciousness mirrors the rhythms of daily life so that we only get pieces, memories, subjective appraisals, and moments of Daisy, just as we do in real life. Daisy embraces the trials and tribulations of life basically like a stone - passively, resiliently, heavily. There is a great deal of stone imagery and symbolism in the novel written as autobiography that unifies the pieces of Daisy’s life and stands as a metaphor for her character and ability to endure the trials and tribulations of her existence. It is as if we must decided whether Daisy has handled life like the hard rock of Orkney or has been too soft, and, so, not as able to serve her existence “The rock was different here, harder, so much so that islanders had traditionally gone to this remote point of rock being too soft to serve” (Shields 292).
In order to demonstrate Daisy’s character, the author uses a style that is meant to mirror reality. In order to best ...