The Stone Diaries
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This paper will address how the image of women presented in Carol ShieldsÆ Pulitzer Prize winning 1994 novel, The Stone Diaries, are products of a particular frame and society. The frame of reference is the entire 20th Century; a century that marked significant changes for women in terms of available opportunities and freedoms. The novelÆs protagonist, however, Daisy Stone Goodwill, never truly realizes these opportunities because she is virtually ignorant of her own life, and is unaware of all that it may potentially contain, although at times she is filled with an unnamed longing. Born in 1905 into a male-dominated, stratified society, Daisy is typical of her generation of women who did not realize that she could liberate herself from the narrow constrictions placed upon women by a society that insisted on rigid gender roles that were enforced by social and economic controls. In 1905, the year of DaisyÆs birth, North American women--as women elsewhere in the worldûwere largely relegated to the narrow role of housewife and mother; women were expected to nurture their husbands and children, but not themselves. For Daisy, this role becomes set in stone. Yet, there were women who broke the mold. In 1905, American novelist Edith Wharton published The House of Mirth which dealt with the tragic life of a young woman who let herself be overly influenced by her society; the novel became a classic. Also, in 1905, May G. Sutton became the first U.S. tennis player to win any
. . .
she is trying to do is keep things
straight in her head...To hold the chapters of
her life in order. She knows that what lies
ahead of her must be concluded by the efforts
of her imagination and not by the straight-
faced recital of a throttled and unlit history.
And the question arises: what is the story of a
Life? (340).
The story of Daisy Goodwill Hoad Flett is depicted in ten chapters entitled: Birth, Childhood, Marriage, Love, Motherhood, Work, Sorrow, East, Illness and Decline, Death. What Daisy leaves out of her story are her experiences with education, sexual awakening and initiation, and childbirth. Although she does discuss sex with her best friends Beans and Fraidy before her first marriage, a marriage that is not consummated due to her husbandÆs heavy drinking and accidental death on their honeymoon, Daisy does not examine her own sexuality. She basically ôdoes her dutyö as a wife in her second marriage, but that is all she reveals. There are, however, times when Daisy briefly wonders about sex thinking ôthat men and women should be bound to each other in this way! How badly reality is organized (192) which intimates that she has not experiences strong sexual passion. Daisy also does not
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2355
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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