The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
"The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields is a poignant exploration of a woman's life, reflecting on themes of identity, memory, and the complexities of familial relationships. The novel follows Daisy Goodwill, who is born into a tumultuous situation when her mother dies during childbirth. Raised by a neighbor, Daisy's life is marked by personal trials, including the loss of her first fiancé and struggles with her father's remarrying and his obsession with building a stone monument to his late wife. As Daisy matures, she navigates relationships, motherhood, and her own ambitions as a writer.
Spanning several decades, the narrative captures her journey through love, loss, and self-discovery, emphasizing the significance of gardening and writing as means of coping. The novel delves into the intricacies of female experience and the societal expectations surrounding it, presenting a rich tapestry of emotions and insights. Ultimately, Daisy's reflections on her life reveal a sense of unresolved feelings, making "The Stone Diaries" a compelling examination of what it means to live authentically amid life's challenges.
On this Page
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
First published: 1993
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Narrative
Time of plot: 1905 to the early 1990’s
Locale: Tyndall, Winnipeg, and Ottawa, Canada; Bloomington, Indiana; Sarasota, Florida
Principal characters
Daisy Goodwill Flett , a writerCuyler Goodwill , her fatherBarker Flett , her husbandClarentine Barker Flett , Barker’s motherMagnus Flett , Clarentine’s husbandMercy Stone Goodwill , Daisy’s motherJay Dudley , a newspaper editor, and Daisy’s boss
The Story:
Daisy Goodwill is born to Mercy Stone Goodwill, a large woman who had not realized she was pregnant until she was giving birth. Mercy dies in childbirth, and her devastated husband, Cuyler, leaves Daisy in the care of a neighbor, Clarentine Flett.
Clarentine soon leaves her husband and moves with Daisy to Winnipeg, where the two live with Clarentine’s botanist son, Barker. Clarentine begins a flower business. Cuyler remains in Tyndall, building a massive stone monument to his late wife; the monument is known as the Goodwill Tower. People come from all over to view it, not realizing that it actually obscures Mercy’s headstone.
Daisy is now eleven years old. After surviving a bout of measles followed by pneumonia, her guardian, Clarentine, dies in an accident. Cuyler, thanks to the attention he received from the Goodwill Tower, has gotten a lucrative job offer in Bloomington, Indiana. He comes to Tyndall to claim Daisy.
Eleven years later, Daisy is engaged to be married. Her fiancé is an alcoholic who dies on their honeymoon, leaving the marriage unconsummated. Magnus Flett, Barker’s father, has been so affected by his wife’s abandonment that he returns to his home on the Orkney Islands and memorizes his wife’s copy of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. After Daisy’s first husband dies, she spends the next nine years living at home with her father, who is now remarried. Thanks to some money she receives from the proceeds of Clarentine’s business, Daisy is able to take a two-week vacation to Niagara Falls and Ontario. While in Ottawa, she meets Barker, and the two quickly get married.
Eleven years later, Daisy is the mother of three children, two girls and a boy. Barker is nearly sixty-five years old and is about to retire. Daisy explains sex to her eldest daughter, and deals with an unwelcome visit from Barker’s niece and from her old friend, Fraidy Hoyt. Daisy’s father, who has remarried, is building a new stone pyramid at his home in Bloomington. Alongside the pyramid, he buries his first wife’s wedding ring, something he had promised Daisy he would do. Daisy feels this slight bitterly because she does not own anything that had belonged to her mother.
Daisy’s love of gardening helps her through Barker’s death. She gets a job as the writer of the column “Mrs. Green Thumb” in the Ottawa Recorder. Daisy enters into a relationship with her editor, Jay Dudley, who then panics over the relationship and fires her over the phone. She loses her column, leading to a period of depression for Daisy. Her children, her niece, Fraidy, Jay, and others try to figure out why she is depressed, and they come up with many theories.
Twelve years later, in 1977, Daisy has shaken off her major depression. She lives in Sarasota, Florida. She accompanies her grandniece, Victoria, on a trip to the Orkney Islands, where she looks up the 115-year-old Magnus Flett, Clarentine’s surviving husband. Magnus is so old and senile that Daisy feels happy and young in comparison, and she lives eight more happy years playing bridge and gardening in Florida. Illness eventually overtakes Daisy, however, and she can no longer live on her own and must settle into a nursing home.
At her death sometime in the 1990’s, Daisy had been thinking about her life. Remembering snippets of family conversations, her bridal lingerie, and old recipes, her final thoughts are that she is not at peace with her life.
Bibliography
Atwood, Margaret. “A Soap Bubble Floating over the Void.” Virginia Quarterly Review 81, no. 1 (Winter, 2005): 139-142. A tribute to Shields by Canadian novelist Atwood that characterizes her as intelligent, witty, and observant, a writer equally capable of creating images of intense joy and images of despair.
Bell, Karen. “Carol Shields: All These Years Later, Still Digging.” Performing Arts and Entertainment in Canada 31, no. 3 (Winter, 1998): 4-7. This interview with Shields provides an overview of her works and reveals her interest in strong narratives in fiction.
Fitzgerald, Penelope. “Sunny Side Up.” London Review of Books, September 9, 1993. A good introductory overview, in which Fitzgerald examines The Stone Diaries and its themes. A brief, readable article.
Mellor, Winifred M. “’The Simple Container of Our Existence’: Narrative Ambiguity in Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries.” Studies in Canadian Literature 20, no. 2 (March, 1996): 96-110. Mellor examines themes of identity, narration, and autobiography in the novel, including the use of letters and other forms of female biography as a means of expression.
Weese, Katherine. “The ’Invisible Woman’: Narrative Strategies in The Stone Diaries.” Journal of Narrative Theory 36, no. 1 (Winter, 2006): 90-120. Applies feminist theories to the complex narrative techniques used in The Stone Diaries to reveal a main character who is simultaneously central to and distant from her own story.
Roy, Wendy. “Autobiography as Critical Practice in The Stone Diaries.” In Carol Shields, Narrative Hunger, and the Possibilities of Fiction, edited by Edward Eden and Dee Goertz. Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Examines the argument that the novel is a commentary on autobiographies, as other critics have noted, but specifically on the genre of women’s “life writing,” another term for autobiography or memoir.
Werlock, Abby. Carol Shields’s “The Stone Diaries”: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum, 2001. Provides an excellent overview of the novel, its characters, and its setting. Also includes critical responses, a biography, lengthy quotations from an interview with Shields, and a list of further introductory readings.