The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields centers around the life of a woman named Daisy Goodwill. Her life takes place across the twentieth century, beginning with her birth in 1905. Daisy was born in Manitoba, Canada, to her mother Mercy Stone Goodwill, who died in childbirth. Daisy’s distressed father, Cuyler Goodwill, gives her to his neighbor, Clarentine Flett, who has just left her husband Magnus. Clarentine’s son, a professor of botany named Barker Flett, supports Clarentine and Daisy. Other than the mention of Barker’s suppressed sexual feelings towards Daisy, she has an average childhood until age eleven, when Clarentine gets hit by bicyclists, goes into a coma, and dies shortly after. Daisy’s father, Cuyler, comes to pick her up and take care of her. Cuyler is still very dedicated to Mercy, Daisy’s deceased birth mother, and Daisy wonders if he will ever make room in his heart to love her instead. Mercy is both Cuyler’s strength and weakness, because she gives him motivation to keep on living, but he is a little too obsessed with her, considering she is dead. On the train ride from Winnipeg, Canada, to Bloomington, Indiana, where Cuyler now lives, the talkative Cuyler rambles on to Daisy about her new life.
Daisy then skips forward eleven more years
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of her life. Up until age twenty-two, she lived a privileged life with Cuyler, who became a successful businessman. Daisy Goodwill is now about to marry Harold A. Hoad, a rich, handsome alcoholic haunted by the suicide of his father. Daisy marries Harold because she believes she can change him. The future, however, looks bleak when Harold is drunk during the wedding ceremony and on the train to Montreal for their honeymoon. At their hotel, Harold is sitting in the window throwing coins to children on the street. Daisy gets in bed and closes her eyes, trying to sleep. When she sits up and sneezes, Harold falls to his death, hitting the pavement below the window. Fast forwarding through nine years of her life, the widowed 31-year-old Daisy recounts how she has been living back in Bloomington, keeping herself busy with her garden and her friends. Daisy was always a thoughtful, quiet girl. If she had a strong opinion, which she hardly ever did, she was not quick to say anything. She is an empathetic woman, always putting others before herself. Because Daisy’s marriage was never consummated, she is still a virgin at age thirty-one. When Daisy’s father returns to Bloomington after a trip to Italy with a new Italian fiancé, Maria, she feels it is time to leave home. Daisy decides to go to Canada by train, to sightsee, secretly hoping something will happen to her that will stir up her monotonous life. Midway through her trip, she decides to meet up with her “Uncle” Barker, as she used to call him, who is now age 54. Daisy and Barker hit it off right away, reminiscing and updating one another on their lives. The conversation takes an odd turn, and Barker admits to have slept with prostitutes, causing Daisy to admit to being a virgin. They quickly develop mutual romantic and sexual feelings, and eventually marry and have three children together. Daisy and Barker’s children, Alice, Joan, and Warren, take up the majority of Daisy’s life. Desperate to be the perfect wife and mother, Daisy reads every issue of Good Housekeeping. Barker is a thoughtful man, always ready to tend to his wife, just as he did when she was a child. He appreciates Daisy, although he has a sexual weakness for her. Barker and Daisy, overall, have a positive relationship. After over 20 years of marriage, Barker dies of a brain tumor. Daisy adapts to life without him. Her children had almost all left home, so she put most of her effort into her garden. She was offered the job of writing a gardening column in the newspaper, which she took pleasure in writing for years, until the column was given to someone else. This was about the time Daisy fell into a deep depression. Her friends and family all theorize as to what caused it. The loss of her newspaper column? A rebellious young daughter? Perhaps the death of her father? Each character’s theory and explanation reflect how that person affected the life of Daisy. Her depression continues, and in her seventies, Daisy moves to a retirement village in Florida. She is in good physical health. Her children and relatives visit her as her life dwindles. She has good days and bad days where she hallucinates and can barely function. After a few more years of her dreary existence, she falls into a coma, and eventually dies. That is the life of Daisy Goodwill Flett, an average woman who wanted desperately not to be. One of the major decisions Daisy made in her life was to marry Harold A. Hoad, the alcoholic. Daisy married him because she felt that she was getting too old to be married, and decided to settle for Harold because she thought she could change him. By marrying Harold, Daisy led him to his death when he fell out a window on their honeymoon. Daisy’s distress over his death gave her nine years to get her life together. After those nine years, when her father comes home from a trip with a new wife, Daisy decided to go on a trip, which she would not have been able to do if she were married. On that trip, she reunites with Barker, the man that she eventually marries and has three children with. If Daisy had put off marrying Harold, she would not have married Barker, and probably would have been living with a man she didn’t love, but who she was still married to because he didn’t die, like Harold did. Marrying Harold A. Hoad was one of the most important decisions Daisy makes in The Stone Diaries. Daisy skips a lot of her life and remembers only what she wants to. I would recommend this book to others because of the details in it that build the story. Reaction to this. Small lives thing. Carol Shields intended for this book to be read by women unsure about their lives and their roles in the world.
The Stone Diaries demonstrated how twentieth century women were often shaped by the expectations of men. Carol Shields wanted readers to see how women were not given much control over their lives, and how they have so much potential, but do nothing without a man to guide them, because that’s what they had been taught. The Stone Diaries wants readers to know that they do not have to be like Daisy, existing only to be a mother and wife, and not doing much else when she does not have a man around. The last years of Daisy’s life were filled with regret, and Carol Shields wants you to make sure that is not
you.
Motherhood in The Bean Trees & nbsp; In the novel, The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, we watch Taylor grow a great deal. This young woman takes on a huge commitment to caring for a child that doesn't even belong to her. The friends that she acquired along the way help teach her about love and responsibility, and those friends become family to her and Turtle. Having no experience in motherhood, she muddles through the best she can, as all mothers do. & nbsp; Marietta was raised in a small town in Kentucky. When she became an adult, she decided she needed a change.
People can change their ways overtime in a positive way. Everyone has experienced change once in their life. Some people have acknowledged change over the course of life in a positive way or a negative way. Throughout the novel “The First Stone” by Don Aker, the main character Reef alters his ways a lot positively. Reef is a teenager who changes his lifestyle and makes a huge impact in his life after he meets Leeza. This novel develops the fact that people can change in a beneficial way, no matter what situation they are in.
The social group of women is often focused on by Gwen Harwood within Selected Poems of Gwen Harwood through the themes of motherhood and domestic life which play an integral role in many of her poems. These themes define a stereotypical role for women representing them as subordinate in a patriarchal society through a range of her poems such as In the Park, The Violets and Prize Giving. Harwood portrays women as subservient and inferior, with the main purpose to be household mothers and wives which was based on society’s expectations during Harwood’s time however her later poems such as Father and Child develop to contain hope for societal progression through occasionally defying these stereotypes.
This book is about a girl name Ellen Foster who is ten years old. Her mother committed suicide by over dosing on her medication. When Ellen tried to go look for help for her mother her father stopped her. He told them that if she looked for helped he would kill them both. After her mother died she was left under her fathers custody. Her father was a drunk. He would physically and mentally abuse her. Ellen was forced to pay bills, go grocery shopping, cook for herself, and do everything else for herself. Ellen couldn't take it any more so she ran away her friends house. Starletta and her parents lived in a small cabin with one small bathroom. One day at school a teacher found a bruise on Ellen's arm. She sends Ellen to live with Julia the school's art teacher. Julia had a husband named Roy. They were both hippies. Julia and Roy cared a lot about Ellen. After Ellen turned 11 years old she was forced to go live with her grandmother. Ellen didn't want to leave Julia and Roy but her grandmother had won custody. Her grandmother was a cruel old lady. Ellen spends the summer with her grandmother. Living with her makes her very unhappy. Since her grandmother owns farmland she forces Ellen to work on the field with her black servants. Ellen meets a black woman named Mavis. Mavis and her become good friends. Mavis would talk about how she knew Ellen's mother and how much Ellen resembled her mother. Her grandmother didn't think the same. She thought that Ellen resembled her father. She also hated that man. Her grandmother would often compare her with her father. Her grandmother would torture her because she wanted revenge from her father. Her grandmother also blames her for the death of her mother. While Ellen was staying with her grandmother her father died. When her father died she didn't feel sad because she had always fantasized about killing her father. Ellen just felt a distant sadness. Ellen cried just a little bit. Her grandmother was furious because Ellen showed some emotions. She told her to never cry again. After that Ellen becomes scarred for a long time. One day her uncle Rudolph bought the flag that had been on Ellen's father's casket. Her grandmother turns him away. Later that day she burned the flag.
... mold of a traditional woman throughout her entire life. She set new standards for women regarding relationships. She dared to get divorces, to leave an abusive man, to leave a cheating man, to have a lover, even to marry a much younger man, but more importantly she dared to write about these controversial topics. Readers may get a sense of Granny's bitterness toward men, but they cannot ignore her strength and independence. Porter was a part of the "era of exuberance" because she played her role in the evolution of women. The answer to the question posed at the beginning of this paper is the same question women of the early twentieth century began asking themselves. This question became a choice for them. Porter chose to be strong because of her ability to move on, and by the time she became Granny Weatherall she knew she had achieved what she had set out to do.
Grief leaves an imprint on those who experience it. Some can survive its deep sorrow, others cannot. In The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, she explores the effect of grief on the main characters. The novel opens with fourteen-year-old Lily Owns struggling with the knowledge that her mother was dead because she, as an infant, picked up a loaded gun and accidentally shot her. She runs away from her abusive father in search for answers of who her mother was. Lily hitchhikes to Tiburon, South Carolina; the location written on the back of an image of the Black Madonna – one of the only belongings she has of her mother’s. There, she finds a pink house inhabited by the Boatwright sisters who are African American women making Black Madonna honey. The Boatwright sisters have had their share of grief with the death of two of their sisters and the racial intolerance they face despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Boatwright sisters and Lily Owens have different methods of coping with grief; internalizing, ignoring, and forgetting are some of the ways they cope, with varying degrees of success. They discover that they must live past their grief, or else it will tear them apart.
Heart break, joy, love, happiness, The Book The Secret Life of Bees has it all! The book is about a young girls that accidentally shot her mother. After spending nine years with her abusive, and emotionally absent father, she decides to run away. So, she breaks her beloved nanny out of prison, and Lily escapes to Tiburon South Carolina, a town she links to her mother through the writing on one of her old possessions. While in Tiburon, Lily finds the calendar sisters three very different, very helpful sisters. The family agrees to take Lilly in, despite the fact that almost every white person in town frowns upon the very idea of this white girl staying in an African American household. While staying with the sisters, August, May, and June, Lily learns lots of things, ranging from bee keeping, to why and how her mother first left her. She falls in love, explores her past, and finds it within herself to forgive her mother for leaving her, and herself, for shooting her mom. This book is rich in both emotion, and culture.
The movie Family Stone takes place during the holiday season when all the children return home for Christmas. Everett Stone is bringing home his girlfriend Meredith whom he plans to ask to marry him on Christmas day. Upon arriving home Everett’s siblings Amy, Ben, Thad, and Susan and parents Kelly and Sybil were not excited that Meredith was there. Throughout the movie Meredith struggles to fit in with the family and her relationship with Everett starts to suffer. Amy gives Meredith the most grief and makes it hard for Meredith to fit in with the family. Meredith’s sister Julie ends up coming to the Stone residence to try to help Meredith form a relationship with Everett’s family. The Stone family loves Julie from the time they meet her
For this paper I read the novel The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, this novel is told in the span of 25 years, it is told by two characters David and Caroline, who have different lives but are connected through one past decision. The story starts in 1964, when a blizzard happens causing the main character, Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. During the delivery, the son named Paul is fine but the daughter named Phoebe has something wrong with her. The doctor realizes that the daughter has Down syndrome, he is shocked and remembers his own childhood when his sister was always sick, her dying at an early age and how that affected his mother. He didn’t want that to happen to his wife, so David told the nurse to bring Phoebe to an institution, so that his wife wouldn’t suffer.
The lives of men and women are portrayed definitively in this novel. The setting of the story is in southern Georgia in the 1960’s, a time when women were expected to fit a certain role in society. When she was younger she would rather be playing ...
The point of this novel is to provide a personal understanding into the lives of women in the twentieth trying to break free from the restraints of society. This novel takes place in two different areas. Grand Isle, where the novel starts the journey Edna encompasses,
After five years of being raised and living with their grandmother whom they truly loved, the girls had a rude awakening. Their grandmother, Sylvia had passed away. “When after almost five years, my grandmother one winter morning eschewed awakening, Lily and Nona were fetched from Spokane and took up housekeeping in Fingerbone, just as my grandmother had wished” (Robinson 29). This was the final attempt that their grandmother had made in order for the girls to have a normal and traditional life. This is a solid example of how the sister’s lives are shaped by their family and their surroundings. Lucille’s ultimate concern in life is to conform to society and live a traditional life. She wishes to have a normal family and is sorrowful for all of the losses that she has experienced such as her mother’s and grandmother’s deaths. On the other hand, Ruthie, after spending more time with her future guardian, Aunt Sylvie, becomes quite the transient like her.
After love circles with Gatsby and his cousin Daisy, lastly Jordan and gossip resulting with killings end up discussed over his experience resulting going back east. Through reading the book, it shows how the experience of selfness and World War 1 made the high social optimistic over their lives. It showed how they wanted to forget the past and build themselves back into their social class. Also, by the experience of Daisy and Jordan treatment from the men in the stories allows the reader to see how time still hasn’t changed how relationships work with men.
F Scott Fitgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, is centred upon 1920’s America. In the text, characters such as Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan are all carefully constructed to reveal various attitudes held by America in the early 20th century. Overall, the construction of female characters in The Great Gatsby showcases an accurate representation of women in the time period the text was composed in.
In Beth Brant (Mohawk) “This is History,” the main theme in the story is to show readers that women came first and love each other in society. She is trying to find a identity for herself and have connections with things around her. She is willing to appreciate nature and earth. She is taking the beauty of everything around her. Including pregnancy and women. “First woman touched her body, feeling the movements inside, she touched the back of mother and waited for the beings to change her world.”