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Professor Van Herk
ENGL 527
22 April 2023

Carol Shields: The Changing Notions of Family and the Significances Thereof

Over the course of the term, we have spent our time getting to know the intricacies of Carol Shields and of her writing; primarily, how she engages with the world on the small and intimate scale. There are no grand fables within the works of Carol Shields; no overwhelming plot contrivances, no superheroes (nor ‘heroes’ at all, in the typical sense of the world), no grand prophecies or fabled destinies to drive our characters along to their ultimate fates. Instead, Shields focuses on the ’radical ordinary‘ — a sort of fiction akin to but not quite a sister to the ’kitchen-sink realism‘ movement — the profundity of the everyday, of happenstance. Shields’ appreciation for this ’beauty in the boring‘ is especially prevalent in how she portrays families within her works, from all sorts of perspectives. Even despite the perceived mundanity of the family structure (largely because of our familiarity with it) Shields manages to, through the material detail of her writing and characters’ thoughts and actions, breathe new life and supply new, radical insight into the ordinariness of family that would otherwise go ignored. The family is at the heart of humankind; we all experience family in some way, whether it is the absence of it, the loss of it, the fulfillment of it or any other possible manifestation of the familial dynamic under the sun. Family is where we come from and is ever-changing in its nature. Shields is acutely aware of this and its significance to our material reality, and particularly aware of the ways in which real-world families try and subsequently fail to live up to intangible, abstract ideals. Thus, in multiple works throughout her oeuvre does she choose to employ the upset of the family dynamic which seems in turn to criticize, in a sometimes-roundabout way, the ’idealistic‘ view of family that is typically presented in much of our modern media, literary or otherwise. One crucial way Shields brings intrigue and a lens of examination to the otherwise mundane institution or structure of family is through her depiction of the eroding or changing family dynamic; how families move, change, or fall apart thanks to underlying or outside factors. The very act of portraying the mundane and all its hidden complexities proves the worth of the radically ordinary, especially Shields’ love of it. As the sum of all these factors, this paper will aim to examine, in detail, how Shields portrays the eroding and shifting of family structures and dynamics, and — tangentially — to analyze what, through her fictional families, Shields might be saying in her various works about the ordinary family, and the traditional family structures of our modern era.

The Stone Diaries follows the life story of a seemingly ordinary woman, who is known by many names throughout her life but principally so as one ’Daisy Flett‘. The novel shifts between various perspectives; Daisy is, at once, both the narrator of and the subject of her own life, with the very structure of the novel itself presenting itself as a fascinating mix of biography and autobiography, becoming both a more typically structured narrative and a historical memoir, mixing in papers and family photos amidst its prose. There is little question when considering all these factors that a principal theme of The Stone Diaries is family, in a few different ways, some of which only become clearer once the novel has concluded. When looking at the course of Daisy’s entire life, when one steps back to do so, one can see a life that seems full of tragedy; both of her mother figures die, her first husband falls to his death, and she ends up marrying her adoptive mother figure’s adult son — one who once harbored sexual thoughts for her, when she was a child — before he, too, dies and leaves her feeling even more alone than ever. It seems, then, that Shields’ intention is to speak to the difficulty in finding familial contentment, or our purposes in life (as they pertain to conceptions of family), and our inability to be completely well and truly known by our families — even when we spend our entire lives with them. Daisy never feels quite satisfied in any of the incarnations of her family; in fact, it seems the happiest she feels when thinking about family comes when she thinks about her garden-child: “It is, you might almost say, her child, her dearest child, the most beautiful of her offspring, obedient but possessing the fullness of its spaces, its stubborn vegetable will.” (342). The changing of family dynamics throughout life, the subtle shifts in the ways other people in our family units perceive us; these are all testament to the fact that family is a fluid entity, one that cannot be rigidly defined and one that is forever shaped by uncontrollable outside factors. The ways in which we perceive ourselves are never the way we are perceived by our family, or anybody else; even though we as readers follow Daisy intimately throughout her entire life, her death raises more questions than it does answers. We are left to witness her surviving children and relatives argue and ponder among themselves who she really was, and as a result, no member of her family ever knows the ’real‘ Daisy. No one ever had the full picture of her life, if one ever existed at all; through her many years, her family and her role in it changed with frequency; we as readers gain a more ’objective‘ insight into her existence, but even then, one cannot be sure of the reliability of the text given its nature as autobiographical biography-memoir, skipping as it does sometimes between Daisy’s perspective and a third-person one. It speaks to the implacability of the self within one’s family, the impermanence of existence amidst our ménages. This echoes the real world, as Shields all so often does in her works, occupied with the human condition as she was; we create ourselves anew all the time, as do our families. We are never the same person we were even a day before, by virtue of the passing of time, and the eroding of everything we hold as immutable truth. Since we are always changing, and since our families play such a crucial role in that change, it is often difficult for us as humans to find ourselves a concrete selfhood, or to be known as we want to among them. As we make ourselves anew, we make our families new in turn; even the most mundane of existences always exist in a state of permanent change, and there is intrigue to be found in the ordinary — and thus reappears that ever-persistent concept, the one that Shields championed: the radical ordinary. Daisy’s garden “perceives nothing of her, not her history, her name, her longings, nothing” (343) — so perhaps, The Stone Diaries posits, the best course of action is to free oneself from the shackles of expectation, any way one can.

Not only that, however, but The Stone Diaries is very much a work that is critical of the over-rigidity of many conceptions of family, particularly historical ones. Not only does it aim to critique — and not necessarily to advise, but to serve as a thematic vehicle for a message in a roundabout sort of way — on an individual level, but it also aims to do so on a societal level, giving the reader insight into the troubles felt by women and their roles in family throughout history. Daisy Flett is steeped in historical context and is a perfect lens through which to examine and critique the changing perceptions of family through the passing of time, what with her long years (having been born in 1905, after all). Despite her nature as an otherwise ordinary woman, her longevity gives her knowledge that others might not otherwise share, and she experiences many different sets of social norms and cultural ideas about what family means and about how it should be constituted. Daisy Flett is a woman who very much feels the weight of wasted potential, and the bearing down of pressure from society in all sorts of ways; she is pressured to conform to the norms of her times, and feels trapped by them, particularly those norms governed by the body of the gender binary. These themselves are intrinsically linked to concepts of family, strongest then but which still persist into the modern day and age. For example, the description the novel gives of the Daisy Flett from 1947 reflects ideas of the nuclear family; Flett is a stay-at-home mother whose principal occupation is childcare, while her husband serves as the masculine ideal, that of the ’breadwinner‘. She embodies the motherhood of the time, a fact her son Warren remarks on as he, as a child, watches her domestic work: he “can’t help feeling proud of her when he sees her [...] coming down the carpeted stairs, all fixed up” (282) — acting as the ideal housewife. Not all these changing conceptions of family directly involve Daisy as a person, in the sense that she is not the only person to offer their insight about them — however, they do all involve her in some way, having an extended family as she does. From her family members offering theories on her depression in 1965 to her children’s and relatives’ post-mortem debates over what she left behind or did not tell them, to even the closing remark of “’Someone should have thought of daisies.‘” (607) being shrugged off, Daisy is defined by her family, most importantly its changing, which prevents her from ever being truly understood — if she ever wanted to be at all.

Larry’s Party, meanwhile, is the story of yet another family, demonstrative of Shields’ fascination with the human condition and particularly that of family; the family in this novel is that is at once both conventional and not, by virtue of the parties involved in it. Primarily, the novel focuses its attention on the life and times of one Larry Weller, an ordinary man who manages to transcend the boundaries of his ordinary life, unlike Daisy Flett. When Larry is first introduced, he has a normal life, one perhaps even more mundane than the typical, given his unluckiness in love (and education, given he ends up, by accident, in ’flower college‘). The most interesting occurrence in his life as of late is accidentally taking a stranger’s jacket, one identical to his own, that allows him to live vicariously through the other man, in a roundabout sort of way. He has grown up unhappy and unfulfilled, shaped by his experiences to be the very model of a mundane, typical man. His familial experiences up to this point have shaped his life’s course; from the very first chapter Shields’ narration makes it known that “Modesty [runs] in [Larry’s] family, his mum, his dad, his sister, Midge, and once modesty gets into your veins you’re stuck with it.” (20). There is, however, one trait that makes Larry stand out, though one would not know it just by looking at him; the deceptively ordinary Larry has an affinity for constructing elaborate, labyrinthine mazes, a fact about himself which he learns while honeymooning with his newlywed-wife, Dorrie Shaw. While he is an otherwise plain, placid, and boring man, his talent for maze-building awakens in him a passion for life he otherwise would never have found. He begins working on a maze around his house which eventually begins to take up all his spare time, leading him to become neglectful of his family, much to Dorrie’s chagrin. Within this novel, this is the first time we, the readers, are made to bear witness to Shields’ omnipresent fascination with the shifting and eroding family; Larry’s neglect of his family slowly but surely begins to change the dynamic of his family, weakening the bonds he has with those around him because of a lack of care for them and an overabundance of care for his mazes. Larry’s Party is very much a story about Larry, but it is also very much a story about his family, seen through the lens of his affectations on the world around him, all catalyzed by one otherwise unremarkable honeymoon. One might very well attempt to argue against this point, to argue that Larry’s Party is merely a novel about nothing but the man, about Larry and Larry alone, and that the people and circumstances around him are merely superficial set dressing to prop up the narrative of his life. However, to do so would be to deny the very foundation of the Shieldsian promise, that ever-present idea that everything, no matter how small, counts. Nothing is placed into Shields’ work without reason, though it might be easy to assume by virtue of her love of everyday life and her appreciation for that which we otherwise often take for granted. Every part of every one of Shields’ narratives holds significance, even if it is not a grand one. It is that profundity, that radical ordinariness, which permeates every aspect of her work, which breathes life into that which otherwise goes ignored, taken for granted or belittled. Kitchen implements can hold scores of untold meaning and importance, scarves even more; the point is that everything is in its right place, each character has a rich life of their own even if we do not see it through their eyes. Each character is almost-real, almost-material in the thought and meticulous care placed into catalyzing their narrative forms. All of this culminates, in the realm of Carol Shields’ depiction of the changing family, in the fact that every little action has its own set of consequences; even if it seems inconsequential, even if it takes place in a life otherwise entirely no less ordinary than any other, it matters to the people it effects, and it is in this way that Carol Shields uses this fictional family to reveal truths about very real ones. Every little action we take matters and becomes the sum of our lives; every single one adds up bit by bit even if we think it does not. In a family setting, this means that every minor strain combines over time, like water lapping at a rock face or like a moving glacier, to erode the foundation upon which family is built. If one does not pay careful heed to their actions or their consequences, then more often than not, the family dynamic will be irreversibly shifted Larry’s actions erode his family’s foundation so much that it causes Dorrie to snap; she cannot take the pressure of Larry’s maze anymore — the time it, in all its unthinking glory, is divesting from her and their son — and as a result, she decides to order a building contractor bulldoze the front-yard section of his maze: . This is just the beginning of Shields’ highlight on Larry’s family, however; this incident occurs close to the beginning of the novel, and the saga of Larry’s complicated-but-basic life is only just getting started. After the bulldozing of his maze, Larry and Dorrie ultimately (and inevitably, given the not-so-metaphorical wanton destruction that their relationship has ended up in) decide to split, and Larry “[emerges] from the cramped crawlspace of his first marriage” (112). Divorce and the way it shifts their family dynamic is the fault of both parties, in their own ways. While Larry is certainly all fault for poring all his time and effort into the construction of his maze, obsessing over his relationship with the materiality of it and the profundity the act of its construction can offer a life that has otherwise been mundane and ’meaningless’, it is Dorrie’s choice to have the maze torn down that ultimately severs the ties between them. It is no doubt fair for her to be upset (though later, at the novel’s end, she apologises to Larry for her actions, as when he tries to apologize for making her upset by his leaving, she replies: “You [Larry] don’t have to be sorry. I didn’t know how to be married back then.” (349)). Her act of destruction in the physical world is echoed in the less-tangible-but-still-real world of relationships, and the two’s bond can no longer take the pressure, cleaved in twain by the backhoe that destroyed his maze, and he lets slip the “the piercing cries and howls of a man injured beyond words.” (111). This leaves Larry without family other than himself — his blood still ties him to his son Ryan, but since the boy no longer lives with him, Larry is left to circumnavigate his life without the strength of his own family foundation beneath him. He goes on to marry a saint scholar named Beth Prior, with whom he is happy, but not necessarily fulfilled, and in hindsight realizes just how much he loved Dorrie. Interestingly, it is only after the erosion of his family structure and its collapse that Larry can see clearly how much it meant to him; such is true of life, too, where people are often prone to taking their families for granted — not merely just for what they can give them in the most abstract of ways, but also their tangible support, guidance and love that they can provide an individual to strengthen them and their places in society. As he moves through the rest of his life — moving to Chicago, becoming a maze designer on a professional level, losing his father, reconnecting with Ryan, even beginning to quarrel with Beth and then divorcing her as well — his thoughts continue to return to his family, or in specific, its origin: him and his relationship with Dorrie. Despite the changes in his life, and his changing definition of family, Larry still yearns for what he once has, and as he falls into a coma in 1996, it seems that, in some ways, his old family does too, being the only ones to visit him in the process. In the story’s dénouement, the titular Larry’s Party, Dorrie and Larry rekindle their love in a mutual confession: “‘I love you. I’ve always loved you.’ ‘I love you too. I’ve been waiting. Only I didn’t know I was waiting.’” (350). The question of who speaks first, of who answers, and by extension the ultimate outcome of the story is never answered, but it leaves the reader to assume their family may perhaps have a chance, despite everything. All that Larry has done throughout his life has led to this — all the exploration of different avenues in search of fulfilment, have some tie to family no matter how much the makeup of that family has shifted, changed, eroded, and grown as both consequence and cause. It seems, then, that the primary idea of Shields’ work on Larry’s Party is to profess the idea that family can persist even through radical change, as well as provide a litany against destructive or self-destructive actions that may adversely affect it and one’s own quest for personal fulfilment.

The last work in Shields’ literary canon that this paper aims to tackle the family dynamics of is her final proper novel, Unless. Unless is a story that, at its core, revolves around family, and aside from The Stone Diaries (which is concerned with both the society-at-large, macro-level aspect of family change as well as the micro-level of the unit itself) is perhaps the most family-centric novel in Shields oeuvre; the larger part of its plot revolves around the family upset (sudden change and erosion) that is caused as a direct consequence of her daughter Norah’s sudden decision to quit college and, instead of coming home, choose to live on the streets of Toronto with a sign affixed to her chest that reads only one word — ‘Goodness’. Unless itself is a semi-autobiographical work, and in that regard, can be compared to The Stone Diaries; however, whereas the latter is intended to be entirely fictional (aside from whatever bits of Shields’ own psyche that may or may not have embedded themselves in the work, for example, in her using some of her own family photographs in the photo section of the novel), Unless sees Shields borrow many of her own thoughts, feelings and experiences to lend to the character of Reta. Once again, Shields aims to expose and explore the radically ordinary, the extraordinary within the otherwise ordinary lives of everyday people, and a large part of this comes from the family dynamic. As has been reinforced throughout this paper itself, family is the ’cradle of life‘, in many ways; from it we come, and from it is founded the basis of our material realities — not only that, but we shape our families and they shape us, and in this relationship of mutual erosion and creation — change — lies the source of and much of our own radical ordinariness, the kind that Shields was so preoccupied with. The inciting incident of Unless, Norah’s unexplained decision, is similarly jarring to that which upsets the family ’balance‘ in Larry’s Party, in that the incidents in both novels cause a sudden change in the family structure that in turn causes the views and lives on all parties involved radically. One key difference, however, is that Larry’s Party’s first big upset, the destruction of Larry’s labyrinth, results in a different kind of familial shift; this being a dramatic one wherein one party becomes two, thanks to the divorce that takes place as a result. In Unless, meanwhile, Norah’s departure and sudden psychological break do not split up the family, though they do cause it a great deal of strain and heartbreak. Norah’s actions, of course, are later recontextualized towards the end of the novel; when pre-existing theories or ideas concerning why she might have been driven to such a drastic and apparently sudden action, like her father’s idea that she may have some psychological damage, or her mother’s idea that there may be some deep, symbolic meaning behind it, are both in parts blown open and ultimately confirmed. Reta, and by extension her family, come to know that the inciting event that drove Norah to her roost on that lonely corner shunning any attempts to bring her home was her attempt to save the life of an Islamic girl who had self-immolated on the very same streetcorner. Being unable to save the girl, and gaining serious burn wounds for her efforts, caused a break in Norah’s otherwise very milquetoast, average life, and made her question the existence of goodness in the world — which then obviously resulted in the thought around her neck. Norah’s wounds, psychological and physical, her sudden doubt of the existence of goodness — any at all — toppled her family structure. Our family connections run deeper than we often think they do; no action we take is taken alone. It seems, thus, that Shields’ intended message in spotlighting this particular family, and this particular portrayal of it, is in part the idea that a wound to one is a wound to all; within a given family unit, all members play an integral role, and any structural damage to that unit will inevitably be the cause of some serious fallout — it may even threaten to topple it entirely. Unless stresses the importance of the family unit, of reliance on one another, as ’goodness’. Shields’ narrator puts it best: “But it’s all right, Norah. We know now, Norah. You can put this behind you. You are allowed to forget. We’ll remember it for you, a memory of a memory, we’ll do this gladly.” (403).

While they may be different novels, and they may focus on different individuals with different and unique existences, Unless, Larry’s Party and The Stone Diaries are alike in their preoccupation, to varying degrees, with the idea of family. All three novels use the erosion of family structures and the changing of definitions and construction of family to make different points about the people we surround ourselves with and call our closest confidantes, and how our interactions with them — on a fundamental level — vary throughout time. No matter how ordinary the person, or the family behind them, the message of Shields’ oeuvre is a resounding call to embrace the mundane and to find the complexities that lie within it. Through her works and her strong sense of meta-text and direction, she calls upon her readers to open their eyes, to gain a newfound understanding of and appreciation for the ‘radically ordinary’ and the tangible world around us; in large part, she asks us to make an equally radical effort to better know our families and the ways in which we are intrinsically connected to them, in the most material and empirical of senses.

Works Cited

Shields, Carol. Larry’s Party. Penguin Books, 1998. EPUB file.

---. The Stone Diaries. Penguin Books, 2008. EPUB file.

---. Unless. Vintage Canada, 2017. EPUB file.