The Stone Diaries-Forces Of Time

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Forces of Time; The Stone Diaries In Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries, she tells the fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill. From conception up until her birth on a kitchen floor in Tyndall, Manitoba in 1905 her existence is known by no one. Immediately following the birth, Mercy Goodwill, Daisy’s mother dies. Daisy is then taken by her neighbour, Mrs. Clarentine Flett, to Winnipeg to be raised; where they reside with her son Barker Flett. Daisy never meets her father, Cuyler Goodwill, until she is reunited with him due to the unforeseen death of Mrs. Flett. The novel is the story of Daisy Goodwill, a woman who wanders through life by the forces of time, never quite settling into place. Her life unfolds through a series of chapters pertaining to some of life’s most profound moments however; many are missing the elements of a life that one would expect to find in chapters titled: “Childhood”, “Love”, “Marriage”, “Motherhood” and “Sorrow”. The Stone Diaries, in which Shield’s offers several examples of life that all trace back to the death of Mercy and the birth of Daisy, creates a lot of interplay between freewill and chance. Although free will plays into some aspects of the lives of the characters, it is chance and especially inopportune deaths in the novel that dictate a life’s trajectory. Some may argue that the death of Mercy Goodwill and the motherless life of Daisy was a result of free will suggesting, that Mercy willingly chose not to investigate her ailments with Dr. Spears. Although this opposition offers valuable consideration, one must consider who Mercy Stone-Goodwill really was. Brought up in an orphanage from the time she was a baby, “[Mercy] grew up, cloistered as any nun” (28), she was a woman who lacked common knowledge on the issues of womanhood, conception and intimate marital relations. Secondly, Mercy was obese, “by age ten she

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