A SCARF -Carold Shield- summary

Carol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian author. She is best known for her

1993 novel, The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada. Shields was the author of several novels and short story collections, including The Orange Fish (1989), Swann (1987), Various Miracles (1985), Happenstance (1980), and The Republic of Love (1992). She was the recipient of a Canada Council Major Award, two National Magazine Awards, the 1990 Marian Engel Award, the Canadian Author's Award, and a CBC Short Story Award. She was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1998 and was elevated to Companion of the Order in 2002. Shields was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Manitoba. 

The story begins with the declaration of Mrs. Winter, the narrator that ‘two years ago I

wrote a novel’. It was her first novel. She is a middle aged woman. Her novel is described as ‘a fresh, bright spring time piece of fiction’ by the Publisher’s Weekly. Her novel’s title is ‘My Thyme is up’. When it was published, she did not know who was buying her item. Mrs.Scribano, her publisher opined that young working girls may buy it and she ventured that the novel is gnawed by loneliness and insecurity. Her husband Tom and her children are her support. She has three daughters-Nancy, Chris and Norah. They were happy about the book because they were mentioned by name in People Mrs. Rita Winters lives on a farm outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with her husband who is a family physician. Among her three daughters, Norah is the most literary girl. Both Nancy and Chris are interested in advanced science .The novel won the Offenden Prize. It recognizes quality and honors accessibility. After the ceremony function, she said goodbye to the family and travelled to Washington as she was offered three book city tours by her publisher. She decided to go for shopping as Norah’s birthday is coming up within a week’s time. Norah longed for a

beautiful and serious scarf. She decided to buy Norah the perfect scarf. Norah wanted something in a bright blue with perhaps some yellow dashes. As she moved from one boutique to the next, Mrs. Winter began to form a very definite idea of the scarf that she wanted for Norah. The scarf became an idea, it must be brilliant and subdued at the same time, finely made, but with a secure sense of its own shape. Norah had always been a bravely undemanding child. Once she was four or five she told her mother how she controlled her bad dreams at night. Then at last Mrs. Winter had the sight of Norah’s scarf, it flowed into her view. It was patterned from end to end with rectangles each subtly out of alignment; blue, yellow, green, a kind of pleasing violet and each of these shapes was outlined by black colour. Sixty dollars was its cost. In Baltimore, Mrs. Winters had to meet her friend Gwen who was with her in the same women’s writing group in Lancester. Five years ago, she became writer-in-residence for a small women’s college in Baltimore. Gwen had made sacrifices for her young student husband. She had

her navel closed by a plastic surgeon because her husband complained that it smelled “off”. This navel-less state, more than anything , became her symbol of regret and anger. Mrs. Winters met Gwen at the Café Pierre. Gwen had changed considerably in dressing and appearance. Her head was covered and Mrs. Winters wondered if Gwen was undergoing chemotherapy and suffering hair loss. But her face was fresh. After talking for sometime about

the book, she showed the scarf to her. Gwen commented that ‘You invented it, created it out of your imagination’. She was so happy to hear such a comment from Gwen. She almost cried herself. She had not expected anyone to understand how she felt. Mrs. Winters watched Gwen roll the scarf back into the fragile paper. She took her time, tucking in the edges with her finger tips.

Then she slipped the parcel into her plastic bag, spilling more freely now. She thanked Reta, “You don’t know what you have given me today”. She wondered why the scarf “ half an ounce of silk” was so important to Gwen. She looked at Gwen and then down at her hands, her wedding band, her engagement ring, a little diamond thingamajig from the sixties . She thought of her three daughters and her mother –in-law and her own dead mother with her slack charms and her need to relax by painting china. At the end of the story Mrs. Winters philosophises that none of us is going to get what we wanted. We ask questions ourselves, endlessly, but not sternly enough. The world is not ready for us; it hurts her to say that. We are too kind, too willing, too unwilling too, reaching out blindly with a grasping hand, but not knowing how to ask for what we do not even know we want. This is how the story ends.