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Brenda Bowman at Dinner with Judy : and in Carol Shields's A Fairly Conventional Woman

Wendy Roy, University of Saskatchewan, has previously published essays on fiction In 1979 the North American art by Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, world was galvanized by the unveiling of and Carol Shields, and a book on women's Judy Chicago's at the San travel writing in , Maps of Difference: Francisco Museum of . Chicago's Canada, Women, and Travel. collaborative ceremonial table honoured often-forgotten women through such Abstract traditional women's arts as ceramics, Like Judy Chicago's 1979 installation The weaving, , , lacework, Dinner Party, Carol Shields's 1982 novel A needlepoint, knitting, and crocheting. Fairly Conventional Woman has been Although much of the effort of Chicago and criticized as too middle class, too domestic, her collaborators had gone into the and not truly feminist. This paper argues, in production of fabric table runners that contrast, that like Chicago's installation, commemorated thirty-nine women, critics Shields's novel broke ground by exploring focused on the accompanying ceramic gendered aspects of the arts-crafts divide plates, which celebrated women's sexuality and the role of domestic activities such as through stylized representations of . quilting as impetuses for social change. Conservative politicians called Chicago's Résumé plates "pornographic." Art critics condemned Comme dans l'installation de Judy Chicago the exhibit as domestic "kitsch." Theoretical The Dinner Party en 1979, le roman de feminists criticized the work as essentialist Carol Shields A Fairly Conventional Woman in the way the "central-core" imagery en 1982 a été critiquée en tant que trop reduced diverse women to their sexuality classe moyenne, trop domestique et pas and thus their biology (Jones 1996c, 36; suffisamment féministe. Cet article discute, Kubitza 1996, 158; Meyer 1996, 48). But en contraste, que tout comme dans Chicago's Dinner Party was praised in l'installation de Chicago, le roman de almost adulatory terms by the hundreds and Shields fut révolutionnaire en explorant les thousands of women who viewed the aspects de la différences entre les sexes de installation in art galleries throughout North la division des arts et de l'artisanat, et du America and Europe and who focused on rôle des activités domestiques telles que le the work's collaborative recuperation of a ouatage comme des élans pour le variety of women's arts and women's changement social. histories. Indeed, many women who lived too far away to visit the exhibit purchased Chicago's books, The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage (1979) and Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework (1980), and pored over their photographs and accompanying text.

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 125 My mother, a needleworker and quilter in by embroidering both her first and last name rural Saskatchewan, acquired one of those on a Centennial quilt (1987, 160). In contrast books for herself and the other for me, a to these brief mentions, quilting and other daughter who was then just out of her traditional women's needlework take centre teens.1 stage in A Fairly Conventional Woman. The plates and table runners of By making the predominantly Chicago's Dinner Party were still very much feminine craft of quilting the core of this in the North American political and artistic novel, Shields places her work within a consciousness when Carol Shields's A continuum of other fictional narratives that Fairly Conventional Woman was first use quilting for political and historical published in 1982. Shields's fourth novel, it purposes, including Alice Walker's 1974 evoked little analytical comment, especially story "Everyday Use," Whitney Otto's 1991 by Canadian critics, perhaps because it is How to Make an American Quilt (and the set in the United States rather than Canada 1995 film adaptation), and Margaret (unlike earlier and later novels) and is a Atwood's 1996 Alias Grace. The companion novel to the earlier metaphorical use to which quilting is put in Happenstance (1980). Aside from initial these narratives is by no means reviews, all published articles discuss A homogenous. In Walker's story, quilts stand Fairly Conventional Woman in the context of in for African-American heritage; in Otto's Shields's other work.2 However, like many of book they suggest women's cross-cultural her other novels, this fourth book makes bonds; and in Atwood's novel they represent detailed and evocative comments about the the pieced-together nature of the historical coming to consciousness of a woman artist. record. In A Fairly Conventional Woman, Exploration of this idea is evident in Small quilts provide an avenue for discussion of Ceremonies (1976) through biographer and women's histories and women's place in the aspiring novelist Judith Gill; The Box Garden arts-crafts divide, as the novel's protagonist, (1977) through poet Charleen Forrest; a conventional woman from suburban Swann (1987) through multiple women Chicago, flies to a handicraft convention in writers, including the title character poet Philadelphia. Mary Swann, academic Sarah Maloney, and Brenda Bowman appeared in the failed poet and editor Hildë Cruzzi; The precursor Happenstance mostly as a kind of Republic of Love (1992) through folklorist ghost figure: the absent wife whose Fay McLeod; and most evidently and attendance at an out-of-town meeting forces autobiographically, Unless (2002) through her historian husband to be temporarily novelist and translator Reta W inters. But in responsible for household and parenting contrast to all these novels, in A Fairly duties. A Fairly Conventional Woman, in Conventional Woman that artist is a quilter contrast, focuses on Brenda's experiences rather than a writer. Shields's only other at that convention as she becomes descriptions of needlework make up minor unconventional about her approach to parts of her novels, and involve men as well quiltmaking. She is compelled to reinterpret as women: in Small Ceremonies, academic quilting as an art rather than a craft and to Martin Gill creates a to demonstrate view the resulting quilts as feminist the themes of Paradise Lost; in The Box statements rather than just "warm, attractive Garden, Charleen's mother expresses bed coverings" (1982, 102). At the herself by curtains and slipcovers for conference, Brenda figuratively "has dinner" her house; and in Swann, unmarried with Judy Chicago, who is never mentioned small-town librarian Rose Hindmarch in the book but whose politically motivated highlights gender relations as she sets art informs the discussions about herself apart from her neighbours, "Mrs. quiltmaking in which Brenda participates. Henry Cleary, Mrs. Al Lindquist," and so on, Indeed, Shields's book rearticulates and at

126 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis times humorously critiques Chicago's coherent, feminist, reading" (Barrett 1986, arguments about women's domestic lives, 162-63). She suggests, further, that The artistry, and sexuality, and at the same time Dinner Party illustrates that "women's art is comments on women's place in the not necessarily '" (1986, 163). In historical record. In the process, the book a similar manner, Groening dismisses draws on feminist theoreticians as diverse Shields's own claim to be a feminist when as and Betty Friedan and she writes that "to call Shields a feminist...is anticipates feminist art critics such as to place her distinctive fiction in an alien Rozsika Parker. land. Although her novels celebrate the In remarkably similar criticisms, world of a certain kind of woman who is works by both Chicago and Shields have perhaps under-regarded in today's world, been dismissed as too middle class, too they most certainly do not welcome domestic, and not truly feminist. Feminist art feminism as a way to alleviate frustration or critic notes that one of the powerlessness" (Groening 1991, 14). The persistent criticisms of Chicago's place subhead of Groening's article states this settings is that they show "a unified conclusion more bluntly and in wording womanhood that...is implicitly white, similar to that of Barrett's: "Writing about heterosexual, and middle or upper-middle women doesn't make an author a feminist" class" (Jones 1996b, 35). Similarly, in an (1991, 14). article about Shields in Canadian Forum, One of Groening's most pointed Laura Groening criticizes Shields's novels criticisms is that in both A Fairly for their almost uniformly middle-class, white Conventional Woman and Swann, Shields protagonists, arguing that "Class renders mocks 1970s and 1980s feminist rhetoric these people completely homogeneous" (1991, 16-17). Groening argues that Shields (Groening 1991, 14) - this despite the fact "defuses the seriousness of any kind of that Happenstance and A Fairly engaged behaviour by consistently coupling Conventional Woman refer to at least one it with the ridiculous" (1991, 16). Just as in joint character who is not middle class: Swann Shields satirizes some aspects of Brenda's mother, an unmarried working feminist literary criticism (and indeed literary woman. Jones quotes art critics' dismissal of criticism in general), in A Fairly Conventional The Dinner Party because it is not only Woman she makes fun of some of the "popular, loved by the masses" but also excesses of of the kind "associated with women's tastes and with provoked by Chicago's Dinner Party. But domestic crafts" (1996c, 88), while in a what Groening fails to acknowledge is that parallel argument Maria Horvath complains while critical rhetoric may be mocked in about the "unnecessary attention to Shields's books, the value of feminist minutiae," the "tedious detail," and the explorations of historical limitations on "banality of real life" in A Fairly Conventional women's lives and women's artistry is Woman (Horvath 1982, 18-19). Even one of clearly acknowledged. Indeed, as even the book's editors, Shields wrote in a letter Groening concedes, "Shields' focus is on to her friend Blanche Howard, was "skittish the quiet, unappreciated lives of artistic about anything with a domestic tone. I know women who have lost themselves (albeit he thought A Fairly Conventional Woman quite willingly) in their attention to their [sic] was too housewifey." She then asked families" (1991, 14). As with all Shields's her friend, "Who does he think reads novels, novels, aspects of those explorations are I wonder"? (Shields 1985).3 distinctly humorous. Thus, while Brenda Writing about Chicago's work, Bowman in A Fairly Conventional Woman English scholar Michele Barrett argues that may at first be so shocked by feminist "the use of women's lives, histories and approaches to needlework that her experience does not necessarily ensure [a] response is comedic, she ultimately finds

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 127 these ideas persuasive. In Shields's books, 1980, 25). This reference to "women's humour gently leads the way to political magazines" evokes analyses by Betty commentary. Friedan about what she called the The political implications of A Fairly "mystique" that developed around Conventional Woman have been ignored by middle-class women in the middle of the many readers and reviewers of the book. twentieth century. Friedan argued that For example, early critic William French of "domestic aspects of feminine existence - as the Globe and Mail dismissed A Fairly it was lived by women whose lives were Conventional Woman as "a fairly confined, by necessity, to cooking, cleaning, conventional novel" about a woman's "crisis washing, [and] bearing children" were of fidelity at the age of 40" (Collins 1982; turned into "a religion" promulgated by French 1982, P23; Wachtel 1982). He was women's magazines (Friedan 1963, 38). responding to a plot twist that has Brenda Studies such as Valerie Korinek's Roughing encounter and become friendly with - but not It In the Suburbs (2000) have since have sex with - a man who is attending challenged the idea that such magazines another convention in the same hotel. Of the were entirely anti-feminist in their editorial other early reviewers, only Thelma Wheatley approaches. Korinek takes issue with the in Writers' Quarterly argued what I think is "truism" developed as a result of Friedan's the book's real point: not Brenda's mid-life thesis "that women's magazines are sexual crisis but "her growing awareness backward, ultra conservative periodicals and acceptance of herself and the other whose only function is to encourage 'housewives' at the convention as 'artists'" consumption" (Korinek 2000, 11). She (Wheatley c.1982, 19). In other words, at the argues, in contrast, that reading a core of the book is a dawning artistic magazine, like "consuming other types of consciousness. As does Chicago's popular culture," involves readers in "a installation, Shields's A Fairly Conventional series of choices," and that women's Woman explores needlework as an magazines did not always present "a single essential part of women's arts and history dominant message, one that reinforced the and questions the arts-crafts divide that hegemony of English-Canadian, suburban, traditionally relegated most of women's middle-class women" (2000, 12&15). artistic productions to obscurity. The novel Shields takes a step toward a similar critique also considers two subjects that are integral by noting that in taking up quilting, Brenda is to The Dinner Party: the way in which not wholeheartedly adopting what Friedan women come together over food and the termed a religion. Instead, through her methods through which they explore their "half-conforming, half-angry reaction" sexuality. Indeed, several of these subjects (Shields 1980, 25), she is resisting that are introduced in Happenstance, which may impetus as she tries to find meaningful work be one reason the books were often that might solve what Friedan called "the discussed together even before they were problem that has no name, a vague published in one volume in Great Britain in undefined wish for 'something more' " 1991 under the single title Happenstance - (Friedan 1963, 54). more on that republication and retitling A Fairly Conventional Woman later.4 introduces ideas about women's magazines The main character of the original and women's work that Shields also Happenstance, Brenda's husband Jack, explored in Swann (1987) and her cannot remember why his wife started award-winning novel The Stone Diaries quilting but speculates that it was "perhaps (1993).5 Shields said in an interview with a frenzied half-conforming, half-angry Eleanor Wachtel that she herself was never reaction to the many women's magazines able to "doze off quite the same again" after she seemed to read at that time" (Shields she read The Feminine Mystique in 1963,

128 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis the year it was published (Shields 1989, 20). prepares a cold supper for her family in the She linked Friedan's book to her own heat of a July day, she uses a recipe for representation of women's roles in The jellied veal torn from Ladies Home Journal. Stone Diaries when she wrote in an In this section of the book, Daisy's kitchen is epistolary interview with Joan Thomas that described as "hot as Hades" (1993, 157), the book's main character, Daisy Goodwill and she says "Damn it" repeatedly under Flett, "believed what the women's her breath (1993, 158-59). In contrast, magazines said about women's work," and earlier in the novel Daisy as narrator has when she noted that many middle-class depicted her mother preparing a dessert wives and mothers did not consider paid using a recipe passed on from another work an option "before The Feminine woman, and her experience is called Mystique was published" (Shields 1995, "heavenly" and her "notion of paradise" 127). The Stone Diaries refers directly to (1993, 2). Daisy describes her mother's Friedan's book when it comments on a work in the kitchen as like that of an "artist" "good jabber about The Feminine Mystique" and adds that "years later this form of (Shields 1993, 242) between two of its artistry is perfectly clear to me" (1993, 2). secondary characters. One endorses This alternating celebration and Friedan's solution to "the problem that has critique of enforced domesticity is also no name" - work outside the home, such as explored in Shields's earlier novel, Swann. the job as a gardening columnist that Daisy One of the book's main characters, literary inherits from her husband and then loses to critic Sarah Maloney, uses the domestic as another man - when she says, "We are our an organizing principle in her work on Mary work!...Work and self cannot be separated." Swann's poems, but at the same time The other, having worked at expresses profound disappointment that less-than-satisfying jobs all her life, "tak[es] Mary's journal contains only "jottings" issue with Betty Friedan's exaltation of work (Shields 1987, 49) about her very ordinary as salvation" (1993, 242). domestic life: "Creek down today," "Green In The Stone Diaries, Friedan's beans up," or "Door latch broken" (1987, theories about the effects of magazines on 55). But even as early as 1982, in A Fairly women's lives during the 1940s and 1950s Conventional Woman, Shields is explicit are evoked through references to Daisy's about the ways in which women can be home decorating scheme, her sex life, and bound up in a domesticity they at the same the food she cooks. In her living room is a time long to escape. Before Brenda -topped coffee table that displays Bowman leaves for the convention, she photographs of her children and a copy of conscientiously completes her domestic her marriage announcement (Shields 1993, duties: making the beds, doing the laundry, 193-94) - a decorating touch inspired by a preparing a casserole (1982, 9). Canadian Homes and Gardens article Retrospective narrative forays into Brenda's ironically titled "Putting the Essential You life history allow for descriptions of the Into Your Decor." During a sexual encounter domestic as it pertained to young women of with her husband, "Mrs. Flett tries, as the 1950s. As was encouraged by the through a helix of mixed print and magazines of the day, Brenda and her distraction, to remember exactly what was colleagues in the typing pool discuss advised in the latest issue of McCalls, cooking "pork chops the new way with something about a wife's responsibility for condensed cream-of-mushroom soup" and demonstrating a rise in ardor; that was it - the merits of paste wax versus spray wax ardor and surrender expressed (1982, 107). The narrator notes that Brenda simultaneously through a single subtle was enchanted by "the domesticity of the gesturing of the body; but how was that newly married...,its crisp, glazed magazine possible?" (1993, 191). And when Daisy aura" (1982, 109). When asked years later

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 129 why she married so young her honest reply loads of wash" (1982, 79) when what is is: "'I was dying to have a pink really needed is "A room of one's own" kitchen.'...What, besides the pink kitchen, (1982, 80) - a reference, of course, to had she asked for? Nothing much, it Virginia Woolf's famous book. But Brenda seemed" (1982, 109, 113). has already realized that need by turning the This lack of the ability to demand guest bedroom into her own "work space" anything substantial is explored in detail in A (Shields 1980, 29). Her husband has a den Fairly Conventional Woman (and again in where he is supposed to be writing a history The Stone Diaries, when the young Daisy of First Nations trading practices, but "wants to want something but doesn't know Brenda has taken the warmest, brightest, what she is allowed" [Shields 1993, 117]). most comfortable room for her own. That Brenda has missed the upheaval of the this is an artist's room is reinforced when it 1960s, including the burgeoning is compared in A Fairly Conventional second-wave feminist movement, because Woman to the of "Van Gogh's she has been "diapering babies, buying bedroom, a golden cube" (1982, 12). Brenda groceries at the A & P, wallpapering deserves this beautiful room, the bathrooms, while other women - who were third-person narrator states, because she is, these women? - fought for equal rights" in fact, "more serious than Jack about her (Shields 1982, 86). Now, the narrator says, work" (1982, 165). Brenda is "assailed by a sense of The serious work of quiltmaking opportunities missed" (1982, 49). She brings benefits that as a late 1970s recognizes that "she had lost the habit of housewife Brenda has never been able to wanting....[T]hrough lack of practice she had claim. First, it allows her the "artist's right to simply forgotten how it was done, how to interpret and name" (1982, 17). As Brenda open her mouth and say: I want" (1982, muses, "Naming was a form of possession. 162). But now, "more was suddenly what It was a privilege; there were lots of people she wanted. W hat she spent her time who never had a chance to bestow names" thinking about. More" (45). Although she (1982, 18). A second claim that quilting has had "Forty years of creeping, of allows Brenda is economic. She has tiptoeing," by the time she strides down a discovered that many people are willing to street in Philadelphia on her way to a spend what she once considered "exorbitant newspaper interview, she is filled with sums" for her quilts and to pay "cheerfully, "Strength, purpose, certainty" (1982, 123). no dickering" (1982, 31). Indeed, as the By this time, of course, Brenda has narrator emphasizes, now that she is sold several of her quilts, has made contact making enough money to file her own with other artists at the convention, and has income tax returns and to buy things for begun to see that quilts can make political herself, Brenda feels "a glimpse of a statements. In particular, she has begun to dazzling new kind of power" (1982, 32). This understand that theories by feminists such of course is the power of the income of as Friedan and Woolf apply to her. Brenda one's own, an idea at which Friedan hinted has been looking forward to a room of her but never stated outright. Although such own in the convention hotel (1982, 55) and power is recognized by fellow craftswomen, is disappointed to discover that because the it is not yet acknowledged by Brenda's hotel has accidentally double-booked the family. When her parents-in-law give her a mostly female crafts conference with a card containing a folded ten-dollar bill and meeting of mostly male metallurgists, she tell her to have a nice meal on her holiday, will have to share a room. At the opening she is barely able to contain her anger and reception, she overhears a fellow tears: "She was going to a national exhibit; convention-goer point out that a woman she was one of the exhibitors; she had been artist is "expected to do her stuff between invited to participate. Ma and Dad Bowman

130 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis didn't present Jack with ten-dollar bills when Brenda argues, increasingly skillfully, that he went off to Milwaukee or Detroit to cooking is a form of artistry because it present papers" (1982, 49). "appealed directly to the aesthetic sense At the convention, Brenda is part of and it involved aesthetic deliberations" a collective of women who are demanding (Shields 1982, 77). Indeed, at the rights and considerations that as an convention, much of the important work of individual she is just beginning to perceive. talking about arts, crafts, and feminist One of her fellow convention-goers calls the politics happens over hors d'oeuvres and fact that they have been bumped out of their meals. When Brenda misses a conference hotel rooms by the male metallurgists a banquet, she feels a keen sense of loss. "violation of our rights as women" (1982, Mealtime conversations are quoted - 59). Another objects to the make-up kit in including the conversation about the need their convention package as a "gratuitous for a room of one's own - and the food eaten tribute to traditional female vanity" (1982, is described in detail (as are, Donna Smyth 61). And a third notices that while the points out about Swann, Sarah's cheese on craftspeople at the convention are mostly pita and Rose's double porkchop platter women, the droning keynote speaker is, [Smyth 1989, 144]). One hors d'oeuvre inevitably, a man (1982, 76-77 & 98-99). takes on particular meaning for Brenda; in Groening suggests that the comedic her hotel bed, she "dreams of the elements of these scenes - and they are pale-green artichoke heart, its leaves funny - indicate that Shields has "gently pushed apart, the sharpened oval of an mocked and humorously dismissed" almond embedded in its centre" (Shields anything that "threatens the supremacy of 1982, 81). In her dreams at least, Brenda domestic contentment" (Groening 1991, 16). recognizes the hard core of artistry and Shields's humorous presentation does feminism at the centre of her quilt-making, contain an element of critique, especially of as well as the "central core" of sexuality that the excesses of 1970s feminist rhetoric. But her quilting expresses. while Brenda may be initially resistant to During her waking hours, however, demands related to perceived gender Brenda is incredulous when a convention inequalities, like Shields and many of her guest speaker discusses traditional quilts as readers she is ultimately persuaded. exhibiting a kind of Judy Chicagoan feminist Brenda participates in discussions sexuality: The Star of Bethlehem is either of the nature of artistry that contain "an orgasmic explosion" or "an immense, elements of the feminism evident in quivering " while the Log Cabin quilt is Chicago's Dinner Party. Chicago pointed out "a seamless field of phallic symbols, so that women are often responsible for tightly bound together that there is no room preparing and serving dinner parties but are at all for female genitalia" (1982, 138). rarely their honoured guests (Chicago 1979, "Poppycock," responds one of the other 11). A Fairly Conventional Woman includes convention-goers, described as the conversations about whether traditionally "Grandma Moses of the quilt world" (1982, feminine activities such as cooking can be 139). Groening argues that through comedic considered art. Such conversations have passages such as these, quilting in A Fairly since been made in more detail, for example Conventional Woman functions as "a in the introduction to Edna Alford and Clare metaphor that allows Shields both to attack Harris's Kitchen Talk (1992) as well as in all she dislikes about the world of art and its Shields's own The Stone Diaries (1993). In critics and to satirize the more esoteric A Fairly Conventional Woman, Brenda's efforts of a feminist search for distinctively husband asserts that cooking is not an art female creativity" (Groening 1991, 15-16). because "it lacked permanence, even the Anne Collins states even more explicitly that pretence of permanence." In contrast, in these passages Brenda "rejects entirely

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 131 the Judy Chicagoan possibilities in moving her hips too much or not traditional quilt designs" (Collins 1982, 78). enough? She was constantly Clearly, Shields's work here is in part a thinking, evaluating, planning, criticism of the way some feminist counting, asking herself what was approaches to art reduce women to their the next move? And the next? sexuality and thus their biology - what art (1982, 155) critic Rozsika Parker calls "an essentialist feminist position" (Parker 1984, 29). Yet Brenda's quilts, in contrast, are presented Brenda also imagines her own inspiration in as organic and spontaneous expressions of terms of human physiology and a more confident mature sexuality. Indeed, reproduction, as "a vibrating organ, one of Brenda's friends describes The half-heart, half-placenta" (Shields 1982, 17). Second Coming as exhibiting both Her quilt that wins honorable mention at the sensuality and a contained sexual energy exhibit is titled The Second Coming - and (1982, 18-19). the sexual rather than religious overtones of Far from dismissing the women at the title are reinforced by the description of the conference who interpret art through the quilt as having "a blocked bed of colour," feminist lenses and who exhibit feminist "a frenetic heat rising from one end," and commitments, Brenda is impressed by their "dark-purple stains printed at the edges with energy. She expresses this idea to a fellow shapes that resembled mouths" (1982, 18). convention-goer, who replies "I myself am In other words, the quilt is a visual orgasm not political." Brenda is preparing to say that that presents viewers with a vulva-like she, too, is a-political when she is central core similar to those in Chicago's interrupted (1982, 100). As this interruption dinner plates. makes clear, the statement is no longer true Sexuality is discussed in detail in A because the convention has acted to Fairly Conventional Woman, in particular the dismantle some of Brenda's conventional way in which Brenda's early sexual ideas and in the process has politicized her. expression is constrained by her reading of She has a new understanding of the articles in magazines such as the Ladies' arts-crafts divide and her own arguments Home Journal, which "had recently done a about confronting that divide. Although she series of interviews on the current state of dismisses as "pompous junk" and sex in America" (1982, 153). Such "pretentious hogwash" the comments about magazines, Friedan argues in The Feminine quilting as art she makes to a newspaper Mystique and the narrator suggests in A reporter (1982, 146), she is persuasive Fairly Conventional Woman, promoted the when she suggests that art poses "a moral idea that women should be virgins at question" to which craft then responds marriage but that men should have "some (1982, 145). As Susan Grove Hall argues, previous sexual experience" (Shields 1982, "Shields's novel in many ways asserts" 154), and that sex should centre around these ideas (Hall 1997, 43). male experience. The narrator of Shields's Even the "Grandma Moses of the novel says of Brenda that, like Daisy later in quilt world" eventually admits her own The Stone Diaries, gradual politicization, especially her realization of the destabilized sense of She had read too many articles, history provided by quilts. She concedes many of them damaging. A man that her "story" quilts are misleading wants to experience the feeling of a because in art as in life there is always more woman surrendering to him. But than one possible ending. And when a how was she to express this woman in one session says that she is message of surrender? The timing interested in "Hacking out new forms," of the climax was crucial. Was she Brenda concludes, borrowing from Flaubert,

132 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis that "What sets quilting apart from other Britain in 1991 in one volume with its crafts is the built-in shiver of history" (1982, companion novel, Happenstance, and A 102). She makes a detailed connection Fairly Conventional Woman became between quilting, narrative, and history Happenstance: The Wife's Story. Shields when she interprets history, like quilting, as has said that she disliked the punning title A "a chain of stories" that "form the patterns of Fairly Conventional Woman (interview with entire lives" (1982, 128). Almost twenty de Roo, Shields 1988, 45), which was years later, in his discussion of W alker's suggested by her publisher. As Shields's "Everyday Use," Sam Whitsitt argues that manuscripts in the Library and Archives of "The quilt 'represents' herstory, history, and Canada show, her working title for the book tradition, binding women, and men, to the had been Broad Daylight, a tongue-in-cheek past and the past to the present" (Whitsitt subversion of a derogatory term for women. 2000, 445). A guest speaker at Brenda's However, renaming the book conference, meanwhile, interprets the Happenstance: The Wife's Story is not an revival of quiltmaking as historically improvement. Instead, its subordination of significant, and as both anti-feminist and the female protagonist to her husband is a feminist: a "retreat from responsibility" and patriarchal subversion of the often witty "a continuum of what it has always been, a revisioning of women's artistry evident in A means of exercising control over a Fairly Conventional Woman. The first disorganized and hostile universe" (Shields published title of the book refers to a woman 1982, 139). whose meeting with other women helps her These gendered positives and to become more political, and thus evokes negatives of quilting reflect the way in which the transformation in critical approaches to Chicago revelled in "the splendor of women's art and women's lives of the late needlework" at the same time as she used 1970s and early 1980s evident in both "specific needlework techniques as Chicago's exhibit and Shields's book. metaphors for women's oppression" Shields told Eleanor W achtel in (Kubitza 1996a, 159). Rozsika Parker 1989 (after the publication of Swann but argues in The Subversive Stitch, published before The Stone Diaries) that she believed two years after Shields's book and five A Fairly Conventional Woman to be her years after Chicago's installation, that "The "best book" but that "hardly anyone agrees" art/craft hierarchy suggests that art made (interview 1989, 35). Like The Dinner Party, with thread and art made with paint are A Fairly Conventional Woman fits within intrinsically unequal...But the real liberal feminist parameters, and certainly differences between the two are in terms of Shields's feminism as evident in that book is where they are made and who makes them" open to the kinds of criticisms that have (Parker 1984, 5). Similarly, Amelia Jones been leveled at liberal feminism of the early describes The Dinner Party as having the 1980s: that it is too little concerned with goal of confronting "the public domain of issues of class and race; that it celebrates high art (the province of men...) with the rather than criticizes cozy domesticity; that it private realm of domesticity (conventionally is not radical enough; that it is essentialist in assigned to women)" (Jones 1996b, 29). its approach. But the dismissal of A Fairly Despite the way in which Shields's Conventional Woman as not feminist or not fourth published book makes some of the feminist enough ignores the historical same arguments and exhibits some of the realities of women's lives and feminist same goals, it has been dismissed as trivial, practice at the time the book was produced. overshadowed by her other books, and Like Chicago's installation three years further obscured by a decision to retitle it. earlier, Shields's book broke ground in the The original publication title was dropped early 1980s by exploring gendered aspects when the book was republished in Great of the arts-crafts divide. And like The Dinner

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 133 Party, A Fairly Conventional Woman both 1992. posits and questions the role of women's sexuality and domestic activities such as Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. Toronto: quilting and food preparation as impetuses McClelland and Stewart, 1996. for social change. Shields's fourth published novel thus stands as a strong statement of Barrett, Michele. "Feminism and the the power of fiction to explore the Definition of Cultural Politics," Feminist relationships among gender, art, domestic Literary Theory: A Reader, Mary Eagleton, labour, and sexuality. ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp. 160- 63. Endnotes 1. The popular response to The Dinner Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party: A Symbol Party can be compared to contemporary of Our Heritage. New York: Anchor, 1979. responses to productions of Eve Ensler's play The Monologues or, in Canada, _____. Embroidering Our Heritage: The exhibits of Esther Bryan's Quilt of Belonging. Dinner Party Needlework. New York: The international dinner party held during Anchor, 1980. the opening of Chicago's exhibit was emulated in worldwide dinner parties to Collins, Anne. "Can This Marriage be Saved celebrate Margaret Atwood's birthday - Again?" [Rev. A Fairly Conventional beginning in 2005 (Glover and Hengen Woman, Carol Shields]. Macleans (Oct. 18 2005). 1982): 78. 2. See essays by Gamble (2003), Groening (1991), Hall (1997), Levy (2007), Williamson French, William. "Exploring the Angst of a (2003). White's book, meanwhile, discusses Married Woman" [Rev. A Fairly both A Fairly Conventional Woman and Conventional Woman, Carol Shields]. Globe Happenstance in conjunction with a number and Mail (Oct. 7, 1982): P23. of novels by other writers (2005). 3. I quote from Shields's letter to Howard, Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New housed in the University of British Columbia York: Dell, 1963. Archives, with permission from the Carol Shields Literary Trust. Gamble, Sarah. "Filling the Creative Void: 4. Citations are from the 1994 Canadian Narrative Dilemmas in Small Ceremonies, edition in which A Fairly Conventional the Happenstance Novels, and Swann," Woman was republished in one volume with Carol Shields, Narrative Hunger, and the Happenstance (with the two books subtitled Possibilities of Fiction, Edward Eden and Happenstance: The Wife's Story and Dee Goertz, eds. Toronto: University of Happenstance: The Husband's Story). Toronto Press, 2003, pp. 39-60. However, I retain the books' original titles in my discussion, both to avoid confusion and Glover, Susan, and Shannon Hengen. because I intend to criticize the retitling. "O.W. Toad (A.K.A. Margaret Atwood) First 5. See my essay "Autobiography as Critical Annual Birthday Dinner Celebration." Practice" (2003) for a more detailed Laurentian University, 2005. discussion of Friedan's theories as evident www.english.laurentian.ca/atwooddinner. in The Stone Diaries. Groening, Laura. "Still in the Kitchen: The References Art of Carol Shields," Canadian Forum (Jan. Alford, Edna, and Claire Harris, eds. Kitchen 1991): 14-17. Talk: Contemporary Women's Prose and Poetry. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, Hall, Susan Grove. "The Duality of the

134 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis Artist/Crafter in Carol Shields's Novels," Otto, Whitney. How to Make an American Kentucky Philological Review, 12 (1997): Quilt. New York: Villard, 1991. 42-47. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Horvath, Maria."Ordinary People." [Rev. A Embroidery and The Making of The Fairly Conventional Woman, Carol Shields.] Feminine. : Women's Press, 1984. Books in Canada (Nov. 1982): 18-19. Roy, Wendy. "Autobiography as Critical Jones, Amelia, ed. Sexual Politics: Judy Practice in The Stone Diaries," Carol Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art Shields, Narrative Hunger, and the History. Los Angeles: University of California Possibilities of Fiction, Edward Eden and Press, 1996a. Dee Goertz, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, pp. 113-46. _____. "Sexual Politics: Feminist Strategies, Feminist Conflicts, Feminist Histories," Shields, Carol. (1976). Small Ceremonies. Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party Toronto: Vintage, rpt. 1995. in Feminist Art History. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996b, pp. _____. (1977). The Box Garden. Toronto: 13-38. Vintage, rpt. 1994.

_____. "The 'Sexual Politics' of The Dinner _____. (1980). Happenstance. Rpt. as Party: A Critical Context," Sexual Politics: Happenstance: The Husband's Story. Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art Toronto: Vintage, 1994. History. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996c, pp. 75-118. _____. (1982). A Fairly Conventional Woman. Rpt. as Happenstance: The Wife's Korinek, Valerie. Roughing It in the Suburbs: Story. Toronto: Vintage, 1994. Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties. Toronto: University of Toronto _____. Letter to Blanche Howard. Blanche Press, 2000. Howard Fonds, University of British Columbia Archives (April 12, 1985). Kubitza, Anette. "Rereading the Readings of The Dinner Party in Europe," Sexual _____. (1987). Swann. Toronto: Vintage, Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in rpt. 1996. Feminist Art History. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996, pp. 148-76. _____. "A Little Like Flying: An Interview with Carol Shields," Harvey De Roo. West Levy, Ellen. "'Artefact Out of Absence': Coast Review, 23.3 (1988): 38-56. Reflection and Convergence in the Fiction of Carol Shields," Carol Shields and the _____. "Interview with Carol Shields," Extra-Ordinary, Marta Dvorak and Manina Eleanor W achtel. Room of One's Own, Jones, eds. Montreal: McGill-Queen's 13.1-2 (1989): 5-45. University Press, 2007, pp. 191-204. _____. (1992). The Republic of Love. Meyer, Laura. "From Finish Fetish to Toronto: Vintage, rpt. 1994. Feminism: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in California Art History," Sexual Politics: Judy _____. (1993). The Stone Diaries. Toronto: Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art Random House. History. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996, pp. 39-74. _____. "'Writing Must Come Out of What

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 135 Passionately Interests Us. Nothing Else W ill Do': An Epistolary Interview with Carol Shields," Joan Thomas. Prairie Fire, 16.1 (1995): 121-30.

_____. Unless. Toronto: Random House, 2002.

Smyth, Donna E. "Shields' Swann," Room of One's Own, 13.1-2 (1989): 136-46.

Wachtel, Eleanor. "Too Long in Girlhood, Innocent of Adult Life" [Rev. A Fairly Conventional Woman, Carol Shields]. Vancouver Sun (Dec. 24, 1982): L27.

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use," In Love and Trouble. San Diego: Harcourt, 1974, pp. 47-59.

Wheatley, Thelma. "Self-exploration and Revelation" [Rev. A Fairly Conventional Woman, Carol Shields]. Cross-Canada Writers' Quarterly 5.4 (1983): 18-19.

White, Roberta. A Studio of One's Own: Fictional Woman Painters and the Art of Fiction. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005.

Whitsitt, Sam. "In Spite of It All: A Reading of Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'," African American Review, 34.3 (2000): 443-59.

Williamson, Dave. "Seven Steps to Point-of-View Perfection," Carol Shields: The Arts of a Writing Life, Neil K. Besner, ed. Winnipeg: Prairie Fire Press, 2003, pp. 169-81.

Woolf, Virginia. (1929) A Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, rpt. 1989.

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