Mrs Turner Cutting The Grass

Matthew Matcki
Eng1102
Sexton, Melanie
02/02/2015
Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass In the short story “Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass” by Carol Shields, the ideology of not judging a book by its cover can be seen as a main theme of the story as it shows the main character, Geraldine being judged by everyone that surrounds her all throughout her life. Shields demonstrates this by taking the audience on a journey through her life giving the reader flashbacks of her life as a young teen to a sight to see on a hot afternoon in June, giving a perspective of a static character development as she remains stubborn and oblivious all throughout her life. This is depicted through third person narration, which presents a conflict of man vs. society point of view within Mrs. Turner’s life. The narration throughout the story is in third person as the narrator always refers to the main character as Mrs. Turner, Geraldine or Girlie instead of using the first person perspective. The point of view is from a single narration that is omniscient since we are given other characters perspectives towards Mrs. Turner and how they feel about her. Throughout the story, she is depicted as impulsive, rebellious, getting herself stuck in bad situations and instead of working out her problems she runs away. The Man vs. Society conflict perspective can be seen through the way other people evaluate her and her life choices. She is negatively judged, for example, by the way she carelessly the cuts the grass, her negligent use of the weed killer and even in the professor’s poem “The Golden Pavilion”, which contrasts the American tourist, in this case represented by Geraldine and her sisters, describing Geraldine as a “little pug of a women” against the majesty and beauty of the golden pavilion of Kyoto Japan. The professor, in this poem, depicts her ignorance and outward appearance in a negative light implying a shallow, superficial life. Interestingly, we are told little about how the character sees herself. Given the fact that Geraldine dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen and worked at the Boissevain Dairy until the age of nineteen, it could be assumed that perhaps her life was really quite difficult. This is evident when in NY, Kiki leaves her one morning and instead of trying to find a solutions to get herself home with her child she decided to just drop the baby off on someone’s porch expecting them to adopt her baby. The author gives us this one self-reflection: “all she thinks is she did the best that she could under the circumstances”. Outside of this then, the reader is left with the impression, that Geraldine led a superficial life, oblivious to the unforeseen damage her reckless behavior caused and oblivious to how others saw her. Just because she doesn’t always make the right decisions doesn’t mean she is a bad person. No one is telling her that she is making the wrong decisions, therefore the theme of not judging a book by its cover is very noticeable even though she is very oblivious to her surroundings, all she is doing is living her life and its not up to anyone to judge another person on how they live their life as we are left to wonder what was her life really like.

“550”