Response: Flower Garden by Shirley Jackson

The story, The Flower Garden, is about a widowed woman named, Mrs. MacLane, and her son, Davey, moving into a small town in Vermont. When Mrs. MacLane and her son first move into their small cottage, they were greeted and helped by many people in the town including Mrs. Winning, one of the neighbors. Briefly after moving in, Mrs. MacLane decided to start something that she always dreamed of making, a garden. Eventually after planting bulbs and everything, Mrs. MacLane realized that she was going to need some help if she wanted the flowers to stay beautiful and tended to. She hired a black man named, Mr. Jones to help her. Soon after hiring him, the people in the town stopped being kind towards her and started talking behind her back. After hiring him, Mrs. MacLane didn’t understand why everyone began to cut her off short while talking to her. At the end of the story, Mrs. MacLane’s close friend, Mrs. Winnings even decided to stop talking to her because of the choice she made.

While reading this story, there were many thoughts going through my mind thinking about what the ending of it would be. Around halfway through, I figured out how it would probably end. Once I finished, there were two literary elements that came quickly to my mind which were Person-Against-Society and an open ending.

Once people in the town found out that Mrs. MacLane hired Mr. Jones, to help her tend to her garden, they started to give her the ‘cold shoulder.’ Talking about her behind her back, they no longer thought highly about Mrs. MacLane because of the decision she had made. This situation seems similar to times around the Civil War. If Mrs. MacLane hired Mr. Jones for help then, she wouldn’t have been frowned upon, but because she was nice and kind to him, people would have thought badly of her just the same as they thought of her in the story.

Throughout the story there were many topics that were written, but the answers were not given. This makes me believe that the author, Shirley Jackson, wanted to make the story an open ending. One example, is that she told us about many physical features about Mr. Jones such as he was a big man with skin like a dark bronze, but she didn’t explain any internal characteristics about him. There was one part in the story were the mother-in-law, Mrs. Winnings says, “And working out there without his shirt on. He goes in the house,” talking about Mr. Jones. From this statement, I feel that he may have had an abusive side to him that the author isn’t telling us about.

The ending of this story leads me to believe that there are many possible theories to end it. I think that Shirley Jackson wanted the reader to really think about what happened in the story and have them decide on their own how the story should end.