The Golden Age: 14. Margaret in Her Garden Summary & Analysis

Margaret spends the morning before her visit to the hospital doing chores in the stiflingly hot house. As an excuse to go outside, she waters the lawn. The task reminds her of a job she used to have at a post-office in the desert south of Perth. When she walked outside her office, she felt the overwhelming solitude of her position, but she “did not feel alone.” While Elsa was in the Isolation Ward, Margaret spent the nights pacing the grass and feeling like “she was lying on the heart of a great animal.” Being among the vast workings of nature comforts her.

Margaret sees her neighbor Raymond’s truck in the next driveway, which reminds her that he’s delivering his produce to the markets in Perth, not far from the Golden Age. Bravely, she walks over and asks for a lift to the hospital. She’s desperate to see Elsa because Jack, her husband, has just told her he can’t drive her to the hospital that Sunday. Instead, he has to fix Nance’s fence.

On the ride into Perth, Margaret feels shy being alone in the car with Raymond. Before Elsa got polio, she wasn’t so bold and wouldn’t have asked for a lift. Now, she’s learned to demand what she needs and to shoulder past the fear and contempt that polio inspires in the community. Margaret remembers that, when Elsa was in the Isolation Ward, their pastor refused to come to the hospital to bless her. She’s proud of Elsa for getting better without his help.

Reading in bed, Elsa recognizes Margaret’s footsteps before she sees her mother. Although she knows she should be happy to see her, surprise makes her unsettled and she questions her mother about how she got there, who is taking care of the baby, and what Jack will say. Elsa feels as though she’s looking at her over-eager mother from a long distance, and she’s a little peeved that her mother has interrupted her favorite part of the day, when she’s used to being alone in the ward and reading.

Margaret stops talking and Elsa relaxes a little. Her connection to her mother doesn’t rest on language; Margaret is like a “mother animal” and always knows what’s wrong and what to do without talking about it. Meanwhile, Margaret feels that Elsa is maturing rapidly in the hospital and growing away from her. She’s sad that she can’t do anything to help her daughter recuperate.

As the nurses return to the ward from their tea, Margaret collects her things quickly, afraid of getting in trouble despite Elsa’s brusque assurances that they won’t mind. As she leaves, Elsa reflects that her mother has to get used to the hard truth that only she, Elsa, can “deal with what had happened to her.” Still, she remembers that when she woke up in the Isolation Ward, her first thought was that her worry for her mother had kept her alive.

As she walks to the train station, Margaret worries about facing Jack. She knows he’ll be deaf to her excuses and call her crazy, an accusation that always makes her cry.

Margaret loves all her children equally, but she has a special connection to Elsa; they have “grown up together,” Elsa as a child and Margaret as a parent. Margaret remembers visiting her father in a nursing home to announce her marriage to Jack. Her father had said he hoped her husband wasn’t bad tempered; even though she knew that’s exactly what Jack was, and even though her father had always been bad-tempered himself, Margaret was pregnant with Elsa and too “deliriously cheerful” to be angry or worried. Elsa’s birth made everything right in Margaret’s life. Now, her sudden illness feels like a curse in a fairy tale.

At the Golden Age, Frank sneaks out and whispers to Elsa through the door of the girls’ ward. He remarks that Elsa looks nothing like her mother, but Elsa doesn’t want to talk about Margaret. Still, Frank is delighted that Elsa casually says she’ll see him the next day. To him, this is proof that “they belonged to no one but themselves.”