From David Henry’s startled, almost disgusted realization that his daughter Phoebe has been born with Down syndrome to the nurse at the hospital who, when Caroline Gill brings Phoebe in during an allergic anaphylactic reaction, asks if Caroline would like her to let the young girl simply die, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is suffused with the pall and poison that prejudice casts over society. Through the character of Phoebe—a slow learner and “late bloomer,” but a deeply sensitive, intelligent, and capable individual—Kim Edwards shows how bigotry divides people unnecessarily, ultimately arguing that those who appear and act in unusual or special ways are disproportionately harmed by society’s fear of difference.
From the very first chapter of the novel, when Paul and Phoebe are born on a snowy winter night, the characters within the book are forced to confront their personal prejudices and fear of difference. Though David Henry orders Caroline Gill to bring the Down syndrome-affected Phoebe to a home for the impaired out of a desire to shield himself and his wife from the heartbreak of what he believes will be a short, painful life for the girl, there’s a seed of judgment and intolerance in his decision, as well. When Caroline brings Phoebe to Pittsburgh, she does so out of love and a belief that Phoebe deserves to live a normal life—a life where she’s given equal opportunity and never has to feel hidden, neglected, or ashamed. Caroline’s struggle throughout the novel to fight for equitable rights, fair treatment, and good opportunities for her daughter is an uphill battle—one which exposes the deep prejudices running through American society not just in the 1960s, but beyond.
When Phoebe is stung by a bee and develops anaphylaxis—a closing of the throat in an acute allergic reaction—Caroline and her boyfriend Al rush the confused, frightened Phoebe to the hospital. A nurse sees Phoebe struggling to breathe, turns to Caroline, who is begging for a doctor, and asks her—in coded speech—if she’s sure she wants Phoebe to receive medical attention, and wouldn’t just rather let her die. Caroline, outraged by the woman’s cruelty (as well as the assumption that Caroline sees Phoebe as a burden), tries to slap her, but Al holds her back. This is the most pointed and indeed the most evil of several smaller encounters Caroline has with people who immediately pick up on Phoebe’s difference and react to her out of fear, judgment, or disgust rather than relating to Phoebe as a whole, capable person with her own personality—a person worthy of life, happiness, and attention.
Caroline also encounters difficulty finding a place for Phoebe to go to school. Through Sandra, the mother of another Pittsburgh boy with Down syndrome, Caroline begins to find and develop a community. The parents petition the school district to let their children partake of a normal, mainstream education—but the local officials refuse their request, claiming that the “mentally retarded” children would only “overwhelm the system” and drain resources form “normal” children who, in the eyes of the state, are more deserving of attention and education. Outraged by this decision, Caroline, Sandra, and other parents of other children with Down syndrome ultimately form the Upside Down Society—a place where their children can meet others like them and learn, play, and form relationships free of the judgement of those who don’t understand them (and don’t even want to try to).
Overall, Kim Edwards uses the relationship between Phoebe and her twin brother Paul to crystallize how cruel, divisive, and ultimately pointless prejudice and judgment are—and how deeply they can wound. In the novel’s final chapters, as Paul gets to know his sister, Phoebe, better and better, he observes how other people’s “strained, uncertain” ways of talking and listening to Phoebe minimize and ignore her personhood. Paul loves and appreciates his twin for who she is, and grows sad as he thinks about “the difficulties she encounter[s] in the world simply by being different.” Paul is comforted by the fact that Phoebe’s “direct and guileless love” serves to “propel” her through the hardships and prejudices she’s faced already, and will surely continue to face as she ages. Phoebe is different, but as Paul has learned, differences can be respected and celebrated instead of met with fear, disgust, or hatred.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Difference and Prejudice ThemeTracker
Difference and Prejudice Quotes in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
She began to laugh. It wasn’t a normal laugh; even Caroline could hear that: her voice too loud, halfway to a sob. “I have a baby,” she said out loud, astonished. “I have a baby in this car.” But the parking lot stretched quietly before her, the lights from the grocery store windows making large rectangles in the slush. “I have a baby here,” Caroline repeated, her voice thinning quickly in the air. “A baby!” she shouted then, into the stillness.
He took a deep breath, fighting a wave of vertigo, afraid even to glance at Norah. He had wanted to spare her, to protect her from loss and pain; he had not understood that loss would follow her regardless, as persistent and life-shaping as a stream of water. Nor had he anticipated his own grief, woven with the dark threads of his past. When he imagined the daughter he’d given away, it was his sister’s face he saw, her pale hair, her serious smile.
Caroline thought again of Phoebe, such a loving quicksilver child. A finder of lost things, a girl who could count to fifty and dress herself and recite the alphabet, a girl who might struggle to speak but who could read Caroline’s mood in an instant.
Limited, the voices said. Flooding the schools. A drag on resources and on the brighter children.
Caroline felt a rush of despair. They’d never really see Phoebe, these men, they would never see her as more than different, slow to speak and to master new things.
He had given their daughter away. This secret stood in the middle of their family; it shaped their lives together. He knew it, he saw it, visible to him as a rock wall grown up between them. And he saw Norah and Paul reaching out and striking rock and not understanding what was happening, only that something stood between them that could not be seen or broken.
“She was lucky, I guess; she never had a problem with her heart. She loves to sing. She has a cat named Rain. She’s learning how to weave. […] She goes to school. Public school, with all the other kids. I had to fight like hell for them to take her. And now she’s nearly grown I don’t know what will happen. […] What else can I say? You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.”
His life turned around that single action: a newborn child in his arms—and then he reached out to give her away. It was as if he’d taken pictures all these years since to try and give another moment similar substance, equal weight. He’d wanted to try to still the rushing world, the flow of events, but of course that had been impossible.
Her silence made him free. He talked like a river, like a storm, words rushing through the old house with a force and life he could not stop. […] He talked until the words slowed, ebbed, finally ceased. Silence welled.
She did not speak. […]
He closed his eyes, fear rising, because he had seen anger in her eyes, because everything that happened had been his fault.
Her footsteps and then the metal, cold and bright as ice, slid against his skin. The tension in his wrists released. […]
“All right,” she said. “You’re free.”
Phoebe’s face was falling, tears were slipping down her cheeks.
“It’s not fair,” she whispered.
“It’s not fair,” Caroline agreed.
They stood for a moment, quiet in the bright harsh lights.
Caroline said it again: Phoebe, not dead but taken away. All these years. Phoebe, growing up in another city. Safe, Caroline kept saying. Safe, well cared for, loved. Phoebe, her daughter, Paul’s twin. Born with Down syndrome, sent away.
David had sent her away.
“You must be crazy,” Norah said, though even as she spoke so many jagged pieces of her life were falling into place that she knew what Caroline was saying must be true.
He realized, with a deep sense of shame, that his pity for Phoebe, like his mother’s assumption of her dependence, had been foolish and unnecessary. Phoebe liked herself and she liked her life; she was happy. All the striving he had done, all the competitions and awards, the long and futile struggle to both please himself and impress his father—placed next to Phoebe’s life, all this seemed a little foolish too.
“How?” he asked softly. “How could he never tell us?”
She turned to him, serious. “I don’t know. I’ll never understand it. But think how his life must have been, Paul. Carrying this secret with him all those years.”
He looked across the table. Phoebe was standing next to a poplar tree whose leaves were just beginning to turn, scraping whipped cream off her cake with her fork. “Our lives could have been so much different.”
“Yes. That’s true. But they weren’t different, Paul. They happened just like this.”
“You’re defending him,” he said slowly.
“No. I’m forgiving him. I’m trying to, anyway. There’s a difference.”
