Flower Garden, by Shirley Jackson, is a story of racism and how it can influence society and relationships. It’s about a woman named Mrs. Winning, who becomes friends with her new neighbor, Mrs. MacLane. Mrs. MacLane has a strong bond with Mrs. Winning, and is very well liked throughout the community until she decides that she needs help with her flower garden. She ends up hiring Mr. Jones (an African-American) and forms a friendship with him and his son, Billy. Shortly after, Mrs. MacLane’s friends start to shun her, and people are talking about her all throughout town. In the end, Mrs. MacLane finds that she has lost all her friendships, has her garden destroyed by a neighbor's branch, and is contemplating giving up and moving back to New York.
What I found most interesting was how much the opinions of Mrs. Winning influenced the conflict in the plot. It seemed that Mrs. Winning could quite settle with the fact that what she wanted in life, she didn’t have, and was rather jealous of Mrs. MacLane. In the beginning, the story talked about how Mrs. Winning liked the grocer’s son. “…when she was twelve and the grocer’s son was twenty, Mrs. Winning had hoped secretly that he would want to marry her.” This quote had no significance to the plot and, therefore, I think that the author said it to make her more of a round character by defining her traits and supporting that she wasn't as happy with her life as she would've like.
When Mrs. MacLane came to the door for her first time appearance, Mrs. Winning was jealous of how young and good looking she was. Also, the author didn’t go into much detail about Mrs. Winning's house. However, she went into a lot of detail of the cottage that Mrs. MacLane moved into. Mrs. Winning wanted to live in that house so badly, and she quoted so numerous times. “It’s just that I’ve been wanting to live here myself for so long,” and, “I’d give anything in the world to live in your house.”
These opinionated jealousies seemed to influence the conflict. It seemed that toward the end Mrs. Winning seemed to know in the back of her mind that she was the one who was wrong. Yet, she seemed to be trying to convince herself that it was Mrs. MacLane who was in the wrong. “The nerve of her, trying to blame the colored folks.”
In conclusion, because of Mrs. Winning's constant opinions, she had convinced herself that Mrs. MacLane had life so much better than her own that she couldn’t have something wrong. It seemed that because of Mrs. Winning’s jealousy she wanted to disprove this and have something right for herself.
