The Garden

The questions, discussion topics, and other material that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation of Clare Beams’s transporting novel, The Garden—the story of a group of women undergoing a novel fertility treatment in a secluded Berkshires hospital shortly after World War II, when their desperation to become mothers collides with the realities, and fantasies, of what they’re giving up to do so.

1. When Irene and George arrive at the center, is it clear that Irene wants to be there? What do we learn later in the novel about her motives for and investment in becoming a mother?

2. Throughout the book, Irene refers to her unborn child by different names: “the weight,” a mouse, a moth, a snake, a possum. Besides the connection to the creatures she encounters at the hospital and garden, what do these names provide her with emotionally during the uncertain early months of her pregnancy? By imagining these creatures inside her, does she seem closer to, or more dissociated from, the baby? Consider what she says when the baby moves: “She’d had no idea love could swirl with horror this way” (140).

3. Why do you think Irene is unable to restrain her sarcastic and bold tone when working with the doctors and around the other women? How does this aspect of her personality both hurt her and help her at different moments during her stay at the hospital?

4. Psychoanalysis is just beginning to come into practice during the time of the novel. Is Dr. Bishop’s approach familiar to you? How does Irene resist—and reverse—the dialogue between patient and therapist that this mode of therapy is designed around?

5. The seclusion of the women in the hospital reinforces the rigid gender roles of nuclear families in the late 1940s. How does what we know about Irene’s relationship with George complicate those roles and expectations? When she reflects, “I’m doing my best, she thought at George, I swear I am, and wondered if it was true,” in response to trying to have the baby to fulfill his needs after returning from war, who actually holds more power in the relationship (57)?

6. How does the doctors’ plan to support the women through gardening set off the course of events for the novel? When the first seedlings fail to grow, how does this motivate Irene to take matters into her own hands in terms of protecting her baby?

7. Describe the alliance between Irene, Pearl, and Margaret. With all their different pregnancies and births, who do you think sacrifices the most? Who gains the most?

8. Why do you think Irene is able to see and hear Dr. Bishop’s grandfather and encounter the supernatural events in the garden? Do you think any other women before her had similar experiences and were able to make it through with healthy babies?

9. At what point does Irene shift her attitude toward Dr. Bishop from antagonistic to sympathetic? Consider what she thinks about Margaret’s treatments: “Dr. Bishop would never hurt on purpose, Irene knew that—she had never doubted the doctor was trying to help, even if she was trying to help herself too. But she might act and act until helping and hurting were the same. How could Dr. Bishop ever know whether she’d done too much or not enough? She couldn’t know, so she kept doing” (228).

10. What did the doctors stand to gain if their treatment methods were successful? Do you think they had any misgivings or guilt about losing so many women—and babies—as a result of their procedures and protocols? What is so convincing about their strategy that so many couples trust them?

11. After Irene catches Dr. Hall with Mrs. Conrad, the women reflect on how men are never taught to feel shame but are allowed to feel anger instead (222); Irene thinks that she “didn’t know what shame looked like in George, unless, as the vision Dr. Hall had said, she’d seen it for years without knowing” (223). Do you think this division is true in the book and in society at large (then and now)? How does Irene in particular feel and express shame and anger during her time at the hospital? What about the other women?

12. Why do the three women hold onto the idea that their sacrifices in the garden are somehow connected to their pregnancies? Did you believe that there was really some kind of force or magic at play—and do you think Irene really believed in it?

13. Were there moments in the book when you doubted Irene’s sanity/mental clarity? Did you suspect that the confines of the hospital, or other conditions, were causing her perceptions and paranoias to change?

14. In each section of the book, Irene’s baby takes on a new form—except the “Child” section (213), when a baby appears, but not hers. How does this shift reflect the way the women relate to one another by this point in the story? When Beatrice and Pearl leave with their babies, how do the others experience these events as a collective rather than just as individuals?

15. What would have happened if Irene hadn’t gone into labor right after she called George to pick her up? Do you think he would have believed her and taken her home?

16. We get a glimpse into each of the women’s experiences of birth throughout the novel, and Irene’s is colored by the sedative drugs she’s given: “Irene’s mind, fixed by them, stopped drifting. The baby was drifting from her now. Because Irene had made this creature, but now she’d slipped out and away. She was separate. From now on, that was the way things would always be” (276). Do you imagine that this experience shaped her relationship to her child once they got home and as their daughter grew up? What kind of mother do you think Irene became?  

17. In the final scene of the book, we see Irene and Pearl, and their and Margaret’s girls, ten years later. What does the narration in that scene reflect about how the women have changed? Do they express confidence about their daughters’ ability to grow up in a world different from their own—or that their own sacrifices to have children were worth it?