The Tragedy of Self-Consciousness

Throughout “Teenage Wasteland,” Anne Tyler depicts Daisy as constantly concerned with her perceived appearance. Despite the absence of others’ direct commenting, Daisy manages to silently identify nearly everything—her attire, her weight, her degree of concern as a parent—that could portray her negatively. Amidst the chaos of events influencing her views on her relationship with her son, Donny, her publicly unknown self-criticism influences her behavior as if someone had directly told her she ought to have “worn nylons instead of knee socks” (¶ 8). Although characters like Cal and Miss Evans directly instruct her how to act, her weakness of rarely ever being resolved allows this damaging exploitation to occur. This unfortunate Achilles' heel proves potentially fatal at a time that requires firmness and resolve.

            Daisy’s insistency on being self-conscious permeates every aspect of character. After she is called into Mr. Lanham’s, the principal, office, she automatically assumes that he perceives her as “a delinquent parent” and “unseeing and uncaring” (3). Moreover, her fixation on “looks” drives her to torment herself over her and her husband’s respective appearances as “an overweight housewife in a cotton dress” and “a too-tall, too-thin insurance agent in a baggy, frayed suit,” despite the fact that their attire is entirely irrelevant to the quality of her and her husband’s parenting (8). Her ability to infer that her apparently ill-chosen clothes and her lack of a gym membership are obvious indicators of her character is a sad reflection of her emphasis on superficiality. While Daisy’s distress over her conjecture of Mr. Lanham’s assessment of her parenting is reasonably justified—her son has lousy grades and has been caught smoking and breaking into another student’s locker—her jump to the conclusion that she is a terrible mother is excessive, to say the least. It seems reasonable to say that Daisy’s utter fixation on appearance drives her to interpret Mr. Lanham’s comments of Donny as “noisy, lazy, and disruptive” as being directed at her, building up her personal shame as a fourth-grade teacher now turned parental failure—or so she feels (2).

            In a depressingly humorous manner, Daisy’s obsession with appearances induces her to serially “flip flop” on positions concerning how to treat her son. When Cal calls Daisy to forcefully suggest she “ought to give him more rope,” Daisy throws her defense of “he’s still so suggestible” to the wind upon hearing Cal’s retort, “Don’t you understand how [not trusting him] hurts?” (36-37). While not textually explicit, Cal’s response implies an understanding of Daisy’s “vulnerability” in the sense of a figurative battle of persuasion. Daisy greets his reply with a 180-degree turn by not only acknowledging that he is right but also by elaborating that “she saw Donny suddenly from a whole new angle” (41). Her fear of looking ignorant—another negative quality she actively seeks to avoid—induces her abandonment of what may be best for her son. More egregious, her reaction to Miss Evans’s, the history teacher, reminders—“you are the parent” and “you should still be in charge”—causes her to become furious at the thought Cal was only serving as a “talisman” to her troubled son (49-50). Leniency for her sudden change of heart is due, however, considering the short-lived realization that all her “luxuries” had been foregone in vain. But that justification is not applicable to Daisy’s reversal of the anger she had only felt seconds before at Cal. What starts as a call to Cal demanding an explanation of his tutoring Donny to get F’s turns into another episode of his “sweet talking.” Why should Daisy want to look “foolish” to a man the reader is told has extensive psychological training? His knockout line, “you and I both know there’s more to it than grades,” hits Daisy’s fatal flaw with nearly perfect accuracy. When she first called she was angry at Cal, but “[w]hen she hung up, it was Miss Evans she was angry at” (54-55).

            If a degree of comical illogic seems rampant in Daisy’s speech and actions, it is because she repeatedly fails to put the needs of Donny before her own. When she ought to be concerned about what is in Donny’s best interests in terms of resolving his behavioral issues and poor academic performance, she instead actively seeks to avoid incurring the disapproval of Cal and others. In response to Donny’s retort that she is “feeling competitive…and controlling” over her concerns of Cal’s efficacy as a tutor, “she bit her lip and said no more” rather than press the matter (62-63). What are the direct consequences of her failure to be the parent Miss Evans tells her to be? Nothing besides the mere infraction of her son’s expulsion from school over “five cans of beer and a half a pack of cigarettes” found in his locker—the principal says it so effortlessly (64). 

            However, Tyler’s presentation of Daisy should not be viewed as satirical. While numerous times she is deceived by the “smile of hunger” emanating in Cal’s words, it is hard to dismiss the notion that her serial flip flopping does not also originate in a desire to desperately help her son (106). One cannot excuse Daisy from the predicament of finding a solution to Donny’s troubles while at the same time maintaining her sanity. If Daisy already has a predisposition to be self-conscious, her chaotic situation only exacerbates it. Her desire to be a perfect mother seems to distort her best intentions when in reality she only yearns for her son to be successful. The true tragedy is that Donny’s situation could not have been more perfect to maliciously exploit her flaw so as to delay an appropriate response before it was all too late. (945)