The Memory Keeper's Daughter July 1, 1989 Summary & Analysis

1989

Summary: July 1, 1989

Norah readies the family home for sale in advance of her impending marriage to Frederic and a move to France. She tackles David’s darkroom over the garage, opening files of his photographs that are now back in vogue with collectors. She doesn’t recognize herself in the photos. She encounters two folders of pictures both simply titled “Survey.” One holds pictures of children and female strangers, arranged by age. Its companion folder has pictures of Paul in all the stages of his growth and transformation as a person. Norah understands that all the years when David would not speak of their lost daughter he was keeping a record of her absence through surrogate children, revealing his secret longing, looking for her everywhere.

Caroline knocks at the door as Norah is coming to terms with what she’s discovered in David’s dark room. Norah recognizes her at once. Caroline tells her that Phoebe did not die at birth as David had told her. Once Norah processes the truth, she asks why David and Caroline colluded in the lie. Caroline describes her motives with self-awareness of her faults and David’s impulse as conventional medical practice. Caroline confesses that she never understood David but believed he was trying to protect Norah. Caroline leaves and Norah looks at David’s valuable photography collection with new eyes. She throws boxes out the window and they break, the wind scattering the photographs. The next day, she systematically burns David’s pictures of the girls.

Analysis: July 1, 1989

Norah readies the house for sale in advance of marrying and relocating and faces the task of cleaning out David’s darkroom, an act that symbolizes combing through his inner mind and cleaning up whatever messes she might find. When David moved out with Rosemary, he left all his photography behind. With collectors valuing his work again, Norah intends to efficiently ready his photos for the curators while remaining emotionally detached. Instead, the photos bring up sensory memories, such as the touch of baby’s skin or the smell of flowers.

When she encounters the “Survey” box of female subjects, Norah examines them closely to determine David’s motive in capturing the images of strangers. When she finds the companion “Survey” box with similar studies of Paul, she understands that David had been missing Phoebe just like did. She suddenly judges David less harshly, knowing that he had shared her sense of yearning for Phoebe. Yet when Caroline suddenly arrives and she hears the story of David and Caroline’s deception, Norah regards David’s photography as a betrayal of the truth of their lives. The “Survey” images of the girls suddenly take on new meaning—David was trying to replicate or bring to life the daughter he claimed was dead, the daughter he stole from Norah. She cremates the images of the girls, a funeral pyre for false memories.

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