Families Born and Made Theme Analysis

When Phoebe Henry is sent away for no reason other than her difference, Caroline Gill—the nurse who helped deliver the child—is unable to leave her at the dirty, understaffed home Dr. David Henry has sent her to, and instead adopts Phoebe as her own daughter. Throughout the novel, as Caroline and Phoebe make a new life together in Pittsburgh while the Henrys remains in Lexington—with Norah and Paul unaware that their family is incomplete—Kim Edwards calls into question what it means to be part of a family. She ultimately argues that some of the strongest families are made consciously by people who love and support each other, rather than by people simply born into the same household.

The most potent example of a “made” family within the novel is that of Caroline Gill. After she adopts Phoebe as her own daughter and moves with her to Pittsburgh, she steadily and carefully creates an extended family for herself as the years go by, slowly erasing the loneliness she’s always felt and realizing that she is not “some sort of vessel to be filled up with love,” but instead a person with so much love to give that she unites all kinds of people from all different sorts of places. Caroline intends to make a family with just Phoebe—she feels an intense amount of love for the child, and never once pities, judges, or looks down on her as she grows. As Caroline and Phoebe settle in Pittsburgh, however, the united front of their little family draws in everyone they meet—and together, they build a larger family based on love, respect, and mutual desire to weather the world together.

Caroline takes a job working as nurse and caretaker to Leo, an elderly man whose harsh exterior melts the more he gets to know her. Leo’s daughter, Doro, who hires Caroline and takes a chance on her in spite of her lack of references (due to the fact that she and Phoebe are in a kind of hiding) also becomes charmed by Caroline and Phoebe’s bond—and Doro becomes a sort of sister to Caroline as the years pass by. Caroline eventually marries Al, a trucker she met on the night Phoebe was born. When Caroline and Phoebe were caught in the snow, Al gave them a ride home in his rig. As the years go by, Caroline wonders often where the kind, handsome Al ended up—and one night, on the dark streets of Pittsburgh, he finds her, revealing he has been searching for her for years. Caroline and Al begin a courtship, and yet Caroline rejects Al’s offers of marriage for fear that Phoebe will one day prove a burden to him. When Al heroically helps Caroline through one of Phoebe’s health scares, Caroline becomes convinced that Al is the right man for her—and chooses to add him to her family, assured of his worth and his desire to choose her and Phoebe right back, every day.

Towards the end of the novel, another “made” family emerges—after David Henry visits his childhood home and finds the pregnant, sixteen-year-old drifter Rosemary living there, he invites her to come back to Lexington with him and live with his family. Norah rejects Rosemary outright, believing that David is either in love with the girl or the father of her child. On a psychological level, Rosemary, who is the same age as Paul—and Phoebe, whom Norah believes is dead—reminds Norah of the daughter she never knew. While for David, this fact makes him want to shelter and protect Rosemary as penance for his secret deeds, Norah is unable to cohabitate with the girl. David and Rosemary move out and into a home of their own, where they live together platonically for several years while Rosemary gives birth to and raises her son, Jack, and takes classes. David—through circumstances of his own making —has felt like an outsider in his own family for nearly two decades. The family he chooses with Rosemary and her son is nontraditional and strange, even, but David feels more at home with the two of them than he ever did with Norah and Paul.

In sending his daughter away and breaking apart the family that was born to him, David Henry commits an unspeakable and, by some standards, even evil act. However, as the novel progresses and the far-flung characters within it form and make families based on choice, trust, and mutual respect and love, Edwards shows that true family is made of the people who show up for one another out of love and commitment rather than obligation alone. Blood, goes the old adage, is thicker than water—but The Memory Keeper’s Daughter shows that sometimes, the inverse is true.