The Shawl

Like Erdrich, Aanakwad is an Anishinaabeg woman. Although initially presented as merely a figure from neighborhood legend, she is ultimately revealed as the narrator’s grandmother. Erdrich locates Aanakwad both within the storytelling tradition of the tribe and her narrator’s immediate family, and so Aanakwad can be analyzed both within the family dynamics of “The Shawl” and against the broader backdrop of Anishinaabeg communities during the 20th century.

Aanakwad is a complex, round character whose emotional volatility, quick temper, and desires propel the action of “The Shawl.” At the story’s beginning, Aanakwad has fallen in love with, and had a child by, a man other than her husband. She is no longer happy in her marriage and wants to join her lover. The series of arguments that Aanakwad has with her husband as they negotiate the end of their union become the first conflict of the story, and it is during the journey to her new home (and spouse) that readers are initially given the impression that she sacrifices her daughter to save herself and her infant child. Aanakwad had been characterized as an emotionally absent mother too unhappy to perform basic household duties, making this version of events seem plausible.