Ivy Rowe's Ideas of the Past in Fair and Tender Ladies

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Ivy Rowe's Ideas of the Past in Fair and Tender Ladies

In Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, Ivy Rowe has a constant

attachment to her past. This attachment is one of the main themes in

the novel. It is one of her main reasons for letter writing and why

she does some of the things that she does, because she does not want

to lose her grip on her past. Ivy Rowe, in Lee Smith's Fair and Tender

Ladies, uses letter writing to keep a hold of her grip on the past and

where she came from.

In Letters from Sugar Fork, Ivy writes for a number of reasons. She

wants to see how and what other people are doing, wanting to improve

her writing skills, asking for help from her grandfather at one point,

in addition to just having some way to release all her thoughts and

emotions. These letters, being a window into her mind, show us the

progression of her as she grows. There is one letter in particular,

which shows how important this correspondence is to her. "I hate you,

you do not write back nor be my Pen Friend I think you are the Ice

Queen instead. I do not have a Pen Friend or any friend in the world,

I have only Silvaney who laghs and laghs and Beulah who is mad now all

the time and Ethel who calls a spade a spade…I will not send this

letter as I remain your hateful, Ivy Rowe."(Smith, 17) This letter

shows just how important letter writing is to Ivy. As she is not able

to receive correspondence from Hanneke she cannot fully express

herself and has a hard time with her anger, as is evidence by the

excerpt from her letter.

Ivy also writes to Mrs. Brown about her experiences in Sugar Fork. She

talks about how she shot a gun and is able to paint a vivid picture of

the winter season. "Ice just shining on each and e...

... middle of paper ...

...her last letter defines her life when she says "Slow down

now, slow down now Ivy. This is the taste of spring. I never have

slowed down." This shows her need to continue and persevere through

all she has been through. Ivy as a character goes through a lot in her

life and by writing these letters and expelling all her feelings and

emotions onto the paper she was able to find a sort of peace with her

existence.

Bibliography:

Henderson, Lara Beth A True Storyteller: Appalachia's own Lee Smith

October 1, 2000,

http://www.etsu.edu/haleyd/engl3134/ejournal/henderson.html

Robbins, Dorothy Dodge "Personal and Cultural Transformation: Letter

Writing in Lee Smith's 'Fair and Tender Ladies'" Critique: Studies in

Contemporary Fiction (Winter 1997, Volume 38 n.2): p. 135

Hill, Dorothy Combs "An Interview with Lee Smith" The Southern

Quarterly 28.2(1990):5-19

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